Hands On: Streaming Media to 2.5/3G Cell Phones

Computerworld - In July and August of this year, I did some consulting work with Paraguay's largest cellular carrier, Personal.com.py. I was brought in to assist the company in evaluating and building a media streaming system that would integrate in its enhanced data rates for global evolution (EDGE) network, which was deployed in early October.

The scope of the project on my end was to assist in evaluating the streaming server product offerings from RealNetworks Inc. and Apple Computer Inc. for ease of use, stability and breadth of mobile unit compatibility. Secondary consideration was given to the ability to transcode recorded media from multiple sources into the 3GP streaming format and also to encode live streams into the same format.

We started by evaluating the two server products. My client liked the QuickTime streaming server from Apple for the quality of media and universal accessibility of the open standard on which QuickTime has been based. The Helix server from RealNetworks had the advantage of being a complete encoding and distribution package, plus many of the mobile units in the field already had the real player embedded. Ultimately, the decision was based on three factors: coder/decoder (codec) quality, compatibility and technical support.

Our collective/subjective quality impression found the QuickTime codec to be visually superior to the Real codec, and the third-party software that was employed to convert QuickTime media to 3GP streaming format maintained that high quality.

In terms of compatibility, the Real format isn't an open standard, and while the Symbian operating system in Nokia Corp. players comes bundled with RealPlayer, many of the mobile units slated for future release are based on other products that only suppor the 3GP standard.

Because the Personal network is an EDGE deployment, backward compatibility with General Packet Radio Service-only units wasn't the primary concern.

Lastly, during the testing phase, my client found Apple to be very eager to provide technical assistance. So the decision was made to proceed with integration and stress testing using the Mac OS X QuickTime Streaming server.

Note that originally the operator had been using the open-source Darwin server, but decided to use a rack of G5 X serves based on the quality of the hardware. Mac OS X server and QuickTime streaming server are bundled with the hardware, so it made sense to use the complete package.

It should also be noted that Personal isn't the only cellular provider that's deploying G5 Xserves for streaming media. Sprint Corp. recently announced that it was certifying the G5 Xserve for use as