The Weather Channel will this week launch a new mobile video forecasts service powered by Vantrix, a content delivery startup we wrote about in September.
The new service is claimed to be a first in this space and will involve the production and streaming of over 5000 mobile video clips per day covering 100 cities, with new clips made available every 30 minutes.
During the initial pilot, the service will be available on most video-capable phones from the four largest US carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile), with carrier and handset coverage to be expanded after the initial trial. The videos will be encoded in H.264 which in theory should provide access to iPhones as well.
The Weather Channel will have access to 80 million handsets during the pilot program.
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Who would have thought - weather could be so exciting.
Actually, the weather channel has been making some small acquisitions of late. …flying below the fog, eh.
I don’t think they’re first, weatherbug is in similar move they’ve already a press release about such feature in mobile phone; http://www.aws.com/aws_2005/re.....202007.asp
They also offer weather.mobi for mobile…
Micfo,
Doing weather on mobile devices is not new. But doing mobile web video forecasts is.
Looks like WeatherBug is a downloadable appliacation with features like the iphone widget. The Weather Channel/Vantrix deal is accessible through the browser (no download requires), is video, and will have constantly updated video clips throughout the day making it an industry first.