NEWS: The Star sends news videos to your cellphone

PETALING JAYA: The next time you’re in a traffic jam or waiting somewhere, you might want to tune in to The Star’s mobile video-news channel on your 3G cellphone.

If you’re a Maxis service subscriber, you can access the Star 3G service now. All you need to do is make a video call to the shortcode *32838.

When the video call connects, you will see a service menu that you can navigate using the phone keypad.

The Star 3G service menu indicates a choice of two video channels — Daily News and Star TV.

Daily News is a three-minute summary of each day’s happenings.

Star TV offers a looping video of about 10 clips, with each lasting between a minute and seven minutes. Viewers have limited fast-forward and rewind options for this channel.

This streaming-video service keeps you in the know anywhere you are and you’ll never be bored while you wait ever again.

The company that created the quick-delivery video platform for this service is Nano Media Technology (NMT) Sdn Bhd, a three-year-old company headquartered in Technology Park Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.

Its managing director, Mark Hoo, said there is no time-consuming buffering (such as when watching videos on the Web) because the video call is a dedicated connection to each caller, like with a voice call.

“We wanted to make viewing videos on your mobile as simple and straightforward as possible, and our technology enables us to do this,” said Hoo.

NMT claims its solution gives service users a much better experience in comparison to WAP-based video delivery because its service is easier to navigate, faster and much cheaper.

Hoo explained that the cost of The Star 3G service would be calculated on a per-minute basis rather than by the amount of data downloaded.

“That’s roughly 30sen per minute (for the service’s fixed data transmission speed of 64 kilobits per second),” he said.

With NMT’s solution, it will typically cost about RM1 to watch a three-minute video, whereas with a WAP-based platform this would cost between RM2 and RM3.

Hoo said The Star 3G service would be extended to DiGi cellular service subscribers in December while discussions to include Celcom users are still ongoing.

For more information, go to www.thestar.com.my/3gvideo.