WapReview

YouTube's mobile site offers the full catalog of videos from the desktop YouTube site. An update adds social sharing features and direct video uploading. 

You need to login  to access to the new capabilities which include the ability to post comments on videos, share videos with other YouTube users or by Email, add videos to my favorites or to a playlist and rate videos. At one time the YouTube mobile webapp supported uploading videos directly from the phone but that feature was removed. You can upload phone videos to YouTube using MMS or Email to your personal YouTube email upload address that can be found on your YouTube account profile page.

I'm impressed with YouTube's approach to mobile. It is one of the very few video sites I've seen that has thematically consistent URLs across all devices and browsers. That means that any YouTube video URL is device independent and will work in any mobile or desktop browser. I can click on a link to a video on a mobile or desktop site or in an RSS reader on my phone or on the desktop and the video will be delivered in a format appropriate for what even device or browser I'm using. It just works and means I can safely share YouTube links without having to worry about the context (Android, iPhone, Opera Mini, feature phone browser or desktop) that they will be viewed in.

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Depending on who is doing the counting, DailyMotion is either the number two or three user generated video sharing site (after YouTube) in terms of traffic.

The Dailymotion mobile site lets you search or browse though  videos in subject area "channels" Or you can jump right into the "Most viewed", "Most recent", "Most popular" and "Best Rated" lists. It looks like the mobile site only contains a subset of the videos on the desktop site though.  I was unable to find many of the videos that are on the main site.

The streaming (there is no download option) videos are in a rather low quality, low resolution (176x144) format even on phones that are capable of handing much larger and higher quality content like my Nokia N95. The only exception seems to be the iPhone which has a dedicated URL, iphone.dailymotion.com with full screen 480px wide videos.

You do not need to register to watch any of the videos.  If you have an account you can log in to view your favorites and profile.

The only mobile upload option is with Shozu.  Which is a great program, provided your phone supports it. It would be nice to see other mobile upload options like MMS, email and browse for file.

The popular video sharing site Vimeo is dedicated to true user generated content and doesn't allow commercial videos.

There's a lot of interesting content on Vimeo but it's hard to access from any phone except an iPhone or Android device. There's a bug in the site's browser detection logic that redirects Symbian, bada, Opera Mobile, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and other mobile browsers to Vimeo's desktop site even if the user explicitly enters the mobile url!

The videos on the desktop site are Flash and don't work on most mobile devices.  The ones on the iPhone/Android Vimeo site are MPEG-4 packaged, H.264, AAC encoded and should work on most modern handsets - if only there were a way to get to them

iPhone only video streams. The Livestream site loads in the Android 2.3 browser but none of the videos work.

OVGuide is a categorized directory of mobile video sites. Categories include auto racing, entertainment shows, and viral clips

Tubidy is a new mobile front end to YouTube.  Browse or search for videos from your country or globaly.  Videos are converted to 3gp format for compatibility with most any phone that supports video playback and download. Low and high quality versions of each video are available and there is an option to download videos spit into 1 minute pieces for devices or networks that limit download size.

Mobile edition of video and audio search engine Blinkx.  Blinkx draws from over 750 content sites and claims to have indexed 4000 years of content.  The mobile site lets you browse popular Blinkx categories or do a keyword search.  Videos on Blink Mobile download rather than stream.  They are rather big files at 640x360px and several megabytes in size.  The ones I tried looked and played great on an HTC Evo Android phone but only the audio portion worked on a Nokia N95-3.  I'm not sure why as they are H264 encoded in an MP4 package which the Nokia should support.

Vuclip (which used to be called Blueapple.mobi), is a video search engine. It searches and indexes over 150 million videos from sites like YouTube, MetaCafe and Versaly. I was able to find videos for almost every query I tried including music videos, TV shows and sports.

Vuclip uses browser detection to deliver files are optimized for almost any video capable phone.  Formats range from low bandwidth 176x144, H263, AMR, 3gp, split into 500KB, 1 minute segments for low end devices to high quality, 320x240 5 MB .mov files for the iPhone.

Revision3 produces and distributes Internet TV shows which are distributed on YouTube, Tivo and Itunes and vis Android and iOS apps. Current shows include Diggnation, Lifehacker, Techno Buffalo and many more (mostly consumer tech and video gaming oriented) shows.

The Revision3 mobile site offers most of of Revision3's content in smartphone friendly format (320x180, H.264/AVC video, MPEG-4 AAC audio). The videos I tried played well on all my test smartphones, including a Nokia N8 and N95, Samsung Wave bada phone, Palm Pixi Plus WebOS device and an HTC Magic Android phone.

Delivery is by progressive HTTP download so videos start to play immediately on platforms (Symbian^3, WebOS, Android and iOS) that support progressive downloads. The Wave and N95  don't and had to download the full video before playback could start. In spite of their relatively low resolution, the videos played in full screen on all the devices. Playback was smooth and free from lag.

Microsoft has added a page of mobile videos to the MSN Mobile portal. There are several thousand videos available including News, Sports, Music Videos and Movie trailers. You can follow the Mobile Video link on mobile.msn.com or go directly to the video page at video.mobile.msn.com. The videos are 240x340 px in size for Windows mobile devices and 176 x 144 px for most other supported phones. They average about two minutes in length and are available as high or low quality streams or as downloadable files.

The site doesn't work with all video capable phones yet. MSN is only offering videos to devices that they have tested and verified compatibility with. For now you may see the the message "We currently do not support Video on your device" and be unable to watch the videos. Testing is proceeding rapidly and MSN's goal is to eventually support 90% of video capable 3G phones world wide.

The MSN Mobile video site is one of the better ones in terms of variety and quality of videos and ease of use. There's timely coverage from NBC and MSNBC News and ABC Sports along with all sorts of entertainment clips and user generated and viral content for sources like StupidVideos.com. The NBC clips include Nighty News items and interviews from Meet the Press.

Reuters has one of the best mobile news sites at mobile.reuters.com. Now there is also Reuters Labs, labs.reuters.com which has two beta mobile applications. The first is a Flash Lite enabled version of Mobile News that runs on unspecified Symbian devices with the Flash Lite player (required Flash version also not stated) installed. I haven't tried it as I don't have a compatible phone. The other beta at Reuters Labs, Mobile Videos, is pretty cool. It has a dozen news videos which are updated daily. The emphasis is on business and stocks with separate videos for the US, European and Asian markets. There are also US, European and World news videos. Each file is available in 3gpp, RealOne and Windows Media formats. I don't think any of these are actually streamable, the whole file has to download before it begins playing. The quality of the reportage, timeliness and variety of formats makes this a great site for news videos and a welcome addition to ZooVision's AP News videos.

Update: Reuters Mobile Videos is out of the labs. Links to selected videos appear on the Reuters mobile News homepage. The video home page is at /mobile.reuters.com/mobile/m/Video. Unfortunately the only format offered seems to be Windows Media! Far more devices support .3gpp than Windows Mobile Video making it a strange choice if only one format is to be supported.

Search for and download videos in mobile formats from Google Video. These are high quality .mp4 and .avi videos (5-15MB) so you really need a 3G connection. Avi support is pretty much limited to Windows Mobile. The mp4 format files are smaller and work on more devices.

Alternate mobile front end to YouTube.  Browse and search for videos YouTube.  Each video is available in a choice of four formats; streaming low quality 176x144 and downloadable higher quality 176x144, QVGA mpeg4 or QVGA .flv. Source: Tappity

Download free videos from YouTube, MetaCafe, DailyMobile and other online sites. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

SPB TV, the popular free streaming TV app for iPhone, Android, Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and WebOS now has a mobile web version that should work on most smartphones that support Javascript, RTSP and 2320x240 mpeg4 videos. The site and videos worked well on an HTC Magic Android phone and a Samsung Wave Bada device. The site also looked good and the navigation was faultless on my Nokia N95 but only the audio portion of the videos would play.  SPB TV offers 150 free TV channels from 20 countries including the the English editions of France TV, AFP News and China's CCTV plus Bloomberg and dozens of local US TV stations. The site features an attractive carousel style channel switcher and an integrated program guide. Source: Intomobile

Since 2004 RocketBoom has presented a three-minute daily news report emphasizing technology and the arts. The stories were presented in a gossipy style by RocketBoom's original anchor, Amanda Congdon. The show was grew rapidly to become the most popular video news site on the web by 2006 but declined in popularity after Congdon was firedlater that year.

vTap is another of the many sites offering streaming video for mobile phones. vTap launched in September as a downloadable application for Windows Mobile devices which is still available. Then came an Ajax powered iPhone version. I don't have an iPhone, but if you do try vTap.com. The iPhone version has some neat features like predictive text search where the site completes words as you type and RSS news feeds that spontaneously appear to help you pass the time while your video is being buffered in the slow ATT Edge network.

 

The big news for WapReview though, is that vTap has just launched a mobile web version of the site at m.vtap.com. The mobile site lacks the flashy features of the iPhone app but should work on any phone capable of streaming 3gpp video. I tried vTap using a Nokia N95 and was pleased with the site's clean and efficient design and large selection of content. vTap is a primarily a video search engine which does real-time encoding of video from web formats like Flash to mobile friendly 3gpp.
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30-Apr-2013: Site is extremely slow and frequently displays "index out of range" errors.

Yamgo provides free streaming TV and prerecorded video to iPhone, Android, Symbian and other mobile phones. You do need to register to use Yamgo but registration is instant, requires only an email address and you can done without leaving the mobile site.

The service is UK based and many of the live streams including World Cup play by play are only available in the UK. Here in the US, only three live channels are listed and only one of those, the Outdoor Sport Channel actually worked. 

I had better luck with the pre-recorded videos, all the ones I tried played well on both a Nokia N95 and an HTC Evo Android phone.  Content is mainly sports, especially soccer. There are also a number videos covering environmental issues from Greepeace and the WWF. Source: Mobility.mobi

Portal and search engine for streaming TV stations from arond the world in all languages. Live online Television in formats for Windows Media Player, Winamp, Real Player, 3gp. Watch and listen to live movies, news and reports on your phone.

Another mobile video download site. All videos are available as .3gp, .mp4 and real formats. The .mp4 videos seem be smaller than the .3gp ones which doesn't make sense as .mp4 is higher quality and always has a larger file size. Not surprisingly, I couldn't get any of the the .mp4's to play.

The ultimate streaming video site for Windows Mobile users with over 300 channels to choose from, everything from news to sports to music neatly categorized. Too bad it's all Windows media content not 3gpp or mpg4 which would work on a much wider range of mobile devices.

Showboxx is a mobile entertainment community - a stage for your pictures and videos. Show us your talent in various voting topics, become a star and win super prizes. Express yourself! Source: Oh! Mobile Directoy

Searchable directory of mobile formatted tv and radio streams plus a language translator and a webapp that lets you create password protected temporary notes which self destruct after 24 hours. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

A mobile web portal whose main attraction is a directory of over 1,000 mobile video and audio streams in Windows Media format.  Today PDA also features news, stocks, weather, a few wap games, chat room and a mobile site directory. Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Indie Hip-Hop, Rock, Metal and R&B music videos. RagTube features over 3500 indie artists. Billed as an iPhone site, I had no trouble using it on an Android HTC Magic and with Opera Mobile 10 on Symbian. The high quality 480x320 mpeg4  average 10 MB in size. Source: Mobility.mobi