WapReview

I've just added the international music oriented television station VH1's mobile site wap.vh1.com to the WapReview directory. VH1 Mobile is really loaded with content. It's a complete mobile entertainment site with news, gossip, photos, videos, contests  and polls.

The photo selection is particularly extensive with hundreds of photos organized into "FlipBooks" - slide shows based on a theme like "Reality Girls Gone Bad" or "Hottest Hunks Under 25".

VH1's video section contains around 20 free clips in low resolution, but compatible with almost any phone, 176x144 H.263 format. Depending on the handset each video is available as either a download, stream or both. The video's are a mix of entertainment news, music videos, star bios and trailers promoting VH1 shows.

Entertainment news and gossip is covered by a news section and several gossipy "blogs". There are also star and band bios, and contests on the site.

Although VH1 started as an MTV clone with music videos round the clock, the channel is better known today for its reality shows with celebrity casts like "Flavor of Love", where 20 women compete for the affections of rapper Flavor Flav.  VH1 mobile includes a mini Flavor of Love site with photos, contestant bios and polls.  There are similar mobile mini sites for two upcoming VH1 shows; game show series "I Love Money" and live concert show, "Remembering The Who".

The VH1 mobile site is uses color and images effectively to createthe feel of a modern full web site. It's a one size fits all design apparently targeted at higher end handsets with about 13KB of markup and a rather hefty 73KB worth of 300px wide images on the front page.  The site looks great in S60 WebKit and Opera Mini. Even the Openwave browser on a Motorola i855 managed to load the site completely if a little slowly but I'm sure there are a sizable number of mobile browsers that would run out of memory trying to load such a large site.  I'd like to see VH1 use browser detwection and image resizing to creat a site that works on all devices.

The mobile web home of NBC Universal's SyFy cable TV network (formerly called the "SciFi Chanel"). It has TV programming schedules, star bios, episode guides, photos and free streaming clips from the network's most popular shows.  The site also has a frequently updated news section covering science fiction in general including new Sci-Fi book and movie releases and interviews with authors and directors. Source Tappity

Discovery Communications, which operates 28 cable TV networks including the Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Discovery Health Channel and Travel Channel recently launched this mobile portal which features selected content including news, videos and games from across the Discovery properties. The site also includes links to the various channel's individual mobile sites and TV schedules.

Discovery Mobile site, which was created by Crisp Wireless, won top honors in the Mobile Entertainment category at the 2009 Webby Awards.

A site for fans of the most on NBCTV's hit shows The Office, The Tonight Show, Conan, The Biggest Loser, Pale Force, Coastal Dreams, 30 Rock, Bionic Woman, Chuck, My Name Is Earl, Scrubs, Medium, Friday Night Lights, Life, Las Vegas and cult favorite Heroes . There are episode recaps, streaming videos, actor bios and blogs, message boards and the opportunity to buy wallpapers and ringtones which have been listed as "coming soon" for months. Not that I'd actually pay for a TV show ringtone but how hard can it be!

Home of Oxygen, a US cable and satellite TV network featuring "reality" TV shows targeted at women viewers.  Top shows include Coolio's Rules and The Bad Girls. The mobile site has photos, video clips and character bios for Oxygen's top shows. Source Oh! Mobile Directory

TLC which used to stand for "The Learning Channel" now mainly runs reality based shows like Miami Ink and LA Ink which about are tattoo artists. The mobile site includes a series of step by step photos of the application of a complex tattoo design. The site also highlights cooking show Take Out Chef and the Miss America pageant which TLC will be broadcasting this year.

 

Music TV has a mobile site. Content consists of entertainment news, photos and entertainer bios - and a Brittney Spears video. But the video is served in as embedded Flash player! Not even Flash Light this is the same video and player that MTV uses on it's web site! I'm pretty sure there is no phone that can play that video.

Official American Idol site with news, videos, photos, and contestant bio's from the long running US singing competion TV show.contestants.

Bravo is a cable TV network with a number of hot shows currently including Top Chef and Project Runway. The mobile site features photos, blogs and a store where you can buy ringtones and wallpapers and have videos MMS'ed to your phone.

The animal lover's favorite TV network's mobile site highlights the show Merkat Manor, a reality show about the life and death struggles of several colonies of African mammal. The site also has a directory of the US's best dog parks.

 

A US cable TV network targeting the 18-34 demographic.  A joint venture between Warner Bros. and CBS it gets its name from the partner's initials.  The networks mobile site has plot summaries, photos and videos from the network's hit shows including 90210, Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, Smallville and America's Top Model.  There seem to be some issues with the videos. Some of them played on my Android and Samsung bada devices, but many did not.  None of the videos I tried worked on a Nokia N8.

The rather barebones mobile site of TeenNick a spinoff from US cable and satellite TV channel Nickelodeon.  Obviously targeted at teenagers, TeenNick's top programs include Zoey 101 and Drake & Josh.  The mobile site has today's broadcast schedule, polls, quizzes and a sign up form for text alerts.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

Mobile web site for the US's most popular children's TV network, Nickelodeon. It has the Nickelodeon TV schedules and video clips, character bios and online games for leading Nick shows like Spongebob Squarepants, iCarly, Penguins of Madagascar, Victorious and Big Time Rush.  Source: Modny 73

Formerly called "Tvbuddies", VH1's Mobile Chat is a social media wWebapp that lets you chat about what you are watching on VH1 with fans & friends.

Television program listing and guide.  The program grids are well designed and look good on most phones.

However the mobile version of TitanTV is not usable without a PC as it requires an account that can only be set up on the desktop site at www.titantv.com. Even after you have an account you can't change the listing to a different city or timezone without using the desktop site.

Mobile sites that require you to use a PC to setup effectively discourage anyone who discovers the site while browsing on the phone  from using it.  Not to mention that there are many mobile web users who don't have a computer.

UK television news,updates tonight's top TV picks, listings, competitions, photos, games and tv catch ups.

AT&T has lauched  this mobile web interface to U-verse DVRs. It lets U-Verse customers schedule and manage TV recordings from their mobile phones. U-Verse is a high DSL service providing IPTV, VOIP and  Internet with speeds up to 24 Mbps. Source: Tappity.

As I'm sure everyone in the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia and Taiwan knows, Tivo is Linux based television digital video recorder and service that is a bit of an obsession with many folks.  I don't have a Tivo but it's appears to be a very smart service that among other things insures that you will never miss your favorite shows even if the broadcast schedule changes and also analyzes your viewing habits and recommends similar programs.

Tivo now has a mobile site at m.tivo.com that lets you program you Tivo using your phone wherever you are.  That's not all it does either, Tivo Mobile also provides a television programing guide that can be used even if you are not a Tivo subscriber.  Just enter your zip-code and provider and Tivo Mobile will list daily favorites and  let you search for shows.  Show listings include time, channel, synopsis, cast list, ratings and an "If you like this..." link to the recommendation engine.  Unlike most other online guides. there is no hour by hour grid.

Tivo Mobile appears to be US only.  At least it wouldn't recognize Canadian postal codes.  But then again may be it's doing IP sniffing and knows I'm not in Canada.  If you get this to work north or south of the border (or in Taiwan or Australia) I'd love to hear about it. Source: MobileCrunch

This new mobile web service lets you control your Verizon FiOS digital video recorders (DVRs) from anywhere using almost any web capable mobile phone. The mobile interface lets you program your DVR to record a show, browse TV schedules and turn parental controls on and off.

Direct TV's DVR Scheduler lets you remotely program your Direct TV Digital Video Recorder using a mobile web interface. I don't have Direct TV so I haven't tried it but Carlo at MobHappy has and reports success. I'm a little disappointed that you have to go www.directtv.com to register, there's no reason using a mobile service should also require PC access.

TV news, celebrity gossip and TV schedules from the online edition of South African entertainment magazine tvplus.  Source: Oh! Mobile Directory

10-Mar-2013 - Site is down.

UK cable TV entertainment channel E4's mobile site features TV listings, star photos and bios (called "blogs"for some reason) and downloadable videos and ringtones from shows including Ali G, Ugly Betty, Big Brother and Friends. Some of the ringtones are free others are a semi-reasonable 50p. For some reason, E4 claimed that both my N95 and Z8 didn't support about half the videos including the Ali G ones. I wonder why? About the only format those phones don't support is Windows Mobile, could E4 be using WMV's? Another annoyance is that you can't even load the site in Opera Mini, getting an "Opera Mini-browser is not supported" message! Source: SMS Text News

10-Mar-2013 Site is down.