This week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona hasn’t just been about battling mobile operating systems and the latest chips for cell phones, it’s also about content. For the first time ever, the GSM Association threw a party at the event focused solely on mobile entertainment, “Mobile Backstage.”

While there have been big announcements such as Nielsen talking about tracking online video, and the launch of mobile ad networks such as MMcast, the content news at Mobile World Congress is still a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing (what? too literary?). Mobile video has taken off in a few places such as South Korea and Japan, but for the most part, press releases outnumber the viewers.

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MTV’s announcement this week that it will be giving young people across the country Nokia N95s and using Flixwagon to stream live video reports from caucuses and polling stations during next Tuesday’s multi-state primary shows that there’s still plenty forward-thinking going on at the network once a pioneer of the cable broadcasting vanguard.

All the video, such as this report from Obama campaign headquarters in North Dakota, will be available on MTV’s think community news site as well as on Flixwagon itself. The network does promise to break into their broadcast programming with both live reports and pre-recorded segments from the field every hour or two over the course of the day.

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YouTube today announced a huge improvement to its existing mobile video offerings: far broader access to watch videos from a far broader range of phones, as well as upload videos of your own. In the past, the service had been available in limited form through deals with Verizon, Helio, and Apple. Now, anyone with a 3G device (admittedly that’s a small fraction of the population) whose handset can handle streaming video can access the service at m.youtube.com and watch “most of YouTube’s catalog, or tens of millions of videos,” according to the New York Times.

Other improvements: Through the mobile version of YouTube, existing users can log into their normal accounts with their library and preferences intact. Video uploads are via MMS. For now, the mobile version will have no ads.

Google had previously told us that the iPhone was not a significant source of traffic to YouTube, though the device had given Google Maps a boost. That’s probably not solely due to the limitations of the video application, but to the slow speed of U.S. mobile data connections. The new YouTube mobile site is available internationally, so look for lots of off-the-cuff cellcam vids from places where people have better phones and access.

SnapTell Launches Mobile Movie Explorer; take a picture of a DVD cover with your mobile phone, send it into the service and it will respond via MMS messaging with details about the film. (release)

GoldSpot Media Raises $3 Million; mobile video ad-insertion management company gets Series A round from Exa Ventures. (release)

SpotRunner Acquires GlobeShooter; deal gives Internet ad agency access to more than 1,200 filmmakers, videographers, producers and more to create the SpotRunner Production Network. (release)

TiVo on Comcast Rolls Out in Boston; service will be offered as a premium upgrade, and act as a test for the Tru2way video technology. (USA Today)

Online Video Users Hate Pre-Rolls; new survey from Burst Media says over half of Internet users stop watching a selected video once the pre-roll pops up. (Silicon Alley Insider)

YuMe to Manage NBC Direct Ads; broadband ad network will do ad and campaign management, traffic and reporting for the peacock network’s download video service. (release)

Among the questions we’ve asked our panel of experts was this one: Will mobile video still suck in 2008?

Selections from their responses are below. We’d love to hear your take on the question or on our panelists’ predictions in the comments. For more information on the NewTeeVee 2008 outsourced predictions, see this post.

George Ruiz, head of new media at International Creative Management (online video talent agent):

“Not all mobile video is terrible. Streaming content and ‘download to phone’ video has been hampered by the slow rollout and adoption of 3G cellular networks and this results in mostly unwatchable pixelation and slow frame rates for video, but ‘download to computer and sync’ solutions can result in a great user experience.

“I carry clips of all my clients’ work on my iPhone and the playback is gorgeous. For now, if you want to watch video on your phone or mobile device it’s best to download it from iTunes or directly from the source and use freeware to format it to fit your device’s screen. The latter method is pretty geeky, but the mobile video-watching audience is, for the time-being, mostly first-adopter types who are quite tech savvy.

“Finally, the rumored 3G version iPhone will probably arrive in 2008 and all mobile video problems will be solved.”

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