I have plenty of questions about the new Sungale Cyberus ID700WTA portable media player. Why does this device have so much trouble connecting to my wireless network? Why do my video clips continually skip and stutter when I’m playing them back? Why is the touchscreen so hard to use?

But most of all, why would anyone pay $279 for this device?

On paper, the Cyberus ID700WTA “Smart Info Engine” sounds great. It’s a portable media player/e-book reader with a big 7-inch color touchscreen. It plays back photos and videos, as well as audio tracks in a variety of formats such as AVI, MPEG4, DVIX, XVID, WMA, JPG, BMP, TIFF and PNG. It has wireless Internet access, and allows you to watch video from YouTube, listen to IP radio, check weather, get news updates and driving directions, check your Gmail, and look at photos from Picasa.

And the device looks good out of the box. It comes wrapped in a handy leather case (my test unit came in a black case, but brown and white also are available) and is light and comfortable to hold. It comes with an AC charger for powering up, and Sungale says it will offer three to four hours of battery life once fully charged.

The Smart Info Engine also comes with a mini USB cord for connecting to your PC. Once I made the connection, though, I started to notice the device’s flaws. One of its biggest drawbacks is its included software, called File Converter, for transferring content over to the player. The app’s interface is downright ugly, which would be acceptable if the app were usable, but it’s not.

The File Converter software should, conceivably, convert files to the right format for you. I’m not just going on the name alone here: The software has a button that says “Convert.” But each time I pressed it, nothing happened — until the software froze on me. I thought I might have better luck with the app’s other option: “AddFile.” And I did, to an extent — it added my content to the list, eventually. But it was incredibly slow to respond, and several times the app just froze up on me. Each time, I had to force-quit the application, and finally resorted to transferring content over using Windows Explorer.

Once I managed to get the content on the Smart Info Engine, I was hoping things would go a little more smoothly. I was wrong. When you turn on the device, you’re presented with two options: Link to Internet or Go to Main Menu. I attempted to connect to my home wireless network, which is protected with a WEP password. But the Smart Info Engine wouldn’t connect — it kept giving me an error message. I was able to connect to my neighbor’s unsecured Wi-Fi network without a problem, though. (And, yes: I double-, triple-, and quadruple-checked that I was entering the correct password.) Sungale provided me with a firmware update for the device, but this did not correct the problem. It said the issue was likely due to a flaw with my home network setup, but I have since been able to connect multiple other devices with no problem.

Once connected, you’re instructed to proceed to the main menu, which is a bit, well, basic looking. It features small square icons for the various features of the device — almost in the style of an iPhone. But the design lacks the finesse of an iPhone, even though the 7-inch, 480×800 pixel screen should be up to the task.

You tap on the icons to access various features, like YouTube or Gmail, but the touchscreen is not nearly as responsive as I would like. Prepare to push hard. The Smart Info Engine also lacks a stylus, which would have been helpful, as some of the text you have to tap is small, particularly when you’re using an onscreen keyboard.

Once you access YouTube, you can browse available videos in categories like Top Rated and Top Favorites Today. You can access your own YouTube account, but I couldn’t find any way to search the site. And you’re not actually seeing the YouTube site; you’re seeing a list of videos reformatted for viewing on this device. Once I played back videos, though, most looked surprisingly good. I noticed some occasional stuttering, but nothing terrible.

I wish I could say the same about watching the videos I had actually stored on the device. I transferred a couple of titles to the device itself and loaded some videos on an SD card that I inserted into the available slot. Finding the content was a breeze, but when I played it back, it looked awful. My video constantly skipped, and often was too pixilated to be viewed at all. And despite the fact that the Smart Info Engine has a big 7-inch screen, video plays back in a smaller window that looks to be about 3.5 inches diagonally. Why not just use the whole screen?

That’s yet another question about this device, but the answer seems to be: just don’t buy it.

Have you ever wondered what goes on at your house when you’re not home? Thanks to Avaak’s Vue personal video network, it’s now easy to find out. This $299 kit features wireless video cameras that you can set up almost anywhere and view over the Internet. It’s incredibly easy to use, and the hardware is well-designed.

Avaak says the system is designed for a variety of uses, including keeping an eye on pets or elderly parents; monitoring vacation homes; checking in on latchkey kids; securing a small business; and more. And it’s so easy to set up that anyone can use it. Unfortunately, the web-based surveillance tools are too limited to be a truly useful remote security system; at this point you can only watch live video, though the company says it plans to add recording scheduling soon.

The kit includes two tiny wireless cameras and a wireless gateway that connects to your router. You just turn the battery-powered cameras on, press a button to pair them with the gateway, and you’re good to go. The four included magnetic mounts are so well-designed — they’re the shape of a ball, cut in half — they impressed me with their simplicity. They grab the camera and hold it securely; it really couldn’t be easier.

Once the cameras are in place, you can log onto my.vuezone.com and create an account, with an identification number from your wireless gateway. Once you’ve created a user name and password, you can access your cameras from any browser that supports Flash. (That means you can’t use the iPhone’s Safari browser, but the company says an iPhone app is coming soon.)

The Vuezone’s Web interface is neatly laid out: Your cameras appear in a window on the left side of the screen, and you can drag them to the main window to play their video feed. The video quality is decent, but varies greatly depending on the lighting in the room. (And these cameras have no microphones, so the feed is video only.) You can change the settings to accommodate for low, normal or bright light, and to a certain extent, this helps. I used the “low light” setting in a room with a dim lamp, and the video appeared nice and bright. But when I tried to use the camera in a darker room, lit only by a nightlight, the video was so dark it was difficult to see — even on the low light setting. This is too bad, because this camera could really appeal to parents who want to see what their little ones are doing in their bedrooms when they’re supposed to be sleeping.

That’s not the only limitation of the Vue network. While the system comes with two cameras — and supports up to 50 (additional cameras are available for $99 each) — you can only see one feed at a time. You can drag all of your cameras into the main window, but only one will play at a time — if you have one camera playing, it will stop automatically if you start another one.

Another limitation: You can only watch live video. You can’t see what happened while you were away — so if someone broke into your house, robbed you, but put everything back in place, you might never even know that they’d been there. You can’t schedule video to record while you’re away from your computer, though Avaak says the feature is coming soon — and it will be a most welcome addition. (You can record video as you’re watching it, but I’m not sure why you’d want to.) And the Vue cameras don’t have any kind of motion detector that would cause them to turn on when something happens in the room, but the company says it is considering adding this to future versions. Scheduled recordings and motion detection would greatly increase the appeal of this product to people looking for a home or small business security system.

Avaak is off to a good start with the Vue personal network; it’s incredibly easy to use. Once the company adds the ability to schedule recordings, it will be far more useful, and able to compete with similar systems, like Logitech’s Indoor Video Security Master System. Until it has those features, though, its appeal is limited.

After slogging through two iPhone-less years, my contract with Verizon is up and finally — FINALLY! — I can catch up with the Techno Joneses and get the Jesus Phone. But with Verizon and Motorola launching their Droid line of phones today, suddenly, I’m not sure what kind to get, especially since I’ll have a newteevee slant to my usage. I could use some help from you, the reader.

To set the stage, I only use my phone as a “phone” for work, for personal use, I generally prefer texting. I’m interested in apps, and I use a Mac and Gmail. Here’s been my initial thinking:

Reasons to Get a Droid:
-Verizon’s network is better (or so the snarky commercial tells me)
-I’m already hooked in with the Verizon system
-Video recording is 720×480 at 24 fps (quite nice for those impromptu video interviews)
-5 mega-pixel camera (iPhone has 3.0), with image stabilization and location tagging
-YouTube baked right in
-I can play my cat videos on a 3.7 inch 854×480 screen (the iPhone is a 3.5 inches and 640×480)
-It’s on an open platform that many people (hopefully) will be developing all kinds of cool stuff for in the coming months

Reasons to Get an iPhone
-Not first-gen hardware
-Plugs into my existing Mac ecosystem at home and work
-Plenty of apps already available
-YouTube baked in
-Video recording with not-quite-livestreaming apps available

I’ve heard mixed things about the iPhone. Om chucked his, but other friends of mine still love theirs and don’t even mind the cruddy AT&T network. With the Droid not available until Nov. 6, I realize that you probably haven’t used one yet, but speaking in broad terms, what do you think? Should I avoid the Droid or does the Droid pwn the iPhone?

Can a cell phone take the place of your pocket camcorder? More and more phones are trying to serve as compact camcorders like the Flip models, as are MP3 players like the iPod nano. But few — if any — offer the same video quality and ease of use that you’ll find in a dedicated camcorder. One of the latest phones to attempt this feat is Samsung’s Instinct HD. And, though the Instinct HD does offer a very good camera and camcorder, I wouldn’t trade it for a Flip MinoHD…yet.

Samsung and Sprint, which is offering the Instinct HD for $250, are highlighting the HD features of the phone. And it can capture HD video; in fact, you’re reminded of this every time you fire it up. Before you can capture any video, you have to select your desired resolution: HD (1280×720), VGA (640×480) or QVGA (320×240). I found this constant reminder a bit annoying; I’d rather pick a default resolution and just change it via a settings menu.

That’s not my only complaint about the camcorders controls, either. You can launch the phone’s 5-megapixel camera by pressing a dedicated button on the side of the handset, but to change it to video recording mode, you have to press a teensy camcorder icon on the phone’s touchscreen. The icon was so small, I couldn’t accurately tap it without using the tip of my fingernail.

Luckily, you can start and stop video recording by pressing the camera button on the side of the phone — which conveniently sits on top when you rotate the handset sideways so it’s in widescreen mode. But to zoom in and out you have to tap another on-screen button. This one is big enough that it’s easy to tap, but doing so does cause the camera to jerk slightly, and you’ll likely notice that movement in your video clips.

In the HD clips I captured, video quality was, for the most part, very good. Close-up subjects looked the best, while larger scenes tended to look a bit washed-out and less crisp. And while it’s nice that you can zoom in and out while recording, using the zoom degraded the video quality to the point that I simply wouldn’t bother.

One of the key HD features about the Instinct HD — it’s mentioned multiple times on the box — is the ability to play your photos and videos back on auxiliary HD devices. The phone even has a mini-HDMI video out port on its side. So, after I recorded my videos, I was all set to hook my phone up to my HDTV to see how they looked. And I would have been able to…if only the necessary mini-HDMI to HDMI cord was included with the phone. Alas, it’s a $30 accessory.

The Samsung Instinct HD does take advantage of some of Sprint’s cool video services, like Sprint TV (which offers a mix of live and pre-packaged TV and video clips) and the NFL Mobile Live service, which lets you watch live football games. Both of these services are included with the voice and data plans that Sprint offers for the Instinct HD, which start at $69.99 a month.

When compared to similar cell phones, the Instinct HD’s camcorder shines in some respects: The video quality tops most phones I’ve tried, and the video out port is a nice touch. But it lags in usability and that HDMI cable really should come with the phone. But what the Instinct HD — and any other phone I’ve tested — can’t do is replace a dedicated pocket camcorder. Cameras like the Flip and Kodak’s Zx1 simply offer superior usability and video quality.

Monsoon Multimedia’s HAVA products have long been a lesser-known competitor to the Slingbox line of place-shifting devices. I’ve always been impressed with the HAVAs I tested, which were functionally better then most Slingboxes, though a little less refined. The same is not true of the newly released HAVA Mobile Player for iPhone app, which doesn’t quite live up to the standard set by the SlingPlayer for iPhone app.

The HAVA Mobile Player lets you view the contents of your HAVA-connected TV over your iPhone’s Wi-Fi connection; like the SlingPlayer app, it does not work over 3G connections. It’s available for $9.99 in the App Store. That’s a bargain compared with the $29.99 that the SlingPlayer app will set you back, but it still seems high to me. To use it, you need a HAVA set-top box, the cheapest of which costs $150. I’d love to see the mobile app come with the device.

I tested HAVA Mobile Player using a demo HAVA set up by the company for testing purposes. Connecting to the device was easy: I just entered the name and password, and within a few seconds, video was playing on my phone. Video looked good, too. The picture was clear, and audio was always in sync with video. I was even able to read on-screen print and graphics with ease when watching news channels like CNN.

As impressed as I was with the app’s video quality, I was equally unimpressed with the way the app’s controls were implemented. The menu reappears when you tap the screen; from there you can access favorite channels, the remote control, the controls for the set-top box, and the DVR controls. But once you delve further into these controls, the app stumbles. The remote control, for example, lets you scroll through or tune to a specific channel. There’s a slight delay while you wait for the channel to change on the remote TV, which is to be expected. My complaint is that once your channel comes on, the remote doesn’t disappear the way it should. Instead, it stays on-screen — occupying at least half of the screen — until you manually close it.

You access the guide through the set-top box control icon — and similarly, after the guide launches, the controls don’t disappear. They stay on-screen, blocking most of the guide info, until you manually control them. But the problem here is that there’s an X icon that says Exit, and another X icon, which sits in a circle. The “Exit” button is the one that you use to Exit the guide itself, while the circled X is the one you tap to hide the controls. Figuring this out, though, took some trial and error.

HAVA Mobile Player also lets you access your DVR remotely, but the DVR features did not feel fully fleshed out in my tests. The DVR controls are basic, with options for playing, pausing and recording live TV. When I pressed pause, though, nothing happened; I saw a message saying that the app was sending a pause command to the remote DVR, but the show continued to play. Adding to the confusion, the DVR controls don’t actually allow you to access the content stored on your DVR; to do that, you have to go into the set-top icon, and then into the menu. It’s an inelegant solution.

HAVA Mobile Player tops SlingPlayer Mobile in price and in video quality, but lags in usability. If you already have a HAVA set-top box, this app is a decent mobile solution. The mobile app alone, though, is not enough to make me purchase a HAVA — not until those controls get revamped.

How much you’ll like 3M’s M120Pro Pico Projector largely depends on your expectations. If you’re looking for a full-scale, high-powered home entertainment projector, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. But if you’re looking for a fun, easy-to-use gadget that will provide a midsized screen in a pinch, 3M’s petite projector will be right up your alley — as long as you can live with some of its limitations.

The M120Pro is 3M’s second pico projector, after last year’s M110Pro, and offers several improvements over its predecessor, including better battery life and a (slightly) brighter lamp, for the same price: $350. Still, despite these upgrades, the second generation of pico projectors isn’t a drastic improvement over the first.

The M120Pro is slightly larger than the 110, but both are tiny. The M120Pro is narrower but slightly longer than an iPhone; you could slip it into your pocket and barely notice that it’s there. It runs on a rechargeable lithium-polymer battery that 3M says can deliver up to four hours of life, making the M120Pro truly portable. That’s much better than the one hour of battery life that 3M claimed for the M110Pro.

Of course, the small size results in a few drawbacks, and chief among them is brightness — the M120Pro’s lamp tops out at 12 lumens. That’s a bit brighter than the 10 lumens lamp found on the comparably sized Optoma Pico projector that I reviewed a few months back, but it’s not an improvement you can see with the naked eye. It’s also far short of the 100-lumens lamp that ViewSonic’s portable PJD2121 projector offers. (The ViewSonic projector is considered an ultraportable, but is too big to carry in a pocket and does not run on batteries.)

And 12 lumens of light may not be enough for you to use this projector in some situations. I tested the M120Pro in a room full of daylight, and found the image so dim as to be almost unwatchable. When used at dusk, the picture improved noticeably, but it wasn’t until nighttime that the M120Pro projected a bright, lively picture that was easy to see.

3M says the M120Pro is capable of creating an image between 8 and 50 inches, measured diagonally. I found the image degraded noticeably when I tried to make it any larger than about 32 inches in size; the picture looked blurry. The projector’s native resolution of 480×640 was enough to deliver crisp, clear images when the screen was small, though.

The M120Pro includes composite A/V and VGA connector cables, plus a handy tripod. A separate adapter will allow you to connect the projector to an iPhone or iPod. I wasn’t able to test this feature, but it seems to me that this is a situation in which a pocket-sized projector would prove most useful: when connected to similarly portable devices. It would allow you to create your own virtual big (or medium-sized) screen wherever the mood strikes.

The 3M M120Pro will satisfy users who put a premium on portability and are willing to sacrifice a bit of power to get it. But those who put picture quality above everything else should keep on looking.

Qualcomm’sFLO TV is launching the properly-named-but-it’s-kind-of-a-boring-moniker FLO TV Personal Television device for those who want to watch television on the go. But do consumers want to carry around another device and pay another subscription to watch TV wherever they are?

The FLO TV Personal Television plays live and time-shifted video content over FLO’s multicast network, and promises no buffering or downloading to watch your shows. The 3.5-inch touch screen allows users to surf through channels with the swipe of a finger.

FLO TV does have a decent lineup of channels including Comedy Central, ESPN, MSNBC and MTV. But the Personal Television will cost $250 and requires an $8.99 per month subscription fee.

That’s pretty steep for a technology that hasn’t even caught on with consumers yet, and would be on top of what people already pay for mobile phones and pay TV subscriptions. Though recent research from Infonetics predicts that the number of mobile video subscribers worldwide will grow tenfold by the end of 2013 from the 41 million in 2008, that isn’t all gravy for mobile pay TV providers. In his analyst note, Jeff Heynen, Infonetics directing analyst, Broadband and Video, wrote:

“Though video-capable phones continue to become more widely available, subscriber uptake of pay TV services (not free-to-air video) continues to disappoint. A combination of poor macroeconomic conditions, subpar 3G network coverage for streamed video services, and pricing that puts mobile video services out of reach for many consumers is contributing to the lackluster growth of mobile video services around the world.”

The FLO Personal Television might be a tremendous device, but it’s a question of whether people need it. It doesn’t do anything other than display TV. FLO TV is already available on some mobile phone handsets through AT&T and Verizon, and more video is coming to competing services like the iPhone including live sports and breaking news. Will people want to pay (and find another pocket for) a device that just does TV? Maybe Liz can pick one up to replace her now-useless analog Sony Watchman.

MLB.com’s mobile strategy is adding to — not cannibalizing — the league’s traditional web business, according to President and CEO Bob Bowman. Speaking at the Apps for Brands conference in New York yesterday, Bowman shared some stats about MLB’s At Bat app and announced a new feature coming to the service in time for the playoffs (hat tip to Ad Age).

Bowman said that the $9.99 At Bapp app, which allows users to stream live games to their iPhone, has been downloaded more than 400,000 times, and MLB’s free app has been downloaded more than 350,000 times.

Unlike MLB’s other subscription products, which are used once or twice a week, customers are using the mobile app “every day,” said Bowman, because they’ve always got their mobile device on them.

MLB is also set to launch a Quad View feature for the At Bat app in time for the playoffs, which will let users view a game from four different angles, simultaneously. Without having seen the app in action, this seems like it will involve a lot of squinting on such a tiny screen, but I’ve learned to never underestimate the nuttiness of baseball fans.

We’ve heaped our fair share of praise on MLB before, and this is just the latest example of how it’s embracing new video technologies — an approach that’s paying off for the league. Earlier this summer it made MLB.TV available on both Boxee and Roku.

The most aptly named live-streaming company in the business, Livestream, is taking the wraps off its new Livepack — an all-in-one, backpack-sized device that enables live, mobile, HD-quality broadcasts.

The ruggedized device requires no laptop and comes with a touchscreen and six integrated 3G/EVDO modems from AT&T, Verizon and Sprint that are bound together in a way to provide the highest possible available bit rate. Livestream CEO and co-founder Max Haot told us by phone that in a good coverage area users can get a solid 700kbps connection (it can go up to 1Mbps), in poor coverage areas, the six modems working together can provide a 300-400kbps.

The Livepack is integrated into Livestream’s platform to handle all of the video encoding and streaming, and it can be used by those with a free or a premium Livestream account. Just plug your camera into the device and you’re ready to broadcast. A single battery will deliver roughly 3 hours of use.

Livestream isn’t manufacturing the device itself; the company has partnered with LiveU for the hardware and to market the product to broadcasters. LiveU and Livestream are offering the Livepack on a rental basis: $2,500 a month with no contract, or $1,500 a month for a year contract with 30 hours of uplink time per month and all 3G and telecom charges included.

Haot sees events as a sweet spot for the Livepack, fitting in between super-high end broadcasters that have their own mobile facilities (like a TV network) and low-end UGCers making amateur looking content with mobile phones. “Event owners and organizers who put on an event — a sports event, community event, church event — they are realizing they can stream live for free or by investing a reasonable amount,” said Haot.

Livestream currently has 20 Livepacks available for rent, but LiveU has hundreds more units that could be called up. The Livepack is available now.

Vuclip announced today that it has raised a $6 million Series B round of funding led by Jafco Ventures, with existing investor New Enterprise Associates returning. This brings the total amount the company has raised to a little more than $14 million.

Liz did an excellent explainer last year on what Vuclip does, but in a nutshell, the company lets mobile phone users search for and playback video. Vuclip does the transcoding on the fly and on the back-end so all the user needs is a phone with a browser, a native media player and data plan.

Craig Gatarz, Vuclip’s chief administrative officer, told us by phone that the service is getting 4 million unique users a month and delivering a million videos a day to 3,000 different handsets in 150 different countries (the bulk of Vuclip’s traffic comes from India, China and the U.S.).

Vuclip offers both a consumer-facing service with an ad-split revenue model as well as a white-label “powered by” service for the enterprise. The company can stitch a pre-roll to a piece of content on the fly, allowing publishers to target using geography or some other criteria.

The company plans to use its new funding to build out its sales and marketing teams and add to its technology platform.

Based in Milpitas, California, Vuclip currently has 40 employees across the Bay Area, China and India. Competitors in the mobile video space include Skyfire and mSpot.

Mobile entertainment company mSpot announced today at the GigaOM Mobilize 09 conference that it’s expanding its streaming movie service this fall beyond Sprint to AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, and will be available on more than 30 handsets.

mSpot allows users to stream full-length feature films (among other kinds of entertainment) across Wi-Fi, 3G or EDGE networks. We spoke with mSpot CEO and Co-founder Daren Tsui, who told us a little more about his service and gave us a little demo of it in action.

I had high hopes when I started scouring the Android Market for cool mobile video apps. After all, Android is known for being one of the most (if not the most) cutting-edge mobile platforms available today. And I was not disappointed — here’s what I found:

VLC Remote

This app, which is available in the Android Market as a free beta, is also available in both paid ($2.99) and free versions in the iPhone’s App Store. It lets you control the VLC Media Player software running on your Windows, Mac or Linux computer from your Android phone as if it were a remote control. (And, by the way, if you’re not using VLC for video playback on your computer, you should be. It’s one of the best media players around.) You just install the app on your phone and then download the setup utility, which allows the mobile software to talk to your computer’s desktop software. VLC Remote automatically finds VLC players on your home network for you and establishes the connection over your Wi-Fi network.

Qik

Qik seems to be turning into a staple in mobile video software. This free app, which I mentioned in my recent roundup of video apps in Nokia’s Ovi Store, is also available for the iPhone. Qik lets you stream live video from your Android-based phone to the web. I haven’t fully tested Qik’s Android version yet, but it was updated in August in order to iron out some of the bugs (such as inconsistent video performance) that were reported in the first iteration, an alpha released in June. 

Gmote

Gmote is another app that allows you to use your Android-based phone as a remote control for your Windows, Mac or Linux-based computer. (At this rate, I may never get off my couch again.) You install the free app on your phone, then install the Gmote software on your computer. Like VLC Remote, it connects to your computer over your Wi-Fi network, and can also be configured to connect via your cellular data network if Wi-Fi is unavailable.) From your phone, you can browse a list of all the music and video files on your computer, and launch them remotely. Gmote worked almost instantly in my tests; one tap on the screen of my Android phone, and by the time I looked at my Vista-based laptop, my videos were playing. A beta feature allows you to play the files on your phone, too, but this seemed rather buggy to me, as it frequently told me that my Android phone did not have a player capable of playing back most of my video files. 

SPB TV

SPB TV has plenty of promise, but one big drawback: You have to pay to get any of the features worth using. This mobile TV application offers access to an interesting mix of more than 100 TV channels, including C-SPAN, ABC News Now and Weather Plus; and a mix of local news stations, such as KNBC 4 Los Angeles, Fox 12 Oregon, Access Sarasota 12 and others from across the country; plus international stations from 17 more countries. You get an easy-to-read program guide, and a simple — if small — video player. Unfortunately, the free (or “Lite”) version offers the channel list and program guide only; if you want to watch any content, you have to pony up $10 for the full-featured application. I understand the need to charge for content, but with such an eclectic mix of stations (not to mention a teeny-tiny viewing window), I’m not sure I’m willing to pay.

These are just a few of the video apps available in the Android Market, which is growing quickly. That means we can expect more cool video tools added, and soon.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

NBC Universal Goes to the Gas Pump; signs deal with Gas Station TV to put its local and national programming on TV screens at up to 1,000 gas stations. (Multichannel News)

Court Tosses Cable Subscriber Cap; Comcast and its ilk now have the green light to go above its 30 percent subscriber limit. (Broadcasting & Cable)

Blu-ray Disc Prices Have Fallen; new releases are 12 percent cheaper and library titles one-third less compared with 2008. (Video Business)

FASTHockey to Stream Hockey Canada Cup; games available for purchase on Hockey Canada or at the FASTHockey portal using the Highwinds CDN. (emailed release)

Watch Live TV on Your Android Phone; Spb TV makes over 100 international channels available on Android devices. (jkOnTheRun)

Sales of video-enabled mobile phones will surge over the next four years, Infonetics projects in new research. Unfortunately, providers of mobile pay TV services won’t enjoy the forthcoming salad days.

Infonetics predicts that 397 million video phones will sell worldwide in 2013, and the subsequent market created will be tens of billions of dollars. The number of mobile video subscribers is expected to grow nearly tenfold by the end of 2013 from 41 million worldwide in 2008, the research firm says. Live sports like soccer and cricket will be a big driver of mobile video adoption, Infonetics believes.

However, pay TV services won’t find an immediate payoff in all this growth. In his analyst note, Jeff Heynen, Infonetics directing analyst, Broadband and Video, writes:

“Though video-capable phones continue to become more widely available, subscriber uptake of pay TV services (not free-to-air video) continues to disappoint. A combination of poor macroeconomic conditions, subpar 3G network coverage for streamed video services, and pricing that puts mobile video services out of reach for many consumers is contributing to the lackluster growth of mobile video services around the world. While mobile video services are expected to eventually grow significantly, until operators combine broadcast, on-demand, and sideloading, revenue will remain a drop in the bucket of overall mobile service revenue.”

Mobile video has been getting a lot of attention recently. YouTube has said that mobile uploads are an “exponentially” growing part of its site.

If you’re interested in the future of the mobile web, be sure to attend GigaOM’s Mobilize Conference this month to hear speakers from Motorola, T-Mobile and Qualcomm, among others.

It’s great that the iPhone finally has the ability to record video, right? But once you’ve captured your video, the iPhone doesn’t allow you to do much with it, other than upload it to YouTube or MobileMe. Pixelpipe overcomes this limitation, by allowing you to upload your videos directly to a wide variety of online locations. But the service also suffers from a few shortcomings of its own.

Pixelpipe is available for free in Apple’s App Store; the startup also offers versions for Nokia and Android-based phones. The app lets you take content from your computer or mobile phone (including photos, videos, audio files, and more) and upload it directly to a variety of social networks, photo-sharing sites, blogs, and more.  On the iPhone 3GS, Pixelpipe supports uploading of video to more than 40 services; the iPhone itself only offers direct uploading of videos to YouTube and MobileMe.

Installing Pixelpipe on my iPhone was a breeze, but once I had the app up and running, things didn’t run quite as smoothly. In fact, the first thing I noticed about Pixelpipe was how slow it was — even though I was using it on a speedy, new iPhone 3GS. The first time I launched it, the app seemed to hang and was unresponsive. As it turned out, though, it was just indexing all of the photo and video files on my phone and placing them in my Pixelpipe Media gallery. But it didn’t tell me it was doing this, and — what’s worse — it repeated this process (which took a minute or longer) every time I opened the app.

Once your media files have been indexed, you can browse through a list that’s nicely organized — with one pretty big exception. Pixelpipe’s gallery displays thumbnails of your photos, but all of your video files have a blank, white thumbnail instead. So, if you’re planning on uploading a video that you captured, you best remember when you took it, as the files are displayed in that order. If you know the file name, you’re in luck, but the iPhone assigns those names, and doesn’t let you alter them. Pixelpipe is aware of this bug, and says it’s working on a fix.

To upload your photos and videos, you go into Pixelpipe’s settings and select your destinations. All of your options are arranged in a neat list, and in most cases, you simply enter your login and password for the sites you choose. Once your destinations are set up, you can go back to your media gallery and upload all of your files, or pick and choose individual items.

I tried to upload a variety of videos to my Facebook and Flickr accounts simultaneously. While all of the files neatly appeared in my Flickr account, I had to wait — and wait — for them to show up in my Facebook page. And when they finally arrived, not all of my videos made the journey. Pixelpipe’s web site has a handy tool where you can check on pending uploads, and it told me that an error had occurred during my upload. I was able to restart the upload right from the site, rather than having to go back to the app on my phone — a nice touch.

I found Pixelpipe a little slow to use and still a bit buggy. If the company can iron out some of the problems — specifically the missing thumbnails on your iPhone videos — I would find myself using it very often, though.

True video connoisseurs are not likely to swap a dedicated video camera for a smartphone. But today’s phones are beefing up their video recording features, hoping to win over shoppers contemplating a low-cost video camera like the Flip or the Zodak Zx1. Thinking of making the plunge yourself? Not so fast, I say: I tested the video capabilities of Nokia’s N97, a smartphone that is capable of capturing “DVD-quality” video, and I’m not ready to give up my Flip just yet.

The Nokia N97’s 5-megapixel camera can capture 640-by-480 video at 30 frames per second, and using it is a pleasure. A dedicated button on the side of the phone activates the camera, so you don’t have to dig through menus to find it. And the N97 has a nice, big 3.5-inch touchscreen, which allows you to really see the video as you’re capturing it. It makes the 2-inch screen on the Kodak Zx1 look miniscule.

Controls for starting, stopping, pausing and zooming the video run along the sides of the N97’s screen, and are nicely spaced so as not to look too crowded. The touchscreen is responsive, so the controls are easy to use. But when you press any of the buttons (to zoom in or pause the video, for example) you end up moving the camera slightly, and I noticed this movement when I played back my videos.

Most videos looked great on the N97’s screen, and even looked equally good when I transferred them to my computer via USB. (The N97 is sold unlocked, so you have to supply your own cellular service. Depending on what you choose, you also may be able to share videos via e-mail, MMS, or using Nokia’s Ovi file-sharing service.)

I did, however, witness a noticeable degradation in quality when using the camera’s digital zoom. While using a digital zoom is bound to reduce the quality somewhat, the hit my videos took when I zoomed in made them unwatchable. See the clip above for an example.

I also found the zoom mechanism a bit hard to use; the on-screen slider is small, and I found it jumped from one extreme to the other, rather than letting me zoom in subtly. I also noticed that the N97 seemed to have difficulty picking up audio. When playing back clips on the phone itself, the sound was dim, and much of the audio seemed almost nonexistent when those same clips were viewed on my computer.

The Nokia N97 is a pretty slick phone, but it’s expensive ($700, unlocked) and I wouldn’t buy it for its video recording capabilities alone. I would, however, buy it for its other features and would just consider its video camera an added benefit — as long as I didn’t need to use the zoom.