December 12, 2005

Customers of Sprint Nextel Corp. don't have to worry about turning off their wireless phones while watching a movie, since their phones are the theater.

This week, Sprint Nextel is expected to announce that it has started selling a service which permits customers to view full-length movies on its mobile video phones.

As of this morning, a cursory exploration of the service using a Samsung Blade handset showed that the movies currently available include "Night of the Living Dead," "One-Eyed Jacks" (a Western starring Marlon Brando and Karl Malden), John Wayne's "Angel and the Badman" as well as "Road to Bali" starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

Two shorts by the Three Stooges also can be viewed: "Sing a Song of Six Pants" and "Disorder in the Court."

The service, provided by vendor MSpot, allows customers to choose short, 5-minute segments of the movie to watch, much like a movie chapters on a DVD.

On Sprint Nextel's CDMA2000 1x EV-DO network, the video begins playing within a few seconds, and the picture quality is comparable to Verizon Wireless' EV-DO Vcast service.

Sprint Nextel's movie subscribers can view unlimited shows and movies for a monthly flat fee of $7 along with normal data service charges, according to MSpot spokesperson Leah Bibbo.

Source: RCR