"Vtap" video player, and browser released for S60 devices

[Micky]

I have read a few posts within the forums about vTap, but didn't find a dedicated thread, so here goes.



from our very own, pseudofinn, on Symbian Guru

Originally Posted by pseudofinn

vTap has released its native S60 client. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I really recommend it. While the graphics leave more than a little to be desired, the operation of the system is brilliant. I’ve used the mobile site before plenty in the past, but having a native S60 app ready to display results at the press of a few buttons absolutely makes vTap one of the most useful features of my phone.

vTap’s main feature seems to be its claim to fame- “videos from everywhere”. The service helps you find media from a ton of sources quickly on your phone. Those sources include news media outlets, user submitted media and of course the perenial favorite of millions, YouTube. vTap claims that a continually growing collection of 200 million videos from thousands of sites is readily and quickly available from the service.

Searches happen the way they should on a service designed for mobile use; when you start typing, results are displayed based on a character-based incremental search. Generally, the entire word or set of words need not be completed to match results. It also takes advantage of T9 to further facilitate ease of use on a mobile device without a qwerty keypad.

While the video searching function of vTap is slick and quite useful in a number of scenarios, what I find to be really cool is the Wikipedia/Wiktionary search. I’m sure we’ve all been sitting around with friends hotly debating some trivial piece of information until someone pulls out a mobile and hits up Wikipedia for (hopefully) the facts and ends the quibble. vTap makes this a quick and simple pleasure by incorperating Wikipedia search into the S60 application. The impromptu abilitly to lookup information on movies and TV, sports, history, people and other various facts has no doubt already saved society more than a few black eyes, and vTap only makes this easier and quicker. The Wiktionary search allows you to look up spelling, meaning and pronounciation with complete ease and without the need to open up a web browser. Simply select ‘Wikipedia’ from the options menu inside the app and you’re ready to start entering a search. Quick and simple, no fuss. Wiktionary results are only English for right now- but we’re told that additional languages will be coming soon.

Another very slick item is the playlist and feed feature. When you sign up for a (free) account at vTap, which can be done relatively easily right from your phone, you get the ability to create your own playlist of previously watched videos. You can also customize feeds to display videos in your main screen that are of interest to you. There’s a recommendation bit as well that, I would assume, bases results upon what you’ve been watching and what’s in your feed- much like TiVo does for TV at home or LastFM does for your music listening enjoyment. Great new features from an already great service, features that I can only guess will continue to be built upon- unlike previous video clip streaming favorites from the likes of EmTube and MobiTubia.



As well as all of these features, there’s also plenty of options such as video quality settings, ‘audio only’ if you’re just interested in listening to a news report or some music from one of the thousands of sources. The app can connect to WiFi or 3G- so if you don’t have an unlimited data account from your provider… you’ll want to be very aware of how you’re connecting to the network.

Head over to Symbian Guru to check out the video, and actual article.

Vtap can be downloaded from HERE

[n9555]

very cool micky

[jkoppee]

has anyone tried this yet? I'm definitely curious as to how well it works and if pseudofin likes it as much as he says in the article then it's gotta be good.

[pseudofinn]

Yeah- I really, REALLY like the app. I think it's absolutely brilliant- although it could be a little nicer on the eyes. Fortunately, I just got word from the blokes at vTap who say that a new interface is in the works, and we can expect it in a month or two.

As far as the app goes right now- it's wicked fast... for me anyhow, some people have complaints- I have a video stream in about 3 seconds no matter how long the video is, and that's at high quality. With regards to that quality, when set to 'high' (it's medium by default) I find the quality to be just as good, if not better than the YouTube app... though it all depends upon the video source.

I've also updated that post last night after speaking with them at vTap with regards to those sources. Some quick numbers to toss around- they've crawled over 100,000 sites for video, have a catalog of over 220 million videos and keep tabs on over 7,000 of the most dynamic video sites out there everyday to ensure fresh, current content.

If you use like using the YouTube app, or EmTube, MobiTubia- any of those- you really need to grab vTap. I'm completely sold on vTap as a more viable option than the YouTUbe apps. For some reason, people seem really stubborn about using anything other than those apps- and given how well the S60 vTap client works and how many sources there are for videos, I personally think that it's totally silly that anyone would use the YouTube app over vTap.

The wikipedia/wiktionary search is pretty cool too! I keep forgetting about that.

[Tommie]

This sounds just amazing ! Thanks !

[gtpman]

I just tried it and it works very well. Only 1 in about 10 videos failed to play. I changed video quility to high and was watching using 3G connection and videos loaded and played very quickly. About 5 of the 10 came from youtube. Others were from CNN, MLB,etc. Quality varied from really good (CNN) to not even watchable (some youtube video) so it depends on the source.