Rok TV heads to US mobile phones

3 April 2006 16:32 GMT / By Stuart Miles

American's are about to get what us Brits have been enjoying for over a year - Rok on their mobile phone.

Britain's only independent 2.5g mobile TV service and mobile video retail publisher has announced that it will be launching its TV and mobile download services stateside.

Among those services will be ROK TV, as well as ROK Media Store, a service where movies, television shows, music videos, music, games, podcasts, and even printed materials can be downloaded directly from the Internet for storage on mobile phone memory cards using ROK's patented technologies.

ROK TV US will launch with 10 news, music and entertainment channels, initially, containing a variety of live channels and made-for-mobile programs.

Future channels will be available on a video-on-demand (VOD) basis and will include music videos, comedies, cartoons, weather and lifestyle channels - with more channels due to be added in the coming weeks. ROK TV will also allow subscribers to order individual channels rather than customers being required to buy the whole package.

ROK TV plays full-screen on compatible mobile handsets and, via GPRS, at a higher frame-rate than any other existing TV-for-mobile service.

In addition, ROK announced in mid-March the impending launch in the UK of its "Black Box" set-top technology which routes a customers home TV service to their mobile via broadband. ROK Black Box (code-named BLCX) will be available for a monthly rental fee of around $20 and is expected to be available in time for the World Cup soccer tornament this summer. ROK Black Box will launch in the US later this year.

ROK Group have licensed content from such companies as Turner Broadcasting, Viacom, BBC, ITV.

Full tags

Phones, Apps, Mobile phone TV, ROK TV