A new report by IDC, a research firm in Framingham, Mass., indicates that streaming -- such as the video service offered by Verizon Wireless -- soon may emerge as sort of a wireless babysitter for today's on-the-go parents.

The rapid development of wireless content capabilities, particularly video, is creating brand-new markets for the content and wireless industries alike.

Experts told UPI's Wireless World that content aimed at children and their parents represents a natural progression in the evolution of wireless. Content that addresses parents' needs furthers the expansion of a wireless retail market that already is under way, with large revenue potential.

Videocasting, or VCAST, mobile-phone service started earlier this year.

"I have offered my own VCAST phone and service to parents of young children at airports and on airplanes, with a near 100 percent success rate at tears and tantrum avoidance," said Scott Ellison, program director of wireless and mobile communications at IDC.

Other experts agree.

"Bert and Ernie on the mobile phone is exactly right," said Ted Demopoulos, founder of Demopoulos Associates and an IT industry consultant and professional speaker in Durham, N.H.

Demopoulos said the concept is an extension of an idea that carmakers embraced recently: placing DVD players in minivans and sport utility vehicles.

"It works miracles with the kids, keeping them quiet (and) happy," Demopoulos said, adding that some parents overseas already are using mobile phones to entertain their kids. "My friends use their mobile phones for exactly the same thing when traveling in Hong Kong and Singapore, usually on public transportation," he said. "Not many people own or need cars there."

Verizon Wireless reports anecdotal evidence that suggests usage of the streaming "Sesame Street" video clips has been higher than initially expected. The service was launched earlier this year, along with video clips lasting from 1 minute to 3 minutes from producers such as CNN, ESPN, Weather.com and others. Children reportedly become quickly absorbed by the VCAST clips, leaving their parents relatively free to attend to other tasks.

Short videos are probably going to be the norm for now on the video phones.

"As far as watching full-length feature films," Demopoulos said, "I know it's possible, but I haven't seen or heard much about it, except as a novelty. Who wants to watch 'Star Wars' on a 2.5 inch by 2.5 inch screen?"

That perception probably will change in the future, however.

The LCD and display business unit of Toshiba America last month announced wide-format displays for mobile phones at a trade show for the information display industry in Boston. These leading-edge products -- called color thin-film transistor active-matrix cell-phone displays -- come in a 240 pixel by 320 pixel format that provides a pixel density beginning at 166 pixels per inch.

The technology, when in portrait orientation, provides a 15:9 aspect ratio that enables wide-screen movies or photos to be displayed.

Until that technology becomes widespread, parents and kids will have to make do with the smaller screens.

There are other applications -- in addition to video -- now being targeted to kids. Digital Chocolate, a content developer in San Mateo, Calif., is offering mobile-phone applications for kids "ages 0 to 4," said Jennefer Traeger, a company spokeswoman.

The product, called Babysitter2Go, lets parents and child caregivers use mobile phones to keep children entertained. It "has five different scenes and activities populated with animals, insects, fish, flowers and Pinky the Flying Pig, a whimsical character full of surprises in each scene," Traeger said.

One thing mobile carriers will be exploring, in addition to buying and licensing new content, is bandwidth.

"Sending or receiving video over mobile phones is difficult because constraints on bandwidth -- the volume of information that can be sent to a wireless device at any given moment -- only allows for low-quality transmissions, either low-quality picture or very short clips," said David Zweifler, a spokesman for Euclid Discoveries in Concord, Mass., a developer of video-processing technologies.

"All the technology is in place for playing and broadcasting video from mobile devices like mobile phones," Zweifler said, "but the bandwidth issue has proven to be a thorny problem that many companies are still wrestling with."

Gene J. Koprowski is a 2005 Winner of a Lilly Endowment Award for his columns for United Press International. He covers telecommunications for UPI Science News.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2004 by United Press International. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by United Press International. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of by United Press International.

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