Realtime Youtube Video transcoding for mobiles

I have been praising emTube just a day ago which was an application for Symbian S60 mobile phones like the Nokia N73 and Nokia N95 that made it possible to browse Youtube with the mobile phone and download + view movies as well. No conversion was needed and the quality of the service was astonishingly good.

Several websites, like the Download Squad, have been reviewing a service called ByWiFi today that converted videos from Youtube and Metacafe into 3gp format, a format widely used by mobile phones so that everyone with a phone supporting the standard would be able to view those movies as well.

ByWiFi has some advantages and disadvantages compared to emTube. The advantage is that the converted files are normally smaller than the ones that you download with emTube and that Metacafe is supported as well. The disadvantage is that the video has to be converted first and that the wait time depends on the capacities of the ByWiFi server.

You do get a link and can reload that link from time to time to check if the video is already available which means that you do not have to be online all the time which would not be a problem if you are on a unlimited data plan.

I do prefer emTube because of its speed and independence from third party services except Youtube of course. Users without a Symbian S60 mobile phone on the other hand will probably like ByWiFi.

Update: Both ByWiFI and emTube have been discontinued it appears. At least, both programs and services are no longer available on the Internet. Modern phones come with options to play YouTube videos right from the phone without need for additional services. I guess the only option for you if it is not the case for your phone is to convert the videos on a PC and move them to the phone instead.

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