Watch live BBC television on latest Nokia phones

Live BBC TV on Nokia S60Live BBC TV and radio streaming (UK-only) is now available on Nokia’s flagship N96 and the all touch screen XpressMusic 5800 aka The Tube, reports All About Symbian.

The complete range of BBC television channels are accessible, including digital, along with the public broadcaster’s full radio lineup. AAS describes the picture quality as “not brilliant”, with a frame size of 176 by 144 pixels, although this can be scaled up to full screen in the S60 version of RealPlayer.

See also: Hands-on: BBC iPlayer for Nokia N96

Not a Nokia first

As readers may remember, last September, in a slightly controversial move, the BBC announced that it had developed a version of iPlayer for the Nokia N96 that supported both streaming and downloads – a first for mobile  – despite the fact that the handset hadn’t yet been released in the UK and therefore had a market share of zero. This left the BBC open to criticism that it was favoring one commercial player over others. Instead, why hadn’t it chosen to support equivalent handsets that viewers already owned rather than one that was yet to hit the market?

Part of the reason was technology, the N96 has an updated version of RealPlayer and the necessary Digital Rights Management functionality, along with the BBC betting on the device selling well in the UK or at least being picked up by carriers (the latter is certainly true). The same criticism, however, can’t be levvied this time around. As we reported back in December, live BBC TV and radio streaming was introduced as part of an updated mobile iPlayer site compatible with the Samsung Omnia, Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 and C905.

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last100 is edited by Steve O'Hear. Aside from founding last100, Steve is co-founder and CEO of Beepl and a freelance journalist who has written for numerous publications, including TechCrunch, The Guardian, ZDNet, ReadWriteWeb and Macworld, and also wrote and directed the Silicon Valley documentary, In Search of the Valley. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

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