RINGING CHANGES
Orange TV — from £10 per month. Call 0500 802080
Three stars
Handy for news clips, but only where 3G is available Orange’s television service on 3G phones offers nine live channels, from ITN and CNN news to cartoons and reality-TV highlights. Annoyingly, the footage only plays with any fluidity when you are within 3G coverage, which is by no means widespread (check your area at www.orange.co.uk). The one-to-one broadcasts are currently only available on the impressive new Nokia 6680, which boasts a bright, clear screen and good battery life. Sadly, the small screen suits news or relatively static video, but not sport or films, and the low frame rate means that images appear jerky. Another TV-to-phone strategy, employing digital terrestrial signals known as DVB-H, is being trialled in Oxford and London.

Early signs are promising, but consumers are unlikely to be offered the service for at least a year.

PERSONALISED PROGRAMMES
Samsung YH-999GS — typically £350, or £300 from www.amazon.co.uk
Four stars
A good picture, but you have to provide your own content Portable media players put the onus on you to find programming — it doesn’t arrive out of the ether, as television does, so nothing is live. The 20GB hard drive in this bulging-pocket-sized device stores more than 10 hours of video at high quality, or tons of music, but you’ll have to download it over the internet or transfer material from your video recorder to the computer, then onto the Samsung. This process can be a bind, and content is limited to select file types, but with the right search engine, you could watch the latest shows from across the Atlantic before they make an appearance on E4. (Bear in mind that much content is copyrighted, and downloading it may be illegal.) The Samsung, with its bright, sharp screen and good battery life, is less bulky than earlier Microsoft Portable Media Player devices, and file transfer is relatively easy, particularly if you use Windows XP.

FILM ON YOUR PHONE
£17 per film from www.rokplayer.com
Three stars
High quality, matched by the price The Rok player is software on a chip that turns most new Nokia phones into mobile cinemas — check the full list on the website. Rok puts its content onto a prerecorded media card, and with video stored on the phone, moving images are fluid and much richer than anything transferred over a 3G signal. Tested on a Nokia 6630, the opening of The Shawshank Redemption was almost atmospheric, and audio was refreshingly rich, but a price tag of £17 per full-length feature film and £17 for albums will deter all but executive-class travellers. Rok is also developing live television feeds, including music, lifestyle and films, to be delivered over widely available GPRS phone signals: the service goes live in September and will cost between £10 and £20 per month.

MEDIA WATCH
TV Wristwatch — £134 from www.firebox.com
Two stars
Short battery life restricts what you can watch Buck Rogers-style futurism went out of fashion during the 1980s, and this workout for your forearm is certainly no style statement. With no external aerial, signal strength will determine reception quality, but all four (or five, if you are really unlucky) channels are simple to tune into at the touch of a button. The picture on the 1.5in screen is surprisingly sharp, although it flickers when you walk. News programmes are watchable, but anything else might send you cross-eyed. The biggest disappointment, however, is the paltry one-hour battery life — enough to ensure that you’ll just miss the denouement of your favourite drama or extra time in the Cup final. In the absence of speakers, you rely on the headphones, which will please fellow rail passengers, but audio quality is high.

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