ByWiFi: Convert and watch videos on your mobile

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Web services

ByWiFi: Convert and watch videos on your mobile

by Naser Hossain Dec 22nd 2007

There have often been times, while travelling for long, boring hours, that we've wished we had the means of downloading and watching popular videos on youtube right in our mobile screen. Most people own largely 3gp enabled phones and the only way to watch videos on the fly is if the videos are pre-converted and transferred to the mobile beforehand. With a poor unlimited GPRS packages, it isn't quite as possible to stream from the Youtube Mobile site either. Then one day we came across ByWifi. This web-based video transcoding/conversion service has a strangely misleading name, but their service is without a doubt one of the most useful ones we've come across.

ByWifi lets you search,convert and download any youtube (and they've also added support for metacafe) video(s) from your mobile. You just enter a few keywords and do a search ( like this one on Cloverfield ). ByWifi will bring forth the results that match your query and give you two options. You can either stream the video in real-time or download it with the "Save It" dialogue. Usually there is a 2~4 minutes of conversion time while your video is put on queue. You can hit the reload button to see if the conversion has finished. When it has, the downloading can proceed. The video being downloaded is in the most common mobile video format AKA .3gp . So if you do have a phone that can play videos, there is almost a definite chance that the downloaded video will also be playable on your mobile . ByWifi sort of falls into the catagory of "Online Video Converters" like Flvix or Vixy. But the ability of it to do the all three basic steps, searching, converting and downloading, from your mobile really takes the cake.

However an unlimited/low-cost data plan is advised before you start downloading scores of videos with ByWifi as the downloads can be a bit data-intensive. ByWifi is accessible with your mobile at the generic address.

Tags: video,convert,online,transcode,youtube,metacafe,media

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Bryan said 10:38AM on 12-23-2007

I have not been able to stream any of the videos and I shudder to save them all to my storage card in order to view them (I actually haven't even tried to do that yet). Hmmm. Anyone else out there having troubles? I have a WinMo 6.0 Treo 750 running on AT&T.

Chuck said 10:56AM on 12-23-2007

Tried it with my Moto V3xx with my unlimited data plan and it kept telling me that the movie was unavailable when I tried to stream it. Then I tried to save it and it told me it would be available in 1 minute. After 10 minutes of refreshing, It kept saying the same thing. I gave up.

Naser Hossain said 11:11AM on 12-23-2007

Hmm...strange. I swear on the grave of Bender B. Rodriguez that it worked everytime I've tried with my Nokia 6630.

Infact I just put up a request for a video on Nikon D40, and the queuing time seems to be decreasing as it should after each reload.

Maybe, ByWifi is just having a bad day, give it some time to straighten up ;)

nikki said 1:02PM on 12-23-2007

I experienced the same problem. It kept telling me that the video will be ready in 1 minute but after reloading many times and waiting for what felt like forever, I just gave up on it. It was frustrating and a waste of battery.

Jonayat said 2:05PM on 12-23-2007

Tried it with n80. Its works..real good one for traveling ..thanks man

Sophia said 4:41AM on 12-24-2007

It works good on my Nokia N7x and many thanks for the guy. Go ahead!

Sophia said 4:52AM on 12-24-2007

I tried with my Nokia N7x and it really works. Thanks for your hard work and go ahead!

Naser Hossain said 9:33AM on 12-24-2007

Ahhh...at least some of the folks are having positive results.

rose said 11:41AM on 12-24-2007

I try the website at my HP iPAQ. It works. I can watch youtube movies when i go to sleep. :-)

Thanks for Naser to introduce this service. :-)

Nick said 12:54PM on 12-24-2007

I just tried this service out and it's taking a while to download on my HTC ouch over GPRS. so far though, it looks like a great site.

http;//htcsource.com

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