Yes, yes, I know I was the guy who argued that YouTube access was superior to mobile TV, and I stand by my principles on the matter. But, as was pointed out, there are other factors at stake than what you want to watch.
The streaming of YouTube videos is, unsurprisingly, very heavy on bandwidth, i.e. the amount of data that needs to stream through the air. Now, the likes of emTube and Mobitubia are most likely to be used when you're within range of a Wi-Fi hotspot and so, even if either or both applications really took off, the main bandwidth hit would be to the Internet backbone itself, via whichever router you're conncted.
BUT. There's a whole new category of software and service, typified by the likes of Phling, offering to either host all your media and then stream it to you over the air, or simply to stream it from your own PC, switched on at home. This is fine and dandy when Wi-Fi and landline broadband it taking the strain, and it's fine and cool in principle and probably works very well in test conditions today.
The trouble comes when you actually go mobile. Relying on heavy, continuous streamed data over a 3.5G connection already breaks down, irritatingly, in busy urban areas (for congestion reasons) and in rural areas (for lack of 3G signal reasons).
For example, I was in a demo booth at last year's Smartphone Show, with some guys from Social.FM, a music streaming service. We set the video rolling three times for a hands-on demo and each time the demo faltered and hung for lack of 3G bandwidth. With the number of other handsets in the hall, it perhaps wasn't totally surprising to find the airwaves severely congested, but it did illustrate the point I'm making here.
What will happen in the future if the model of having your music (for example) streamed over the air starts to take off? Even allowing for infrastructure improvements in the next few years, there is simply no way that a tenfold, let alone a hundredfold increase in use can happen without a hitch.
Now, some services, informational in nature, or the streaming of news video or audio, obviously have to come over the air because they're utterly real time and generated on the fly. But I simply refuse to go along with the modern idea that storing all my music (for example, let alone my videos) online just so that I can stream it to my smartphone without having to bother side-loading it first, makes any sense at all. Yes, it's a cool use for technology but it's not scalable and it's not sensible.
You want to listen to your music on the move? The most natural place in the world to want to have the Floyd or Amy or Noel in your ears. But please don't rely on some Web 2.0 streaming service that will cut out every time you enter a metal-framed building or journey on a tube train or simply venture where 3G signals are either too busy or fear to tread.
Hint: there's a memory card in your phone. It's got Megabytes of capacity, probably even Gigabytes these days. Its sole purpose in life is to store music and media for your delight. Use it. And let's keep the 3G airwaves clear for the information that really matters.
Steve Litchfield, AllAboutSymbian, 14 Feb 2008