REVIEW: Makayama’s Media Studio brings ‘Simpsons’ to the smallest screen

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly feature, Yay or Nay. Every week we’ll review a new wireless application or service from the user’s point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works and what doesn’t. If you wish to submit your application or service for review, please contact us at [email protected].
Application: Makayama’s Media Studio for Blackberry 2.0
Running on: BlackBerry Pearl from Sprint Nextel
Yay: Watch full-length movies on your cellphone.
Nay: Be careful with Media Studio’s settings, you might not get what you expected (like a movie in Spanish, for example).
We say: Makayama’s software turns smartphones into tiny movie theaters, thereby greatly increasing the “neato” factor of such devices and potentially expanding wireless multimedia into the broader, movie-loving consumer market.
Review: We admit that, at $35, the price for Makayama’s Media Studio for Blackberry 2.0 is a bit steep. However, we were interested to find out if Makayama’s claims about the software were true: that it would allow us to easily watch full-length DVDs on our phone, without sacrificing a lot of memory to do it.
After a relatively painless download using www.Handango.com (aside from forking over the $35), we were up and running. The welcome screen for Media Studio was surprisingly simple: We needed only to click the “action” button to begin. The application asked us to locate our DVD (which we inserted into our computer’s disc drive) and it then began converting the movie into files viewable on our BlackBerry.
Essentially, Makayama’s Media Studio for Blackberry 2.0 breaks up a DVD into 25-minute chunks, and then recodes each chunk as a 3GPP movie file. After finishing this process (which takes perhaps 45 minutes for a two-hour movie) it moves the files into the “video” folder on the memory card in our BlackBerry. To watch the movie, we simply accessed our BlackBerry’s “media player” function, and selected the proper video (our movie was broken into parts 1-6).
The whole process was smooth and easy, at least for the first movie we tried.
The second DVD we tried to move onto our BlackBerry was an ’80s-era Hong Kong action movie by director John Woo. We simply assumed that it would be dubbed into English, and didn’t even think twice about the issue. After 45 minute of converting and another 10 minutes of transferring it onto our BlackBerry, we discovered the film’s dialogue was in what sounded like Chinese. Since we do not speak Chinese, we were somewhat chagrined.
We then moved on to one of our favorites, “The Simpsons Movie.” Having learned from our Chinese escapade, we ventured into the “advanced” menu and selected what we thought was the proper audio track. The result turned out to be the commentary track by the director, which was not what we were hoping for. Our second attempt, in which we relied on the track highlighted by the application itself, produced a version in Spanish. Since we do not speak Spanish, we were somewhat chagrined (and somewhat surprised with the gruff Spanish Homer spoke).
Finally, our third attempt, in which we apparently selected the correct audio track, produced the full movie in English, to our Homer-loving relief.
The obvious solution to our dilemma would be clearly marked audio tracks, or – if that wasn’t possible – some way to test the tracks before commencing the conversion.
Despite such linguistic adventures, we were impressed with the quality of audio (Chinese, Spanish and English) and video produced by Makayama and rendered by our BlackBerry. We were also impressed that the full “Simpsons” movie (running time of 87 minutes) only took up 213 megabytes.
Interestingly, Makayama’s application provides various file-size options, and warns users about the compromise between audio and video quality and size.
Makayama’s Media Studio for Blackberry 2.0 application sits at an opportune place; as Apple courts business customers with its newly opened, multimedia-friendly iPhone, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. has a respectable answer for those movie-loving consumers interested in the company’s wares.