Talk:Ringtone/Archives/2012

Unsorted talk
There should be a reference to- Singtones. Singtones are the merger of mobile phones with karaoke to create customized ringtones with the user's voice overlayed to a pre-recorded music track.

How many ring tones are not licensed but based on copyrighted work, ie bootleg?

There should be some mention of novelty ringtones like Crazy Frog or Sweety the Chick.

It's just me or is popularity shown twice in the article?

Also could there be discussion about home-made ring tones that one makes themselves on their own computer and transfers to their own phone that they own. Or if such does not exist there could be talk about why not, i.e. a greedy industry that wants to control content and thus profits. When I first started hearing about ring tones I thought of all the cool clips of independent, non-radio bands that I could put on a phone if I ever got that type. But judging from the article here, it doesn't look like we are able to control the content of the phones we own.

Just a note on the history of downloadable ringtones - The now defunct phoneshop.com was offering downloadable ringtones in 1997 - I think part of the problem is that anyone who admitted to inventing the downloadable ring tone would probably be immediately shot. Lawrie (talk) 22:16, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

"90-volt 20-hertz AC wave" ?
I'm guessing the "90-volt 20-hertz AC wave" refers to POTS in the US only, right? If so, I think this should be mentioned in the article.

82.83.12.214 18:04, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

In Australia it's 16.7 Hz. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.231.176.69 (talk) 01:01, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

What file format
As someone who can never find my mobile phone - which probably is too old to be able to download a ringtone - even if I wanted, I don't know a lot about ringtones and found this article quite useful (the first such article I have found!). But the simple question is: "if I want to offer a ringtone on a web site, what would be the best format to use?" I thought ".MMF" was the standard, then I looked at my son's phone (sagem my501c) and he's got ones that are: ".aac", ".mid", ".amr" - which means all that work trying to find how to convert to ".mmf" was wasted (or was it?). As I've only got a sample of one, and since it's virtually impossible to find anything on the web about the technical specs for ringtones - this is really the only place I can ask! Bugsy 08:10, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

OK, experience now proves that ".mmf" files can't be uploaded onto the sagem my501c, however, that could be an issue with the web server not the phone! Bugsy 08:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Mobile games
I tried uploading a game.zip which when I opened it in windows contained a game.jar and a game.jad. If anyone happens to know the technical issues about loading games - again it would be worth an article (and a link from here for people like me!) Bugsy 08:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC) --213.42.21.76 11:00, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Incomplete Merger
The merge of Ring (Telephone) and Ringing Signal does not appear to have been completed very well - This article still mostly only makes sense if you realise that it was once just about mobile ringtones.

E.g. Third Sentence "This facility was originally provided so that people would be able to determine when their phone was ringing when in the company of other mobile phone owners."

The History, Types of Ringtones, Ringtone formats, Ringtone maker and Criticism sections only talk about mobile ringtones. The Ringing signal article has just been dumped into this article as a new section. I'm going to mark it as needing a cleanup --Ozhiker 07:47, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

About free ringtone sites -- hey jamie
hey jamie i dont know if this is the correct way to talk just new to wikipedia. Hey i just made amendment to the page for ringtones. I just found those 2 sites break.com and ringaholic.com and those sites offer free ringtones so jsut wondering :S why free ringtone places shouldn't be put on a page that is ringtones page ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.228.41.244 (talk) 21:46, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
 * See WP:EL and WP:SPAM. There are millions of ringtone pages. Wikipedia doesn't need to list th em. OhNo itsJamie Talk 21:55, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Two Billion Dollars ?
Article cites Fortune, "By 2005, ring tones generated more than $2 billion in annual worldwide revenues.[6]"

I find this figure unbelievable. Does anyone have additional reliable data? Cgmusselman (talk) 19:00, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Introduction of concept
Wouldn't it be proper to credit the Derek Flint franchise with the idea of ringtones in general? - knoodelhed (talk) 19:15, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

FCC ruling?

 * "Following a 1975 FCC ruling which permitted third-party devices to be connected to phone lines, manufacturers began to produce accessory telephone ringers which rang with electronic tones or melodies rather than mechanically."

--Abdull (talk) 23:20, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Is this ruling either Hush-A-Phone v. United States or the ruling following the Carterfone case? If so, both seem to have happened earlier than 1975.

Pulsating DC?
I believe that this paragraph (and an earlier mention of "pulsating DC") contains a lot of misinformation:

"A ringing signal is an electric telephony signal that causes a telephone to alert the user to an incoming call. On a POTS telephone system, this is created by sending a ringing current, a pulsating DC signal of about 100 volts [90 volts and 20Hz in the USA] into the line. Pulsating DC does not alternate polarity; it pulsates from zero to maximum voltage then back to zero. Today this signal may be transmitted digitally for much of the journey, provided as a ringing current only because a majority of landlines are not digital end-to-end. In old phones, this voltage was used to trigger a high-impedance electromagnet to ring a bell on the phone."

AC is used everywhere that I am aware of, effectively superimposed on the battery voltage to allow the ring-trip relay (or whatever) to respond the called party's off-hook condition.

Furthermore, ringing voltage is always applied at the called party's end and not "transmitted digitally for much of the journey". This should be evident from the fact that, for example, American telephones do not ring in a British cadence when called from England. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.53.195.38 (talk) 19:07, 9 July 2010 (UTC)