Mobile TV Tries to Break Into Prime Time
On Super Bowl Sunday, about 116 million viewers watched commercials touting Budweiser, Doritos and Coke — as well as spots promoting Flo TV, a service that promises to let you watch TV wherever you are.
It was a high-profile promotion for mobile TV, which despite years of innovation has failed to catch on outside of a few niches.
A mobile TV service from Qualcomm, Flo offers channels such as ESPN, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central for a monthly fee. You can watch Flo on your cellphone, in your car or on a dedicated device known as a personal television.
“Flo is a prepackaged entertainment experience,” says Alice Kim, senior vice president of strategy & corporate development for Flo TV. “It’s about portability, it [is] about live video and it is complementary to your home experience.”
Mobile TV, which bring television news and shows to handheld devices, could be the next big thing for consumers who want to watch a game while on the subway, or catch up on their favorite TV show while waiting at the DMV. For instance, with Flo TV, you can get Jon Stewart on The Daily Show or live NBA games with a few clicks. The 3-inch screen is small, but it’s more convenient than a netbook.
But it’s a difficult sell. U.S. consumers so far have failed to jump on the mobile TV idea, even though it’s been around for years. Just about 1 percent of mobile users in the U.S. watch mobile TV. And even there, Flo faces some stiff competition. Rivals MobiTV and Sling Media also offer TV content to go. Last month, AT&T allowed iPhone users to access live and streaming TV on the Sling player over 3G. Meanwhile, a coalition of local broadcasters has formed a group called theOpen Mobile Video Coalition that attempts to bring free TV content to mobile devices.
“The idea is to be an alternative to the DVR,” says Ross Rubin, an analyst with research firm The NPD Group. “Prime time can be when you say it is or you can always tune in to live programming.”
Flo TV is alluring to some — especially when you have restless kids on your hands. Just ask Tyren Patterson, a Michigan-based Flo TV user who has been paying $25 a month for the service since 2006 on his LG Voyager. “When we go out and run errands or shopping and the kids get to start to antsy it’s good to be able to turn on Nickelodeon,” he says.
Patterson, a Verizon Wireless customer, has been a subscriber to Verizon’s V Cast service, which is powered by Flo TV.
“I use it everyday,” he says. “When you turn it on and start flipping the channels and see basketball games there’s the wow factor. The cost doesn’t matter then.”
Customers like Patterson may be few today (Qualcomm won’t disclose how many Flo TV users there are currently) but there are 200 million cellphone users who could become potential users, says the company. Flo rival MobiTV claims to have more than 7 million subscribers.
Where Flo TV says it hopes to distinguish itself is by offering the kind of shows and channels that most consumers would really want to watch, by offering high-quality video, and by time-shifting so you can watch shows when it’s convenient to you.
Flo — which stands for Forward Link Only — takes standard video signals and re-formats them for the mobile platform. Flo’s network operations center transcodes and compresses broadcast content into a single package that is sent to transmitters using satellite, microwave or optical fiber. The transmitters then send it to receiving devices over the 700-MHz spectrum.
“Flo TV’s network is explicitly designed for this and does a very good job of it,” says Rubin.
And because it’s a push technology with one-way data transmission, from the tower to the device, it doesn’t overload the network. Video through Flo TV is smooth and doesn’t stutter, says Kim. But to run Flo TV, devices need to have a special chip made by Qualcomm.
To popularize Flo TV, Qualcomm hopes to bring down the price of the service and offer it on a variety of devices. A personal TV that runs Flo costs $200 today, down from $250 just months before, Kim says. Meanwhile, AT&T has reduced subscription fees for the device to $10 a month from $15 earlier.
And on the road map are new devices such as a personal DVD player from Audiovox that will come with Flo TV, and a shot at the iPhone and iPod Touch market through a collaboration with battery and accessories maker Mophie.
“We are not trying to make a choice for the consumer, we are trying to give them choices,” says Kim.
See Also:
- Review: AT&T Mobile TV — Media Flows Like Greased Lightning
- Mobile TV, Video Market Will Be $15 Billion Worth of Huge
- Web/Mobile Video Will Overtake TV By 2013: Research Group
- Americans Don’t Care About Mobile TV
Parallel Image Display Is Low-Res and Gorgeous [Art]
Just because it isn’t HD doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful. The Parallel Image display uses photoreceptors to transmit brightness levels to the other side of the display. I’m in love with all of that gorgeous copper.
The project represents how video would be transmitted if serial data had never been invented. Each pixel in the 50×50 grid arrives on its own channel, hence the lovely mess of wiring.
I wouldn’t want to string all that copper, but I sure don’t mind looking at it. [Hack a Day via CruchGear]
Posted: December 5th, 2009
at 10:00pm by Chris Jacob
Topics: Displays, Parallel image, Parallel image display, TV, Wiring, art, copper, display
Samsung’s 30-inch 3D AMOLED TV won’t make you dizzy, will leave you poor and silly
Feeling that 3D craze yet? No? Well what if we told you that Samsung was bringing stereoscopic 3D to its magnificent AMOLED panels touting a million-to-1 contrast? Today in Japan it’s showing off its 30-inch AMOLED 3D television with Full HD panel measuring just 2.5-mm thick. Although much is lost in the Korean language press release, Sammy is claiming that itd panel plus shutter-glasses technology helps to reduce the dizziness felt by some 3D viewers. The set’s just a prototype at the moment but its price will certainly invoke financial vertigo whenever it might hit the manufacturing lines. One more very serious picture after the break.
Continue reading Samsung’s 30-inch 3D AMOLED TV won’t make you dizzy, will leave you poor and silly
Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment
Samsung’s 30-inch 3D AMOLED TV won’t make you dizzy, will leave you poor and silly originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Fully-functional iPhone 3GS costume is expensive, bulky, and better than your Halloween idea
What could possibly convince you that strapping a 42-inch LCD TV to your body is a great idea? We don’t know, but somewhere between concept and the $2,000 total expenditures — with “no regrets,” mind you — Reko Rivera and John Savio, with the help of John Matthews, outfitted themselves with the displays used to project images from their iPhone 3GS. Unfortunately, the large screens themselves aren’t touch screens, but we probably can’t be that picky. Their reward? First prizes at costume parties and minor internet celebrity, which we’re happy to oblige. Video after the break.
[Via TUAW]
Filed under: Cellphones, HDTV, Portable Video
Fully-functional iPhone 3GS costume is expensive, bulky, and better than your Halloween idea originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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30 Rock ’s Emphatically Branded Windows Computer Is Confusing [TV]
On this week’s 30 Rock, we found out Jack’s (or Jack’s designer’s) choice of computer, and it’s a weird one: It’s a prop model of a forcefully-branded Windows computer, yet 30 Rock has historically been in love with Apple products.
Warning: Clip is US-only. U-S-A! U-S-A!
At first glance I thought it was a black MacBook with a Windows logo pasted over the Apple, but that’s not it—the case is too shiny and angular, looking more like a slick Lenovo or something. 30 Rock has been very obvious in its love of Apple products in the past, with Liz and Jack always using iPhones and the writers using MacBooks, so it’s pretty surprising to see a Windows computer, even if it’s an imaginary one. But 30 Rock has always been a little edgy about product placement anyway, once breaking the fourth wall to ask advertisers “Can we have our money now?” But hell, at least it’s not at the point of the “Dr. Pepper Amuse Bouche Challenge” nonsense of Top Chef. [Hulu]
Posted: October 24th, 2009
at 1:45pm by Dan Nosowitz
Topics: 30 Rock windows, 30 rock, Microsoft, Product Placement, TV, Windows, laptop, video
