If you’ve heard of Verizon Wireless’ VCast or AT&T Mobile TV, you’ve heard of FloTV. Both companies re-brand it as their own, but the company behind it all is MediaFLO, giving you TV on your cell phone. The best part is, it actually comes over the air as a TV signal, which saves you from having to use your cell phone’s data plan, and also saves you a ton of battery life. Your cell phone picks up the signal, plays it on your FLO enabled phone, and you get live TV from channels you already love at home like ESPN, CBS, NBC, Fox, Comedy Central, CNBC, MTV, etc. Their “primetime” is 11a-2p, so you can catch some of your favorite moments you might have missed last night on your lunchbreak. It’s not a re-broadcast of those channels’ existing programming, they each have a “mobile” version, with special content that is sometimes an exact mirror of their traditional feed, other times re-broadcasts of popular shows.

MediaFLO was showing off their existing TV on cell phones product at their booth, but had a new application of their technology to unveil at CES. In partnership with Audiovox, you can now watch those same TV channels in the car. You see, the same chip that’s installed in your cell phone to capture the signal, can be installed in your car as well. Just add a bigger screen, and suddenly you don’t just have to watch DVDs in the back seat anymore. Passengers can watch the live game on ESPN in the backseat, while even the driver can enjoy the audio. Interestingly, I learned that you can even watch live TV on your front dash (say on your GPS screen), as long as the car is in park.

Check out some of the pictures here, it looks amazing. I’m lucky enough to have been down to MediaFLO’s master control room at their headquarters in San Diego a few weeks ago, and let me tell you, it’s amazing. Rivals any TV or network center I’ve ever seen. They have real time monitoring of each channel, maximizing the signal many times per second. They’re in 65 markets right now, and will expand to 179 by the end of the year. They will be a big beneficiary of the digital TV changeover happening next month, because they will be able to tap into more of the airwaves in more cities.

The car solution is slated to cost around $500.

For all the gamers, Audiovox also announced a partnership with Sony to put Playstation 2 into a flip down center TV console for the car. It shrinks the PS2 unit from the big box in your living room, to essentially a portable DVD player sized unit that mounts on your car’s ceiling.

--Peter Szabo

Labels: ATT Mobile TV, Audiovox, CES coverage, FloTV, MediaFLO, VCast

This entry was posted by Amber, on Sunday, January 11, 2009. You can leave your response .