Qualcomm halts the FLO of TV

Qualcomm is reportedly pulling the plug on its US MediaFLO service, after discovering that even Americans won't pay to watch broadcast TV on mobile phones. The service will go offline before the end of the year according to PaidContent, and Qualcomm is in discussions with AT&T and Verizon - who run branded versions of the …

[Tom 35]

Money sucking pigs

Broadcast TV is already there, just put a receiver in the handset like they do in Japan. But then it would be free.

They want to build another network to broadcast the same crap just so they can charge a monthly fee.

[Mage]

handset TV

It only works if it's free and costs the broadcaster nothing extra.

So DVB-h (Listening Nokia?) and Nextwave's IPW-TV (did they ditch IPW again?) doomed too.

ATSC in N.A, DVB-T in europe and friends, DMB China and ISDB elsewhere works, in high end handsets. But less well than FM Radio. You can listen while doing other stuff, but not watch TV. At prime time you are often at home. More http://www.techtir.ie/blog/watty/mobile-tv

[Anonymous Coward]

Mobile TV works...

... watched Newsnight last night on my HTC Desire using BBC iPlayer. Wouldn't pay for it tho'

[paulf]

Not quite

That's not broadcast telly using a point to multi-point broadcast network architecture which is what the article was talking about (e.g. DAB, DVB-T, DVB-H). Sounds like you were watching a live stream over a 3G data connection. That is point to point, so the BBC was sending out a unique data stream for each concurrent iPlayer user like yourself.

Oh and go over your "unlimited" monthly data cap and you will be paying for it - rather handsomely if your mobile operator catches up with you.

[Henry Wertz 1]

What about FloTVs?

I saw ads, literally within the last few weeks, for a standalone FloTV personal television -- it uses the same service but instead of being in a phone is a *standalone* small TV that only shows MediaFLO channels. I don't know about you, but I'd be wicked pissed to pay almost $200 for a TV that only works for 3 months. (They are on sale still, right this moment, for about $140).

Two problems this has had:

1) Limited coverage. TV ads, ads on Amazon, etc. will say "works everywhere you can get UHF reception" or text about it using it's own extensive network, or the like, but look at the coverage map and coverage is VERY limited. There is no FloTV in my entire home state for instance.

2) Limited choice of channels, and people have commented even the channels it does have are a little different, one broadcast channel has 3 comedies in a row, but the "same" channel on FloTV replaced the middle comedy with a (apparently pretty bad) reality TV show for some reason.

[uglygeorge]

Qualcomm Has NO Titsup

Funny that you say Qualcomm has gone "titsup" because that is just their problem: they had NO tits. Brits never understand that Puritans after Ollie Cromwell took the boat to America and decreed "No Sex!"...Qual. had a policy of "no adult content"; expecting subscribers to pay heavily for News,Fashion & Trifles-it never happened, of course. They were told that the "Ugly George Hour Of Truth,Sex & Violence" was the most-watched cableTV show in NYC, and promptly sneered at it. And now-who in Europe is smarter than that? maybe "ugly" George Galloway,MP?

BTW, my email is NOT for publication & my website uglygeorge.com is not 4 minors or commies.