Flo hand-held TV not ready for prime time
Could this be the year for hand-held television?
It’s been tried before, but so far TV, unlike just about all other digital entertainment devices, has not successfully been shrunk to a pocket-size format.
But there are a couple of new candidates. Now available is Flo TV, a personal television with a 3 1/2 -inch screen. And later this year a host of portable devices using a new standard for mobile digital TV will arrive.
Attempts at hand-held TV go back to at least the late 1970s when English entrepreneur Clive Sinclair -- whose other inventions included a lightweight folding bicycle -- introduced the Microvision MTV1.
It used a little picture tube with a nearly 2-inch screen that might have been good for Barbie, but it was not a big success.
There’s a picture of it and other early hand-helds on the Frank’s Handheld-TV Pages website (proving once again that there’s a site for everything) at www.taschenfernseher.de.
Later came Sony’s Watchman (also with a tiny tube) and models with LCD screens.
Perhaps the most curious of these was the Seiko TV-Watch, which you wore on your wrist. That might have been cool, but it wasn’t self-contained. The directions instructed the user to run a wire from the watch, under a sleeve, to the receiver placed in a pocket. A set of headphones completed the ensemble.
The drawing of all this in the instructions made the user look like a walking science experiment.
Though novel, these TVs never widely caught on. Reception was often spotty and the picture quality marginal.
In 2007, San Diego’s Qualcomm Inc. launched Flo as a service for mobile phones. There were already a handful of other TV providers for phones at that point, but none had set the world on fire.
Neither did Flo. By then, Apple had successfully brought video to its iPod. More recently, online video streaming from YouTube and other sites has become standard on smart phones.
Hand-held broadcast/cable TV remained elusive.
But Qualcomm didn’t give up on the service, and late last year it introduced its hand-held Flo TV device. In February it was promoted during the biggest ad fest of them all, the Super Bowl.
Flo TV -- which is a bit larger than a deck of cards, but thinner -- is what the industry calls a dedicated device in that it does just one thing. This bucks the trend of smart phones and other hand-helds that strive to multitask.
It’s a classy-looking, easy-to-use gadget with buttons worked nicely into the edges. Particularly clever is a little kick stand that folds down to hold the TV upright.
If only its function were as good as its looks.
Flo’s programming is broadcast from towers in metropolitan and other well-populated areas. In Southern California it’s available in most flatland areas, according to a coverage map on its site, while reception is spotty to nonexistent in mountainous areas.
But even in relatively flat terrain, such as downtown L.A., coverage was spotty, depending on where I was standing. Indoor reception was particularly tricky -- within the Times building, the picture pixilated or halted every few seconds unless I situated the gadget in just the right spot on my desk (which happened to be atop the computer monitor).
Outdoor reception was generally better, but like hand-held TVs of the past, bright light washed out the screen.
The ideal situation for Flo TV seems to be outside on an overcast day in a metropolitan area not near any mountains. Then you’re golden.
Under those conditions, picture quality on the little screen was quite good. But what are the chances Flo is going to be showing something you want to watch? Currently, the service offers only 15 channels of programming, including the four broadcast networks, plus cable offerings such as CNN, Comedy Central, ESPN, Disney Channel and Fox News. That’s weak in an era when dozens of channels are available, even on basic cable. But it gets worse.
In most instances, the Flo offerings are “mobile” versions of the channels that don’t always simulcast what’s being shown on regular TV. Instead, they might offer re-runs or other programming.
That means that sometimes the mobile channels skip something you’d really like to watch. Like a little thing called the Olympics.
Although Flo TV carries three NBC-owned channels -- NBC2go, plus mobile versions of CNBC and MSNBC -- none of them carried the network’s biggest event, by far, since Conan O’Brien signed off late-night TV. The popular Olympic Games were not on any of these channels, at least not on the several days I watched.
Instead, they offered up reruns of “Real Housewives of New York City,” a well-worn show on the making of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and episodes of CNBC’s “American Greed.”
Live sports would seem to be a natural for mobile TV, but the only channel showing them during the test period was ESPN, which had NBA games.
And here’s the capper. Not only does the device cost $250 to buy, but there’s also a $15 monthly programming subscription fee.
Through the end of March, however, the device is selling for a promotional price of $200, and that includes the first six months of program service. But even that pricing would cost a user nearly $300 in the first year to see often-stale programming while balancing the gadget in just-right positions in selected areas.
Later this year, we’ll find out whether the new mobile digital TV devices can do any better. They’ll be able to pick up live broadcasts from local television stations, plus extra digital channels. Also, they’ll supposedly have TiVo-like recording capabilities and some interactive functions.
Until then, at least, the dream of hand-held TV remains just that.
