Interactive TV finding its bearings in mobile

Interactive TV services haven’t exactly been a hit at home. Try as they might, residential services companies haven’t had much success in delivering or getting their customers interested in interactive services beyond video-on-demand and DVR capabilities. The TV has always been and remains something to watch, not interact with. But TV’s newly emerging counterpart on the mobile network believes it can succeed where home broadcasters has failed.

Several of the mobile TV service providers are betting that making TV a two-way proposition is not only fit for the fast-paced and frenetic world of mobile — as opposed to the static world of the home — but it could be the key service that sets mobile TV apart from its home counterpart, driving up consumer adoption. FLO TV president Bill Stone sums it up succinctly: “Let’s get the customer more actively engaged in the programming.”

Stone said when Qualcomm first invented the MediaFLO technology and launched the FLO TV network, it was never intended to be a merely a linear video network. A host of interactive capabilities using wireless 3G networks as the back channel were designed into the standard, and though they’ve taken a while to develop, FLO is starting to introduce some of those services.

This year, FLO will launch its first time-shifting capabilities, initially allowing customers to sideload content to their FLO-enabled devices from a PC, and will eventually support full DVR capabilities, plucking programming from the air. But along with its recording capabilities, FLO plans to launch its first truly interactive features. FLO will start with simpler capabilities, such as the ability to click on ads or a program to open up a Web site or enter a contest. But FLO will gradually introduce more functions that will combine ingrained multimedia features in the FLO client along with application programming interfaces to other functions on the device, Stone said. Instead of merely watching TV, customers will have a host of other features from location-based services to IP communications to personalized financial and sports information, all accessible from their FLO screens and all linked to the content they’re watching, Stone said.

“We’ve been building a service layer over the top of the FLO platform — it’s one of the differentiators that makes FLO different,” Stone said. “With it you can interact both within the FLO network and outside of it. Imagine watching an NFL game, and on-screen its data-casting my fantasy football stats, while I’m tweeting about the game.”