You’ve seen the commercials and probably are thinking to yourself, “Mobile TV just isn’t worth that much to me.”  Well, for $15/month and the price of a new gadget, you’re probably right.  Besides, isn’t the purpose of getting out of the house mean getting away from sitting around watching TV?  However, I sure could have used this while on the city bus everyday going to school, or while I’m at my daughters gymnastics class for sure.  So if you have $250 laying around begging to be spent on a personal television, then FloTV will throw in 6 months of free service until March 31st, 2010.

For the rest of us, an option of the least cost to utilize this service does exist.  In fact, FloTV is available to AT&T Mobile and Verizon Wireless customers with compatible phones. And if you’re due for an upgrade with either service, you might want to consider getting a FloTV compatible phone.

Devices

The Personal TV device is a 1 pound touchscreen device with a 3.5″ screen. The PTV is pretty straight foward, turn it on, and watch TV. Just like at home.

Nothing special really… yawn.  So… let’s talk about the phones!

The good thing is the devices both AT&T and Verizon currently compatible with FloTV are pretty decent phones that are 3G ready and all have full HTML capability for Facebook and Youtube browsing.  The downside is that both Verizon and AT&T only offer two phones per network that are FloTV compatible.

All the phones are completely touchscreen and mobile web capable, but the HTC Imagio offers the Windows Mobile Pro OS including Microsoft Office applications like Excel, Word, and Powerpoint!  HTC Imagio also comes with Adobe PDF Reader so you can read E-Books!  So scratch one for Verizon!

Service & Prices

The more I researched the service available on the two wireless networks giants, the more I realized that FloTV can be as affordable as I would like it to be.

If you don’t have a mobile device but want to take advantage of mobile television service FloTV, $250 can buy you a personal TV along with free service for 6 months if you purchase service before 03/31/2010 and 15 channels including: 2.Flo, ABC, Adult Swim, CBS Mobile, CNBC, Comedy Central, Disney, ESPN MobileTV, Food Network, Fox Mobile, Fox News, MSNBC, MTV, NBC 2Go, Nickelodeon.

AT&T offers FloTV at a more affordable $10 per month rate & more channels including: CBS Mobile, CNBC, Comedy Central, ESPN Mobile TV, FOX Mobile, FOX News, MSNBC, MTV, NBC2Go, Nickelodeon, CNN Mobile, ABC Mobile, Disney Mobile, and Crackle.

Verizon offers the service thru V-Cast for with $13 per month for only 4 channels including: Fox Mobile, NBC 2 Go, MSNBC, CBS Mobile (reminds me of TV at Grandma’s when “Walker Texas Ranger” was the show before bed).  Or you can get 6 more channels for $15 per month which will add:  Comedy Central, ESPN Mobile, MTV, Nickelodeon, CNBC, Fox News, MTV tr3s (VZW Only), ESPN Radio (VZW Only).

You may notice that AT&T offers one more kid friendly channel, Disney, in place of Verizon’s exclusive ESPN Radio(?) channel…radio!? On a Mobile TV service? Wth? At least you get, MTV Tr3s, right?… anyone? (No one cares)

Conclusion

To sum up, you can get a personal television device for $250 with 6 months of free service and $15 per month afterwards, or if you are due for an upgrade with Verizon or AT&T, you can take advantage of FloTV service for a little less on your wireless device for nearly as many channels.  You can make that decision for yourself depending on your needs.  I hope I have been helpful and have shed some more light on the FloTV service. Leave comments!

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