Hi.  My name is Doug, and I am a TV-aholic.  Well, I am actually not sure whether that is a real thing, but it should be.  I watch TV pretty much anywhere: while eating, riding in the car, working, you name it.  Probably the only time I do not watch TV is when I am in between locations.  You know, places like the train, or walking down the street, or just sitting in the park.  Places that are just too far from an extension cord to make TV watching practicable.  Until now.  Thanks to Flo TV, now you can pack your 60 inch TV into your pocket and take it with you.  Live TV, anywhere…anytime.  Now that warrants a closer look.  Fortunately, the folks at Flo TV were kind enough to send a loaner unit for me to check out for a few weeks.  So, indulge me for a minute and I will share my impressions with you.

In the Box: Let’s get started with the basics and take a look at what you will find when you open up the box.  Nestled on top, of course, is the Flo TV unit, which you will probably want to pause and admire.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.  Once you are done ogling, we’ll go ahead and remove the cardboard insert and check out what else is going on inside the box. 

Under the insert, you will find:

• a cleaning cloth, which you will learn to appreciate since touch screens can be fingerprint magnets
• a USB cable
• AC adaptor
• battery
• headphones (which I promptly ignored in favor of a higher quality pair)
• quick start guide and legal documents

Noticeably absent from the box were any kind of case or screen protector, which would have been nice.  I also would have liked a car charging adaptor. 

While it is not advisable to use this device while driving, there are plenty of opportunities to use it while you are a passenger in a car, and an adaptor to keep the battery charged would have been helpful.

Hardware: I was really impressed by the hardware on the Personal TV unit from Flo TV.  It had a sleek feel, which really made it fit well within the world of mobile electronics.  It is much skinnier than you might have expected.  In fact, it is pretty close in width to the iPod Touch. 

There are not a lot of buttons on the device, because most of your interaction will come through the touch screen.  On the top, there is the power button, and the battery button. 

Tap the battery button and the four LED lights will show how much time you have left to watch TV before you will need a charge.  Obviously, the more lights you see, the more power you have available.

On the right hand side of the device are your volume controls and mute button.  Again, this is all pretty self explanatory.  Also on this side, you will find the charging connection, which is a standard micro-USB, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

Before we get to the face, which I know you are all waiting for, let’s just flip it over and take a look at the back for a minute. Folding out of the back is a stand, which I thought was fantastic.  This allows the Flo TV unit to serve as a standalone player, without the need for you to hold it all the time.  A lot of media players miss this obvious feature. 

In addition, you will also fine two speakers on the back, which I thought featured pretty good sound quality.  Though I do question the decision to place them on the back of the device.  This results in the audio projecting away from you, rather than towards you.  In other words, by the time the sound reaches your ear, it has already been bouncing around the room and is going to be partially degraded.  For this reason (at least in part), I found that using headphones significantly improved my experience with the Flo TV.

OK.  Let’s go ahead an check out the face of the device.  Here, you will find a 3.5 inch touch screen, which the Flo TV website describes as, “the perfect size for watchability and portability.”  While I agree with the portability aspect, we’ll more fully test watchability in a bit.  I can tell you this, I do not believe that 3.5 inches is perfect for much of anything.  Five inches would always be better than 3.5, and 7 is even better.  Actually, in my testing, I have found a seven inch screen to be a more perfect size for watchability and portability.  That really seems to win the balance for me.  It is still pocket sized and portable, while making an extremely nice viewing area.  Notwithstanding these overstatements, I do think it is accurate to say that the Flo TV unit struck a nice balance between watchability and portability.

On the right hand side of the screen is the guide button, which will call up the on-screen guide.  Other than this button, there is nothing else going on on the face of this device, which left me wondering why we needed such deep bezels on either side of the screen.  Some might argue that these bezels are required so you have space to hold the device in your hand without interfering with the screen.  This seems a bit unintuitive to me, though, because the stand on the back eliminates the need for you to hold it while watching.  In the end, this just seemed like an awful lot of wasted space, which could have been much better used to increase the viewing area.

As far as the hardware goes, that is all you need to know.  I loved the clean lines and simple layout of this unit.  All of the controls are well placed and easy to locate, which makes the device intuitive and easy to use. 

What is Flo TV: Before we get to how the device performed, I thought it would be a good idea to pause for a moment and talk about what exactly is Flo TV.   In a nutshell, this is live, over-the-air TV.  There are three modes through which you can view Flo TV: a car unit, AT&T or Verizon mobile phone apps, and the stand-alone portable TV unit.  We are looking at the stand-alone portable TV unit today.  Since this is live TV and not video streaming from the Internet, you do not need to worry about download times, buffering, or any of the other complications usually associated with watching video content on the web.

User Experience: This device simply could not be easier to use, which is exactly perfect.  Just power it on, and wait a few seconds for the guide information to download.  That’s it.  Now you are ready to start watching.  To change the channel, just swipe the screen up or down.  For a more complete look at what is on, tap that guide button on the right and you can scroll through the whole guide, and even skip ahead to see what is coming up.  I was a bit disappointed to find that, unlike DirecTV or other cable providers, the guide on Flo TV does not offer detailed information about the shows in the guide.  As such, you cannot check the guide to see whether a show is a rerun or who will be appearing on your favorite talk shows that day.  Hopefully, this feature can be improved in the future.

Once you have selected the show you want to watch, the bulk of the user experience is going to revolve around the image on the screen.   Overall, I thought the image was pretty good, if not a bit small.  I did notice that some content had an extremely pixelated feel to it, especially when watching live events like sports.  Additionally, the small size of the screen made it difficult to see some detailed content like news tickers, sports scores, or other detail oriented content (note that the pictures of the screen in this review are actually sized larger than the screen on the Flo TV unit.)

That all being said, neither of these issues really caused a problem for the bulk of my viewing.  For example, I did not have any problem watching and enjoying Godzilla vs King Ghidora on the Crackle channel.  As for my kids, they never voiced any complaints when watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on the Disney channel or SpongeBob Squarepants on Nickelodeon.

One thing I found odd was the sleep mode on the screen.  Leave the unit sitting for a few moments and the screen will go to sleep, requiring some form of user input (a tap will do) to wake it up.  While this is a fine feature on a device which requires active involvement from the user, like a phone, the Flo TV device is a passive use device.  In other words, once you find the show you want to watch, all you need to do as the user is sit and watch.  No further input should be required, which made this sleep mode extremely frustrating.  Even more frustrating was the fact that I could not find an option to adjust it in the settings menu.

Finally, when I spoke with the folks representing Flo TV, they warned me to check out the coverage map.  Their concern was that I was not in a great reception area, which might detract from my ability to use this device.  I have to say, however, that this proved not to be a problem at all.  Even though I never seemed to climb out of a poor reception rating, I always enjoyed perfectly fine reception.  I was pretty impressed by this, and I think it speaks volumes about the strength of Flo TV’s network. 

Content:  If there is one area which Flo TV could really improve, it is the content.  For your money, you are only going to get 17 channels, which is not much at all.  This includes:

• 4 News Channels
• 2 Kids/Family Channels
• 7 Specialty Channels
• 4 Local Broadcast Channels

By comparison, sprint TV, which is included free on virtually every Sprint PCS phone, includes dozens of channels, with both live and recorded content, as well as premium and subscription channels alongside the included free channels.  That kind of robust programming is noticeably absent on the Flo TV.  Of particular note here is the fact that not all of these mobile channels mirror their broadcast counterparts.

By way of example, here is a shot of what was on the mobile versions of NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX.

And here is the standard version.  OK, maybe you did not want to watch all that news from 11:00-11:30, but, needless to say, you will not necessarily be able to watch your favorite broadcast shows as you might have expected.

Still, this was not nearly as disappointing to me as the other options which I did not find here:

• There are no premium channels.  It would have been great to see different packages with expanded or premium content, especially movie channels like HBO or Showtime.  Barring that, content which is not available on any other mobile or portable devices is critical.
• There is no way to watch prerecorded content.  The player would really benefit from a memory card slot, allowing you to use it to watch prerecorded videos and movies on the go.  Another idea would be a DVR-like system, allowing you to record content for viewing at a later time.
• The ability to connect to the web and download or stream content would be fantastic.  It would be great to be able to watch things like On-Demand content or Netflix videos, as well as YouTube and other online content.

Without these features, you are really left with an extremely limited array of content options.  In my opinion, Flo TV really missed a bet here.  They had an opportunity to make this a complete stand-alone video player, with the unique Flo TV content, as well as a myriad of online and prerecorded video options.  The problem for Flo TV is that they are competing against mobile phones, iPads, and other devices which offer significantly more content options, not to mention other online TV providers, like Hulu.  So, it is hard to imagine the niche which Flo TV is aiming for.  Someone who wants Live TV on the go, is comfortable with a mobile/portable device, but does not use another mobile device which could play live TV, as well as  a significantly great range of media content, and other functions.

Conclusion: I am always leery of these single-function, stand alone devices, and Flo TV proved to be no exception.  While I probably would have absolutely loved this device 10 or even 5 years ago, it is really hard to endorse this effort today.  As I noted with the Peek device, which was limited to email only, it is hard to imagine someone investing the money into a device like this, when for the same price, you can buy a mobile phone or mp3 player which far outpaces the limited functionality of this device.  Still, I could have stood behind the Flo TV as a portable video player, but the limited content options really hurt it in this area as well.  In the end, I really did not find anything that made this one stand out from the myriad of online, mobile, and other media playing options.  What Flo TV lacks is unique content.  Either in the form of channels which are not available anywhere else, or the ability to watch prerecorded content, such as movies stored on a memory card.  The Flo TV Personal TV is a nice idea, which came about five years too late, and includes far too few content options to appeal to the average mobile user in today’s market.

The Flo TV Personal TV is available from the Flo TV website for $199.99.  In order to receive service, you will also need to sign up for a subscription, which costs $14.99 per month.

What I Liked:

• sleek design
• easy and intuitive controls
• fold out stand
• live TV with no buffering or downloads
• excellent reception, even in poor reception areas

What Needs Improvement:

• no case included
• no car charger included (though I think I understand why)
• screen could be larger
• deep bezels
• sleep mode for the screen
• limited content (17 live channels) and no unique channels
• cannot play recorded content from a memory card

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