Modeo -- Engadget

Modeo posts

Modeo smartphone unboxed

by Paul Miller posted Mar 1st 2007 at 8:05AM

It's amazing how short a distance we've travelled since we first spotted Modeo's DVB-H smartphone in April. Sure, now we know that it's just an HTC Foreseer under those orange accents, but after months of promises, the phone is only just now making it into our hands in boxed form. There's live DVB-H service lighting up NYC, but only six channels to watch, and no sign of a commercial launch in sight, as we mentioned yesterday. Luckily, the phone feels good in the hand, and while it might be bit large for an EDGE device in this day and age, it still looks and feels proportional in hand. The screen is quite sharp and general performance is snappy, especially video, thanks to the NVIDIA GoForce 5500 GPU under the hood. TV performance is great, at least as far as we've tested it in Manhattan and Brooklyn -- we'll revisit this in a week or so and let you know how we're doing -- but CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News, Fox Sports, Discovery Channel and E! get old fast, and the eight audio channels are about as basic as it gets. We'll give you our full impressions once we've had some more time to soak it all in, but for now you can peep the unboxing gallery below, along with our hands-on pics from last night's event.

Gallery: Modeo smartphone unboxed

Modeo boosts signal power, shows off DVB-H SD and mini-PCI cards

by Paul Miller posted Feb 28th 2007 at 11:40PM

Modeo hosted a little shindig tonight to unveil some of its future DVB-H plans and show off some kit. The big news is that the FCC has approved Modeo's request to boost signal power by 10 times in urban markets and 20 times in rural areas, giving the company a much easier path to coverage rollout and better signal quality. Modeo also mentioned that while it's currently testing service in NYC only, it has designs already in place for moving into the top 30 markets in the US. We also got our hands on upcoming DVB-H SD and mini-PCI cards, with the SD cards up and running in a myriad of Pocket PC devices, and the mini-PCI card running smooth -- though rather pixelated -- video on a Dell laptop. The next move for Modeo is to get channel changing time under 2 seconds, continue to improve video quality, add PVR and mediacasting capabilities, and stick interactivity into the programming. Modeo's software partner Penthera already had most of those capabilities up and running on demo units, as you can see in the gallery below, so it looks like most of this stuff will be all ready by the time a commercial launch happens. When that might be is anyone's guess. Modeo is still looking for a retail partner, and they made it pretty clear that Qualcomm's MediaFLO model of hitching onto mobile providers is exactly what Modeo would like to be doing -- unfortunately for Modeo, nobody's signed up yet.

Gallery: Modeo boosts signal power, shows off DVB-H SD and mini-PCI cards

Modeo launches mobile TV beta service in NYC

by Donald Melanson posted Jan 8th 2007 at 5:15PM

After a delay and a promise, Modeo has finally come through with the planned beta launch of its DVB-H mobile TV service in New York City, with the company also showing off the technology to those in attendance at CES. As we knew before, the NYC trial will be limited to just a few hundred users during its beta stage, each of who will get to test out the service with a shiny new HTC Foreseer handset. In addition performing the usual smartphoning duties, it'll let the lucky beta testers pick up mobile TV from the likes of Fox News and the Discovery Channel, as well as streaming audio courtesy of Music Choice. What's not so clear are any firm details on Modeo's plans beyond the NYC trial, with the company only saying that the beta will continue throughout the first quarter of 2007 and that they plan to use feedback from it to "evaluate network distribution options with wireless carriers." In other words, convince 'em to sign up before they go somewhere else.