I was at the MoCoMixer last night and got a chance to speak with some guys from the Qualcomm MediaFlo group. They’re in the middle of a test with Sprint, and they have a buch of major metro areas lit up with the service now.

Some interesting facts from their trial. Keep in mind, these guys are from Qualcomm so it’s going to be biased:

• People love watching shows on it. Some have even said watching movies is not a problem and even quite enjoyable.
• Women love the service – surveys have stated that they watch it while their husbands watch a show they don’t like on the big TV
• People love it in bed – like curling up with a book
• It runs between 24 to 30 frames per second at around 320×240
• The system is running about 12 channels in the test now, but is theoretically capable of running up around 20
• Qualcomm also makes DVB-H components, but they see more promise in MediaFlo
• DVB-H is more power hungry by about a factor of 2 and runs at around 8-15 fps

They were unable to show me the service live, because it’s not lit up in LA yet, But I did check out the Sprint SPH-M250 and the MediaFlo interface (pictured above). I have to admit – very very impressive. They say that MediaFlo streaming time is about the same as talk time on one battery. Not bad.