Doug Aamoth…

AT&T will begin selling two handsets on Sunday, May 4th to complement its “AT&T Mobile TV with FLO” service. FLO TV, in and of itself, is not exclusive to AT&T, as it’s been available to Verizon Wireless customers since January 2007 as part of the VCast Mobile TV feature. At any rate, AT&T will soon be offering the service on the LG Vu ($299) and the Samsung Access ($199). Rate packages will be as follows:

Monthly access packages for AT&T Mobile TV begin at $15 a month for the Basic package, which includes unlimited access to Mobile TV, as well as access to the exclusive CNCRT channel for a limited time. AT&T also offers a Mobile TV Plus package for $30 a month, which includes unlimited Mobile TV, unlimited mobile Web browsing on MEdia^TM Net and unlimited CV mobile video. Customers can also subscribe to a limited basic package for $13 a month, which gives them access to four channels: CBS Mobile, FOX Mobile, NBC 2Go and NBC News 2Go. Because AT&T Mobile TV operates on MediaFLO USA’s own dedicated multicast network, AT&T customers do not incur data or voice charges. Additionally, programming is subject to change, and sports programming is subject to blackout restrictions.

Some of the programming that’ll be available starting Sunday includes shows on CBS Mobile (CSI, CSI:NY, and How I Met Your Mother), a live CNN feed, Comedy Central episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, live games on ESPN Mobile TV, certain Fox shows, live NHL games on NBC 2GO, news from NBC News 2Go, some Nickelodeon stuff, and stuff from MTV that helps further the ultimate deterioration of our once-intelligent society, like The Hills and Real World. 

Full press release after the jump…

AT&T MOBILE TV PREMIERES SUNDAY, MAY 4

AT&T to Deliver MediaFLO USA’s FLO TV Service in 58 Markets on New AT&T-Exclusive Handsets Designed for Mobile TV Viewing; AT&T Introduces CNN Mobile Live, PIX and CNCRT, a Special Concert Channel

SAN ANTONIO, May 1, 2008 — We interrupt your scheduled programming with an important news bulletin: AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) and MediaFLO USA Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM), announced today the May 4 availability of the AT&T Mobile TV with FLO™ service. This powerful new mobile television service will provide around-the-clock access to some of today’s most popular television programs — live and in color on the mobile phone.

To ensure an unmatched mobile television experience for consumers, AT&T is introducing two new exclusive handsets: the Vu from LG Electronics MobileComm U.S.A. Inc. (LG) and the Access from Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung). 

• LG Vu: A sleek and stunning device, the Vu gives you a clear view of TV, Web, pictures or videos on its large interactive touch screen. It also lets you get the utmost in mobile entertainment with a music player, 2.0 megapixel camera and Bluetooth^® capabilities.The LG Vu is available for $299.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a $100 mail-in rebate.*
• Samsung Access: This stylish handset features a large landscape display, ideal for delivering a rich viewing experience and an internal antenna for exceptional reception. It’s a great device for customers who are looking for advanced multimedia capabilities such as a camera, external stereo speakers, stereo Bluetooth, AT&T Music, CV, of course, AT&T Mobile TV. The Samsung Access is available for $199.99 with a two-year service agreement and after a $100 mail-in rebate.¹

“AT&T Mobile TV is more than a new entertainment service — it is an experience that will significantly change and enhance our customers’ mobile lifestyles,” said Mark Collins, vice president of Consumer Data for AT&T’s wireless unit. “With this in mind, it was imperative that we launch this revolutionary service on devices that were optimal for the best mobile viewing experience imaginable. We worked closely with LG and Samsung to deliver these two iconic handsets, which are designed with the specific needs of what will soon become our Mobile TV viewing audience.”

AT&T Mobile TV proves that big things come in small packages. The service will offer unmatched TV-quality programming from leading news and entertainment brands: CBS Mobile, ESPN Mobile TV, FOX Mobile, NBC 2Go, NBC News 2Go, MTV Networks’ COMEDY CENTRAL, MTV and Nickelodeon, as well as PIX and CNN Mobile Live, which are both AT&T-exclusive channels on MediaFLO USA’s FLO TV™ service.

• PIX, from Sony Pictures Television, offers a variety of contemporary films, including comedies, cult classics, action films and family favorites from the studio’s vast library.
• CNN Mobile Live provides users with access to 24 hours of breaking news with live streaming anchored coverage from CNN.com Live as well as CNN’s most popular programs, including “American Morning,” “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” “CNN Election Center,” “Larry King Live,” “Anderson Cooper 360º,” and “CNN International.”

“Our research revealed that news and movies were the two most popular program categories consumers wanted to watch on their mobile phones. We have exceeded their expectations with AT&T Mobile TV,” said Collins. “Together with MediaFLO USA, we are changing the picture of television-viewing by giving our customers an innovative way to stay connected to breaking news from CNN Mobile Live, an arsenal of movie favorites with PIX and a formidable lineup of other quality programming while on the go.”

Additionally, for the next 60 days, the AT&T Mobile TV service will feature CNCRT, a special concert channel delivered by Control Room, a leading producer and distributor of world-class entertainment. Every day, for 24 hours, the CNCRT channel will air one of approximately 30 recently recorded concerts from major recording artists, such as Avril Lavigne, Chris Brown, Fall Out Boy, Jay Z, Sheryl Crow, Akon, Daughtry, Lenny Kravitz, Rage Against the Machine and more. 

“With the authority of CNN, the cinematic variety of PIX and the star power of CNCRT, AT&T Mobile TV adds an exciting dimension to the FLO TV service,” said Gina Lombardi, president of MediaFLO USA.  “We are thrilled to be working with AT&T to provide consumers with such a powerful new mobile entertainment experience.”

MediaFLO USA’s award-winning FLO TV service features premium full-length, high-quality programming delivered to mobile phones over MediaFLO USA’s own dedicated multicast network. Using an intuitive program guide, AT&T customers will be able to easily flip from one channel to the next on their mobile FLO-enabled phones to experience the best-quality mobile TV.

There are more than 150 simulcast and/or time-shifted programs, as well as live sports events, currently available for viewing. Below are examples of some of the entertaining TV programs and events that are scheduled to air the week of May 4:

• CBS Mobile: New episodes of “CSI,” “CSI:NY” and “How I Met Your Mother”
• CNN Mobile Live: Live breaking news coverage, including real-time results from the Democratic and Republican primaries in North Carolina and Indiana on May 6.
• Comedy Central: New episodes of “The Daily Show with John Stewart” and “The Colbert Report”
• ESPN Mobile TV: Live game coverage as well as ESPN Mobile TV shows such as “ScoreCenter,” “ReSET” and more
• FOX Mobile: New episodes of “Bones,” “Back to You,” and LIVE Big 12 College Baseball
• MTV: New episodes of “The Hills,” “Real World: Hollywood” and “The Paper”
• NBC 2Go: LIVE NHL Stanley Cup Playoff and Final games and finale episode of NBC’s  “30 Rock” (Thurs., May
• NBC News 2Go: LIVE coverage of the Indiana and North Carolina Democratic Primaries

• Nickelodeon: Episodes of “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “iCarly”
• PIX: “Memento,” “In The Line of Fire,” “Groundhog Day,” “Kung Fu Hustle” and “Resident Evil”

AT&T Mobile TV will launch in 58 markets including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, Seattle and Washington, D.C.  The service is a perfect complement to the wireless carrier’s already impressive portfolio of wireless video offerings, including CV, which gives subscribers mobile access to thousands of on-demand video clips — including news, sports, entertainment, music and movie previews. With the addition of Mobile TV, AT&T customers now have even more choices in how they experience and enjoy video content from their phone. As with CV, AT&T Mobile TV will have the Parental Controls feature, which provides content filtering and purchase blocking on your phone so that you can restrict access to content that may be inappropriate for younger viewers.

Monthly access packages for AT&T Mobile TV begin at $15 a month for the Basic package, which includes unlimited access to Mobile TV, as well as access to the exclusive CNCRT channel for a limited time. AT&T also offers a Mobile TV Plus package for $30 a month, which includes unlimited Mobile TV, unlimited mobile Web browsing on MEdia^TM Net and unlimited CV mobile video. Customers can also subscribe to a limited basic package for $13 a month, which gives them access to four channels: CBS Mobile, FOX Mobile, NBC 2Go and NBC News 2Go. Because AT&T Mobile TV operates on MediaFLO USA’s own dedicated multicast network, AT&T customers do not incur data or voice charges. Additionally, programming is subject to change, and sports programming is subject to blackout restrictions.

To learn more about AT&T Mobile TV, including service, programming and handset details, visit www.att.com/mobiletv .

¹For the LG Vu or the Samsung Access pay $399.99 or $299.99, respectively, and after mail-in rebate, receive $100 AT&T promotion card.  A two-year service agreement is also required. AT&T promotion card valid wherever major credit cards are accepted and for 120 days after issue date. May be used to pay wireless bill. Not redeemable for cash and cannot be used for cash withdrawal at ATMs or at automated gas pumps.

Find More Information Online:

Web Site Links: Related Media Kits:   
AT&T Web Site
AT&T Wireless Web Site
AT&T Mobile TV Web Site
MediaFLO Web Site AT&T Offers Choice in Wireless
AT&T Mobile Phones

Related Releases:       Related Fact Sheets:  
AT&T Mobile TV – Coming to Your Wireless Phone in May

AT&T Selects QUALCOMM’s MediaFLO USA for Mobile Entertainment Services AT&T Network Coverage Map
Technorati Tags: AT&T, AT&T Mobile TV, mobile phone
About AT&T
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) is a premier communications holding company. Its subsidiaries and affiliates, AT&T operating companies, are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and around the world. Among their offerings are the world’s most advanced IP-based business communications services and the nation’s leading wireless, high speed Internet access and voice services. In domestic markets, AT&T is known for the directory publishing and advertising sales leadership of its Yellow Pages and YELLOWPAGES.COM organizations, and the AT&T brand is licensed to innovators in such fields as communications equipment. As part of its three-screen integration strategy, AT&T is expanding its TV entertainment offerings. Additional information about AT&T Inc. and the products and services provided by AT&T subsidiaries and affiliates is available at http://www.att.com.

© 2008 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T, the AT&T logo and all other marks contained herein are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property and/or AT&T affiliated companies.

This AT&T news release and other announcements are available as part of an RSS feed at www.att.com/rss. For more information, please review this announcement in the AT&T newsroom at http://www.att.com/newsroom.

About MediaFLO USA Inc.
MediaFLO USA Inc. unleashes the power of TV for mobile consumers, combining the best content, an intuitive user interface and a superior multicast network to deliver a true TV experience.  The award-winning FLO TV service from MediaFLO USA offers full-length simulcast and time-shifted programming from the world’s best entertainment brands, including CBS, CBS College Sports, CBS News, Comedy Central, ESPN, FOX, FOX News, FOX Sports, MTV, NBC, NBC Sports, NBC News, CNBC, MSNBC, NickToons and Nickelodeon. Based in San Diego, Calif., MediaFLO USA is a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated.  MediaFLO USA, with FLO, and FLO TV are trademarks of Qualcomm Incorporated. Further information is available at both www.mediaflousa.com and www.flotv.com.

In an interview with PC Play Magazine, when asked about the current state of PC gaming, Crytek president Cevat Terli said:

“We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy.  To the degree PC Gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we wont have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore.”

Plenty of other PC game developers have raised the same complaint about piracy. You’ll recall that THQ chimed in a couple months ago and Gears of War developer Epic Games announced that it’ll be going console-only from now on.

via ALBOTAS

There’s a company in the UK called SuperMario Plumbing and Heating. The owner, Mariusz “Mario” Gruzka, though likely not Italian, could perhaps pass as a real life version of the Mario that most of us know and love. He’s no Captain Lou Albano from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show (remember Zelda Fridays?), but he’ll do.

There’s some loose talk going around the ‘net as to the legalities of a company called SuperMario Plumbing and Heating, but here’s to hoping that everyone can just have a nice, healthy chuckle and move forward without too much trouble.

via Geekologie

Remember this, from last March? If you do, then you’ve been reading CrunchGear for quite some time and we really appreciate your patronage. BGR’s gotten word that the SMT 5700 smartphone might finally be launching on AT&T, although there’s no real evidence other than saying “it appears that AT&T is finally gearing up to launch the thing.” Whatever the case may be, if you were holding out for this phone, your wait might finally be over. If it’s not actually coming out, why not wait longer? What the hell, right? You’ve gone this long, what’s another year or two?

Original specs included Windows Mobile 5, EDGE, 2-megapixel camera, and a $99 price tag. I’d guess they’re at least gonna update the OS.

via BGR

For those of you that use Google’s personalized home page, you may have noticed that there are now even more options as far as your themes are concerned. Google recently added themes by “world class artists and innovators” like Jackie Chan, The Wiggles, and yes, even Coldplay.

iGoogle Artist Themes [Google.com]

Tamir Khason wrote an article about four years ago theorizing that there’s a direct correlation between the modern-day popularity of a particular programming language and how much facial hair the inventor of that language has. He’s now revisited the subject in a new post called Computer Languages and Facial Hair — Take Two.

The inventors of the following languages have (or had) no facial hair at all; Fortran, F#, Prolog, Objective-C, Java+, C#, RubyCLR, WPF, Silverlight, and IronPython.

The inventors of the following languages have (or had) mustaches; Smalltalk, BASIC, and Perl.

Finally, the inventors of these languages have (or had) beards; C, C++, Ruby, Python, Java, JSON, and PHP (although he’s just got a little chin-beard).

Haskell will be an interesting case because it has three founders; one with no beard, one with a huge beard, and one with a little chin-beard.

Khason speculates that Haskell might do well since the guy with the huge beard (seen left) makes up for the other two.

On a somewhat unrelated note, the guy in the upper left corner of the main photo looks an awful lot like SNL’s Darrell Hammond as Sean Connery.

via Newsvine

The DC800 from SeaLife is an 8-megapixel digital camera that works underwater in that housing apparatus on the left and then works on land as that little guy on the right. Perfect for taking photos of majestic sea creatures during the day and exotic cougars at night. It’s got five special underwater modes to adjust to the color of water that you’re diving in, plus a continuous picture feature that automatically snaps photos in five second to five minute increments.

It’s waterproof up to 200 feet, has a 2.7-inch display, 4x optical zoom (plus 5x digital), 32MB of on-board memory, plus an SD card slot. It’s $549.95 from SeaLife Cameras.

Press Release

I just got around to watching last Wednesday’s Cranky Geeks video podcast starring John C. Dvorak and Sebastian Rupley (plus a panel of guests that rotate each week) and found this bit to be kind of funny. Dvorak’s step-son apparently set up a Twitter account under “SRupley” and posted updates as Rupley, like:

I belched….mmm…peanut butter. Yum

After 7, no wait, 8 hours, I got tired of watching TV. Going to check out Digg stories and drink wine coolers.

Reading the news while I drink my mocha frappuccino.

Apparently this sort of thing happens all the time until the fake accounts get shut down by the “real” people. Jonathan Ive, Leo Laporte, and Woz, to name a few. In this case, Rupley decided to bite the bullet and just take over the Twitter account for real after Dvorak gave him the password. Others aren’t quite so lucky, though.

A lot of notebook manufacturers will take photos of their products being used in locations that most normal people would never dream of taking such delicate and expensive devices.

Case in point, the first iteration of the Asus Eee PC with the girl on the beach. Everyone knows that the beach is the absolute LAST place to take a laptop. There are too many people having “fun” — blissfully unaware that they might be kicking sand up all over your computer while you’re trying to work. The beach is just too dangerous.

So it’s great to see that Asus has shifted gears with its Eee PC 900 series and taken some photos of the device next to a plate of gutted fish with the protective covering still affixed to the trackpad (although that soy sauce is dangerously close).

While I don’t condone eating next to your laptop, it has to be done unless you “take breaks” and eat in a “kitchen” with your “family” instead of at your desk. Basically what I’m saying is that the new Eee 900 will be available in black and it’ll have somewhat more realistic product photos.

via SlashGear

I can’t quite put my finger on it (pun intended) but this interface looks similar to something I’ve seen before. The “Smart Touch” UI by Gigabyte for its line of GSmart phones will be available in Europe “after May,” so there’s no telling if we’ll see something like this here in the US. Actually, we’ll see a lot of stuff like this if we haven’t already, as most major mobile device manufacturers and software developers work to replicate the UI of a wildly popular phone that’s been on the market for a while.

via the::unwired