Mobile Phones Turn Up The Interaction On TV

from the it's-the-simple-things-in-life... dept

For years television execs have talked about and experimented with "interactive television" concepts. And, every time, they've pretty much failed because people don't necessarily want to interact with their TV... until now. It appears that people are willing to use their mobile phones as the device of choice in interacting with television programming. For example, people use it to vote on polls or on TV contests like American Idol. While attempts at offering specialized hardware for interaction never made sense, people have no problem pulling out their mobile phone and placing their vote. Of course some interactive TV believers scoff at the idea of the telephone as the interface, saying it's only good for limited things like voting. That may be true, but so far, it seems like that's all people really want to do when they're watching TV.
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