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Motorola Q Road Story

August 23rd, 2006

Imagine live television streaming out to the Internet from your actual home living room, beamed to a mobile device, while speeding down a stretch of rural highway. Sounds like something from the future, right?

I did this in August 2006.

I recently upgraded my mobile life to the new Motorola Q. (View post). It is an amazing device, and it has completely changed the way I get email, text, and stay connected to the network. But, it is not merely the device that fascinates me, but the fact that it represents a new chapter in true network mobility — a milestone in personal technology.

Just when I thought I had seen it all with this device, along comes a situation that blew my mind – a unique and distinctive glimpse of the not too distant future of mobile technology. Forget what you know about email, texting, television, and mobility.

Truly Mobile Television

During a 17 hour car trip to northern Canada from Chicago, I decided to test what my Motorola Q could really do — truly mobile, and far from any tethered laptop. So, I launched the Slingbox remote television application that I installed. A Slingbox is a piece of hardware that allows you to stream your actual home television anywhere on the Internet. You can change channels and all the other features you would normally have while sitting on your couch at home. Slingbox has a mobile version that sends this stream to your Motorola Q (or, technically, any device running Windows Smartphone)

We were somewhere in rural Wisconsin – about 10 miles north of Rice Lake and heading north on highway 57. It was 11:00 at night. The Slingbox connected, and video started streaming to my Motorola Q. As Slingbox does, the video improved as it found the best pathway to me on the network.

I actually watched a one-hour television show on my Motorola Q while speeding north on a highway in Wisconsin. I could not believe how good it looked – definitely watchable. Next thing I knew we had arrived for a rest stop in Superior.

The Infrastructure For This to Happen

The cable network beams its signal to my satellite provider, they send it into space, my home satdish brings it into my living room, Slingbox takes the signal from my television, streams that signal to my router out to the Internet, to my mobile phone service provider, they locate me in the network, then the signal goes to the cell tower in Wisconsin, radio transmits to my Q, and then to my eyes and ears.

Mind blowing. If I can do this now, what will it be like next year, in two years…in five?

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