Motive TV launching popular tablet service in UK

Motive Television announced the expansion of one of its popular consumer technologies to the UK on Wednesday, after a successful period of sales in the United States.

The AIM-listed TV technology firm sais it would launch TabletTV Plus - the successor to its TabletTV product - in the British isles initially for Apple iPad tablets, with an Android version forthcoming.

TabletTV Plus allows tablet devices in a home to connect to a proprietary Motive TV tuner, to watch and record any Freeview or internet channel on the device - essentially turning a tablet into a portable television and personal video recorder.

Motive said the new features on the Plus product included split screen viewing, sharing a single tuner across multiple devices, transfer recorded programming to a television screen through Apple TV, and access to streaming channels.

"TabletTV Plus solves the problem of finding a simple, inclusive and low cost way for viewers to access sports, movies, news and entertainment in one place", said Motive CEO Leonard M Fertig.

TabletTV Plus launched in the US in mid-November, and was met with favourable reviews. Motive reported it had sold most of its available inventory there, but assured it had access to a sufficient supply of tuners for anticipated high UK demand.

Motive's success with the product in the US was in stark contrast to similar startup Aereo, which allowed users to receive signals from a tuner they leased, located at Aereo's premises.

The Supreme Court ruled that service breached the copyright of television networks, as it was essentially rebroadcasting their signal. Motive was banking on the fact their tuner was located in the user's home, and therefore would be seen as another television antenna.

The service was expected to launch on the Apple App Store on Wednesday evening in London.