The Mobile as TV Remote

We at AppMarket / Agora Media do believe that the Mobile can act as a substitute for the conventional TV Remote for Social TV.

The mobile device is already a device taking a central place in daily lives. Adding more functionality and purpose to the mobile decreases the need for yet another device/remote for the television medium.

In the article Google TV Preps for Lean-back with New Youtube by Richard, Google goes for the keyboard as remote, being not ergonomic and leanback, the iPhone can offer this experience to the user.
Small in size and users are already accustomed to it, which increases the use and lowers the perceived risks and barriers.

Aforementioned reasons are valid and the quest for an iPhone app that does this continues.

The latest attempt to transform the iPhone in a TV remote is the My TV Remote application by Ryz Media.
As reported on MobileCrunch:

Instead of acting like your current remote control by providing the same buttons on a digital screen, the My TV Remote app provides a significantly improved user experience. Rather than flipping through channels on your TV via up and down arrow buttons, a TV guide is downloaded to your phone so you can thumb through channels the same way you do music. Furthermore, you can see what shows are on each channel and read descriptions or ratings of the shows.

My TV Remote also incorporates social elements – you get real-time recommendations of what to watch based on what’s most popular right now. Furthermore, you can see what your Facebook friends are watching and interact with them via a comment thread about the show. You can also “check in” to a TV show and share it on your Facebook wall, which I can actually see myself doing.

The price of this application makes it even more interesting, because it just costs $10 instead of traditional prices between $150 up to $1000 remotes.

What do you think, can the mobile device act as a (Social) TV remote?

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