Earlier this month, a strange thing happened at the annual NC Idea awards ceremony in Durham: OtherScreen, a fledgling consumer technology firm, brought home the big prize.

The strange part? The company's from Charlotte.

In the fierce battle for startup funding, OtherScreen's pocketing of a $45,000 grant was a major - and all too rare - victory for a Charlotte-born tech outfit.

While the Queen City boasts plenty of talented techies, it's often overshadowed by rival geeks in the Research Triangle. It comes down to who's willing to strut their stuff, said Lister Delgato, a partner at Durham-based Idea Fund Partners and adviser to the NC Idea awards.

"We just don't see that many Charlotte companies," he said. "They have to get out more and try to bring in the money."

Since its 2005 founding, for example, NC Idea has doled out about $2.1 million to about 57 startups pushing to commercialize their innovations - mostly always to firms in Raleigh, Chapel Hill or Durham. The only Charlotte firms to win: OtherScreen, Open Connect Corp., and Entogenetics.

As Paul Wetenhall, president of the Ben Craig Center, a nonprofit advocate for entrepreneurs at UNC Charlotte, puts it: "What's especially cool about OtherScreen's award is, it gives them instant visibility to larger-scale investors, as well as potential strategic partners. It's the kind of validation Charlotte's technology startups need a lot more of."

Bragging points aside, here's the trouble with playing second fiddle: Of the $456 million in venture capital investments made in North Carolina in 2010, only $58.3 million, or about 13 percent, landed in Charlotte. "Essentially all the rest went into the Research Triangle area," he said - noting, though, that the $58 million nearly tripled the 2009 total.

So far this year, Charlotte's venture capital funding continues to be comparatively modest: two deals for $1 million in the first quarter, or about 1 percent of the state's overall $99 million venture capital funding.

"We've got a bit of a chip on our shoulder, being from Charlotte," says Garth Moulton, OtherScreen's 40-year-old co-founder. "People say you can't start a successful tech company unless you're in Silicon Valley, or even in the Research Triangle, and we think that's baloney."

OtherScreen's technology is clever, if not necessarily revolutionary: It's a convergence product, a piece of Web-based software that augments TV broadcasts with social gaming.

Think Pop-Up Video goes interactive, with a Web deejay watching the NFL playoff game with you. "Fourth down. Pass or Run?" you're asked. Or during a commercial, you might hear: "What do you prefer, Budweiser or Heineken?"

Co-founder Chris Halligan says more than 80 percent of mobile device users report using their phone, tablet or computer while watching TV. Ordinarily, he said, such Internet usage isn't wired to the broadcast event. Their product, still being tweaked in beta phase, attempts to bridge that gap.

"Nobody is engaged in television as they were, say, 10 years ago," says Halligan, 44. "But we can increase viewer engagement by making the television an ally with the other things competing for attention.

"Let's face it: Flicking channels is the enemy of all advertisers. If you can make advertising feel like a game, users will love you." And so, too, will investors.