Where forth art though, portable digital tv?

January 29, 2009 8:45 AM

My wife has a small 4" portable analog tv in her cubicle at work. Help me replace it before the digital tv transition comes.

Are there inexpensive (less than $150), small tvs with ATSC tuners that work reasonably well? She'll be about 20 miles from the local transmission towers.

Also, she'll soon have an MSI Wind netbook that she couild bring to work. Is there a USB based solution that can work with this? I found an external tuner like this one, but from reviews, it sounds like this might be CPU intensive, and I'm worried that the netbook won't have the horsepower to use it.

posted by jaimev to technology (7 comments total)

Goggle says
posted by Bonzai at 8:50 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]

Um, if she's happy with the little 4-incher (pardon the pun) why not just hook it into an (almost) free digital tuner that you buy with your $40 Guv'mint card?
posted by emjay at 8:51 AM on January 29

Bonzai, thanks for search tip. Didn't realize I could search strictly by product.

emjay, we stupidly applied for the coupons when the program first started, only to find there were no converter boxes we could purchase with the coupon. Thus they expired unused, and we got denied when applying for another one.
posted by jaimev at 8:56 AM on January 29

Honestly, why replace it?
A $40 to $50 converter box is much less than a $150 mini lcd tv, and it's very much less likely to walk off after hours.

And you can always run things like TVU on her MSI Wind. I guess it depends on what she wants to watch.
posted by terpia at 10:10 AM on January 29

Why not ask friends to get a coupon which you then use? My parents had 4 sets to convert, so I got mine and handed them over.
posted by Tomorrowful at 10:31 AM on January 29

I just favorited this question, but mainly for a reference to Bonzai's search results. Living here on the Gulf Coast, we were without power for several days after Hurricane Ike, and the battery-operated b&w analog TV was an information lifeline.

I've been searching for battery-operated digital tv's since then, but couldn't find anything less than $200. I'd still like something less than $100; looks like prices are moving in the right direction.
posted by Robert Angelo at 1:04 PM on January 29

Hmmm... aren't they planning to possibly extend the switchover date, and also do some re-funding of the coupon fund?

Either way, you could always ask the relatives who have cable or satellite who do not need converter boxes to request them for you once the money's available for the coupon fund again.

Honestly though, if she's getting a small PC to use, there's so much content online for tv shows and movies, even local broadcasts are more and more frequently avaible as streaming media in different areas.

What is it she really wants to watch? Soap operas? The View? Oprah? Local news? Anything else should be available elsewhere.
posted by emjay at 7:32 AM on January 30