[SBE] Portable DTV Receivers

[Jerry Paonessa]

Carl,

 

I bought one of those 9" Audiovox TV's last year as I was beginning my DTV Speaking career.  The 12VDC power capability was a big draw for me, and I have used it in our car, a friend's RV and best of all, on a pair of rechargeable gel-cells that deliver almost 4 hours of service.  The down side is of course that it takes all night to recharge once the gels go flat, but if you have the luxury of a car to power one, it is great.

 

About five years ago we bought a little 9" battery-powered B&W CRT TV for power failure emergencies.  It isn't pretty and the sound is not so great, but paired up with a Winegard Digital Converter box (Also sold in some stores as the "Venturer" brand) that runs on 9VDC and a sneaky power tap strategically placed in the "D"-cell stack of the B&W TV, I have an emergency DTV receiver that will run for about six hours before it is time for a fresh stack of "D" batteries.  With a pretty basic omni VHF/UHF antenna sitting on the roof of the car or stuck inside the house on top of a bookcase near a window, we could demonstrate pretty reliable DTV reception.  The $40 Zinwell converter boxes run on 5VDC, but demand a little more current from the battery pack and therefore peter out a little sooner than the Winegard.

 

I have demonstrated these little wonders at many DTV Speaking engagements, including staff orientations at our station.  They're always a crowd pleaser.
 


Date: Tue, 12 May 2009 22:31:34 -0700
From: carlesundberg at yahoo.com
To: sbe at sbe.org
Subject: Re: [SBE] Portable DTV Receivers




Hi all,


Some time ago, I bought a 9 inch Audiovox at Target. To my surprise, I have never found an 8VSB TV with a hotter tuner. This thing works and locks up when nothing else will and it will work just fine on a car adapter. The shame with all of the portables is the fact that they take so much power, none of them will work on ordinary batteries like the analogs would. In fact, so far, I haven't seen a single one in any store that will take ordinary D - C or AA batteries that you can just change when the old ones burn up. Sorry guys, but I'm a hard nose who thinks TV is and always will be the greatest emergency communication system ever invented. Most, if not all of us have generators on the big stations and during power failures from storms, floods and the like, we keep these electronic candles burning with everything we've got. The public has always been able to rely on us to not only tell them about dangers like radio, we could show them and that "show them" thing is damn important and I'll bet it has saved many lives. Analog goes away just as the Gulf States are in the middle of the hurricane season and I've seen more than my share of them come and go. I know what ordinary people do. They buy batteries for the portable TV's and rely on them immensely to know what to do to keep their family safe. Let's not forget, we are a mobile society. If you get caught in a storm in places like North Florida and you don't know the place because you don't live there, announcers talking about city names and tiny places on radio mean nothing to you. You have a real hard time figuring out where these storms are and where they are heading. With TV, you know in seconds. Those electronic maps really tell the story. If the FCC really gave a damn about safety and homeland security, they'd force all the manufacturers to make a certain percentage of TV's that will run on replacement batteries or not allow them to sell here. We required all the auto companies to have a certain company average in miles per gallon, safety gadgets and all those environmental devices. The least we could do is give the people in flood plains a way to monitor the danger areas on TV.


Hell no! I don't want to keep massaging the tired muscles of my Klystron transmitters one more day after June 12th. I've squeezed those ancient tubes until they won't fit into the trollies any more. Enough with analog already, but let's not kill people because we're too afraid to ask the receiver people to do their part. They're making a bundle because of the changes we have paid for with our sweat and late night call outs to keep ancient museum pieces working. The least they could do is come up with some units that take ordinary consumer batteries. How about it FCC? 



"Ah! What a tangled web we weave when we broadcast so others can receive." 
 Carl Sundberg
3318 Coraly Ave.
Eugene, OR 97402-6544


Cell: 541 520-2867
Landline: 541 461-2324






From: "Lane, Rod" <Rod.Lane at espn.com>
To: sbe member discussion mail list <sbe at sbe.org>
Sent: Friday, May 8, 2009 8:30:09 AM
Subject: Re: [SBE] Portable DTV Receivers


Check out Amazon at;
 
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw_0_11?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=atsc+tv+portable&sprefix=ATSC+TV+POR
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=tv+portable
 
They have several portables.
 

Rod Lane
ESPN Systems Engineering






From: sbe-bounces at sbe.org [mailto:sbe-bounces at sbe.org] On Behalf Of Gary
Sent: Friday, May 08, 2009 11:02 AM
To: sbe at sbe.org
Subject: [SBE] Portable DTV Receivers




Sunkey Electronics in China has two portable DTV receivers...I do not see AM/FM receivers integrated with them. The URLs are as follows:

http://sunkey.manufacturer.globalsources.com/si/6008824733813/pdtl/ATSC-receiver/1010496467/Portable-LCD-TV.htm
http://sunkey.manufacturer.globalsources.com/si/6008824733813/pdtl/ATSC-receiver/1014265263/ATSC-Receiver.htm

Gary Brefini
SBE Member



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