[mythtv-users] DTV: It Has Begun

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Tue Sep 9 02:49:51 UTC 2008


On 09/08/2008 10:32 PM, Jason Sullivan wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 10:26 PM, David Brodbeck wrote:
>   
>> Jason Sullivan wrote:
>>     
>>> This is the part I don't get, because a big part of public safety is
>>> being able to get information when the power goes out.  Are there any
>>> OTA digital portable TVs?
>>>       
>> I haven't seen any.  Portable radios that could tune the audio portion
>> of VHF TV stations used to be a good standby source of information
>> during natural disasters, too, and those will no longer work.
>>     

But, it would be very easy to create a receiver that ignores all video 
streams and simply plays the audio streams.

>> Aside from cost issues, digital portable TVs represent an interesting
>> marketing problem.  The public has been conditioned to think that
>> digital TV means HDTV.  But supporting 1080i on a 10" diagonal display
>> would make no sense whatsoever.
>>     
> Maybe not aesthetic sense, but surely it's technically possible.  The
> displays with the resolution are there.

Not to mention, downscaling is significantly easier than decoding the 
HDTV-resolution MPEG-2, so you don't even need a high-res display.

Mike


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list