This story actually starts with a DVD Audio player! DVD Audio is a defunct HD audio format from 2001 (along with SACD) that brings the master recording to your home. Unfortunately the DVD forum and mastering houses failed in execution of this new standard making many of the titles auto play for multi-channel only, not stereo; an irritating premise for a 2 channel audiophile minimalist requiring a video monitor to navigate the menus to the stereo tracks. Indeed, DVD Audio listening time was few and far between due to this hassle.
What my DVD Audio world needed was an inexpensive, small LCD display with quick and convenient disconnects, but in 2002 that was a tough nut to crack. LCD has come a long way since then so I decided to see what a local brick and mortar store might have to offer in 2009. My natural preference was a display with full HD A/V inputs. The smallest size available was a 15" 720p Dynex over at Best Buy. This tempted me into a custom application in the form of a wall mount and holes in the wall for cabling yet also created a hassle factor of pulling the AC plug and video cable during listening. That led me to the portable TV category.
General Features of Portable TV
Like so many things related to marketing I can't help but wonder why this category remained portable TV rather than changed to portable DTV. This category label is bound to bite a used electronics purchaser who could unwittingly end up with an NTSC-only product.
There are a number of products available. The common feature set is a DTV tuner, standard RF antenna connector, remote (very small card type), mini 3.5mm jacks for A/V input and headphones, battery pack and AC wall wart power supply/charger with some including a car charging adapter. Typical battery life is 1.5 hours. Most provide a telescoping antenna attached directly to the RF jack with a handful providing a small stick antenna on a magnetic base with an RF cable to the RF jack. Some include a USB and/or card reader slot for PC pictures, music and video. The old analog NTSC standard is supported by many. Some serve double duty as fully featured digital photo frames.
DTV has been riddled with over the air reception problems since inception and is the most glaring problem with these products per customer reviews. Based on the use and expectation of performance of portable TV products of yesteryear, these are bound to disappoint. Our old NTSC analog system was far more robust because it was far more forgiving. Multipath problems and signals buried in noise were still useful especially on little screen sizes, creating nothing but momentary visual blips of noise and even under severe conditions at least you could hear the sound. Analog beats digital hands down as an emergency service for the public. These same problems wreak havoc on digital because blips in the stream of data kill pictur...
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