As a kid I imagined the future as being able to hold a TV in your pocket, and flying skateboards. For the latter I guess electric scooters will have to do
Don’t forget the $800 30mph electric skateboards!
I am old enough to remember portable tvs.
deleted by creator
I used one as recent as the mid 2000’s. There was some sporting event going on (probably women’s world cup) and I wanted to watch the game while playing in Ultimate league. Streaming wasn’t as prevalent as it is now and the game was on OTA channel.
And actual pocket TVs. Interesting to see OP think they were never a thing. Don’t get me wrong, they were shit, but they did exist!
What are you even on about? I have a screen in my pocket where i can watch quite literally every movie that exists.
Imagine being a time traveller and someone asks you if you have any cool tech like a pocket tv.
“Hah, no kiddo, we dont. I have that screnn with access to movies and tv shows tho.”Also, my TV provider’s app allows me to watch live TV on my phone.
if you primarily watch videos with your smartphone, couldn’t you call it a pocket tv?
I know it’s semantics, but if your great-gramps would time travel to today, he would ask about your pocket TV, and you would reply nah, it’s a smartphone
Which is actually not smartphone, but a general purpose computer with cell internet connection that can be used for many things, one of those is actually calling.
Or, I would reply yes, totally. It’s called a smart phone, and load up the literal television app called YouTube TV
No, because your smartphone needs internet, tv signals reach way more places, and more reliably.
Especially since broadcast tv, in America ya damn Limeys, is free, while internet is either very localized (WiFi, etc…) which may or may not be free, or wide spread (Cell phones, Satellites, etc…) which are definitely pay.
Do they?
I can watch my local TV channels from the other side of the planet. I don’t think the signal reaches that far.
With internet
Your point?
That that is the difference to me, a tv has a built in tv tuner, otherwise it is a streaming device.
So? Not sure why the difference matters. What is even the use or a tuner anymore?
Tuning into OTA broadcasts.
I mean… They were a thing before smartphones.
I thought it was random as fuck when I worked at Walmart, I was asked to clean out the traps in the freezer (like a liquid channel for spills) and I found a pocket TV from the 90’s stuffed in there, still in the packaging. This was only a few years ago; that thing had to have been in there for at least 2 decades.
As most of the other comments point out, pocket TV did exist and you have exposed yourself as:
- Younger than the smartphone
- Never watched a 90’s movie with a security guard in it
Both wrong
-
1st smartphone Galaxy Spica age 26
-
These TV wouldn’t fit in your jeans
You missed the point of my very unelaborate shower thought. I see how not being a thing could be understood as never existed. I meant a big thing like, you know, smartphones
Watch season 1 episode 8 of friends, Joey has a pocket tv to watch the football game at a funeral.
(…)a big thing like, you know, smartphones
And that was mid 90s, 10 years before the hand tablets of today.
I’m unsure what you think Netflix or YouTube TV are, but they are indeed on my smart phone, which goes in my pocket.
Cargo shorts were in style at the time, so there’s that
-
Sweet summer child. It was a thing.
Would this require feeding it batteries like a triggerhappy machine gunner?
Absolutely! (Same as playing a regular game on a Game Gear.)
I had both an AC adapter and a 12VDC car adapter for mine. Without those (considering the sorry state of rechargeables back then), the cost of batteries would’ve made actually using the damn thing untenable.
Look, I tried, and failed, to come up with a joke involving bonking something on the head, but they all got too wordy.
That thing was heavy as hell, especially with all those batteries.
Probably! According to Wikipedia you get 3-5 hours off of 6 AA batteries. Not sure how that changes with the TV tuner but battery life wasn’t great.
The antenna doesn’t need power to receive the signal, unless it’s boosted, but something tells me that’s not the case here.
What might consume more power would be any kind of decoding that’s going on.
And a carry pouch
The Turbo Express also had a TV tuner add-on.
The PSP also had that type of attachment here in Japan, but it uses the 1-seg standard that IIRC was made for phones and still exists
i had several battery operated ‘pocket’ tvs of various sizes… 80s/90s… the best being the watchman…
somewhere around 2005 i saw one in a mall, used, for sale. i remember thinking it would only be valuable for a few more months as they were about to switch everything to ‘digital broadcast’ and it would be completely useless.
Not a pocket tv, but we had radios that picked up tv signals. Those were pretty popular. We had several when i was a kid. You could still buy them fairly recently - before the digital thing. We used to take one camping for local weather reports.
A smartphone is a pocket TV.
How do you call yours though?
A smartphone is ALSO a pocket TV is what you mean. It’s not the other way round is what I mean.
“The iTV 6 Pro can now make phone calls”
I think some of the folks in this thread might enjoy the Techmoan channel on YouTube. It’s not about pocket TVs in particular, but he does review and restore old AV tech. It’s a fun channel if you’re into retro tech.
If we’re gonna rep tech YouTubers, I am honor bound to mention Technology Connections.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to buy 2 of something.
Love Technology Connections. I learned way too much about pinball machines thanks to thay guy.
why would you want only pocket tv when you already got pocket everything?
same reason
And cars killed horses. Sometimes literally.
Because of smartphones, they ARE a thing!
You don’t call them that is what I meant
You mean the call meant what?
Only with Internet
Before the analog blackout, some phones had both radio and TV apps. They even came with an adjustable antennae.
