Hand it to iPod: Tiny TV looks crisp
You've got the whole TV world in your hand -- if that's where you want it. By now, you probably know
that those industrious iPodders at Apple have added TV to their music box, streaming Apple Store-
supplied video onto a screen that's roughly the size of a small Post-it Note. And all you need to join
this brave new TV world are good eyes, a steady hand and a desire to see some very tiny Desperate
Housewives misbehave in your palm, which does have a certain undeniable appeal. It also helps to
have that sort of techno-centric sense of adventure that allows you to value the novelty of a device
over its practicality. No one really thinks a 2.5-inch display makes an ideal TV screen, just as no one
thinks, say, the back seat of a crowded bus is the ideal place to catch up on Lost. The gizmo truth is
that many people want to watch TV on their iPod not because they should, but because they can --
the techno "wow" at work. At the moment, your chances to be wowed are limited: Desperate
Housewives, Commander in Chief and Lost from ABC, Law & Order and The Office from NBC, and a
handful of others. But if iPod's music history is any model, the list likely will grow. What you'll get for
your roughly $2 an episode is an image that is bright, clear, crisp and, of course, small. While the
picture's sharpness is at first a pleasant surprise, it's also a viewing drawback for TV shows: The
iPod's exaggerated contrast works against scenes shot in either bright sunlight or shadow. Which
means, for example, when the Lost castaways are all sitting around the fire, pretty much all you'll see is
the fire.And though this may seem obvious, one of the major viewing problems is inherent in the concept
of a handheld TV: You have to hold it. Not only that, you have to hold it steady and at the proper angle,
or the image either washes out or gets drowned in reflections. Still, it's not as if you'll be holding it for
hours on end; the battery would give out even if your eyes and arm didn't. The video iPod is a
supplement to your TV, not a substitute. So the only real issue is whether, given its ease of use and
portability and its undeniable cool factor, the iPod provides an acceptable viewing experience.
Digital TV deadline could be 2/17/09
Congress is poised to make Feb. 17, 2009, the hard-and-fast date for the national conversion to digital TV - ending the more than 60-year era of analog broadcasts and potentially making millions of analog TV sets obsolete.
The digital transition was included in a $40 billion deficit-reduction bill that the House passed early Monday. The Senate is expected to finish work on the measure later in the week and send it to
President Bush for his signature.
The government is eager for the transition to occur. Federal officials hope to collect more than $10 billion by auctioning off the spectrum now used for analog TV and allocating some of it to emergency services.
The slow initial sales of digital TV sets put pressure on Congress to delay the transition date, which had been set for the end of 2006, or when 85% of a TV market could watch digital broadcasts.
Under the legislation, people who want to keep their analog sets will be able to apply to the government for subsidies. Each household can get up to two vouchers, worth $40 apiece, that can help pay for boxes that convert digital signals to analog. The bill sets $1.5 billion aside for that purpose.
But under the bill, people will have to request the vouchers to get them. And there's no guarantee that the fund will be large enough to cover everyone.
"How many people are going to know they have to send an application to the Department of Commerce?" says Consumers Union's Gene Kimmelman.
"There's something fundamentally unfair about making perfectly good analog TV sets go black because the government wanted to change things."
The fund is intended primarily for owners of about 73 million television sets that now receive programming from over-the-air analog transmissions - and particularly the 21 million homes that don't have cable or satellite service.
But Kimmelman says 85 million cable and satellite customers might also have to buy digital TVs or decoders. That's because federal law bars providers from "degrading" a broadcast signal, and the bill doesn't provide an exemption to convert broadcasters' digital and high-definition programs to analog.
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