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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Tenacious on December 19, 2009, 12:24:18 AM
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There are a number of portable/battery-operated LCD televisions with digital tuning out lately, even Radio Shack has a couple. Some have respectable resolution in a 7" screen. Most seem to have audio/video inputs (composite).
Does anyone have experience using one of these with Amiga?
This is an area in which I'm waiting for the manufacturers to catch up. Portable DVD/LCD players have been available for a number of years. Why are they so slow to also put a modern tuner into one?
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They got them into PCI cards and USB sticks quickly. TVs seem to be a tech level behind monitors... 2ms monitors have been around for long time.
It's probably some retooling thing at the factory. Complain to the stores and the companies. They won't do anything until people complain.
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I was wondering this too.
It seems those PCI and USB tuners for your PC are really just relatively simple adapters that collect the signal from an aerial and convert it to a digital signal (USB/PCI). The PC does all the work making it into an image, that's why you need a fairly fast PC to display a HD station.
Tuners in a standalone TVs (portable or not) and set-top-box have to decode the digital signal into a displayable image themselves, hence they require some fairly fast CPU power. The set top box I have has a 250Mhz ARM based CPU, VRAM and 16Mb of flashram for the firmware/menu system as well as USB connectivity for firmware updates. It's effectively a small, fast embedded computer.
Interestingly, when using an Amiga with a small digital TV, the TV has far more processing power than the computer attached to it.