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

      • @grue@lemmy.world
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        267 months ago

        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.

        • NoIWontPickAName
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          67 months ago

          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.

      • @TheAgeOfSuperboredom@lemmy.ca
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        77 months ago

        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.

        • deweydecibel
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          57 months ago

          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.

    • @spookex@lemmy.world
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      37 months ago

      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

  • @Guntrigger@sopuli.xyz
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    617 months ago

    As most of the other comments point out, pocket TV did exist and you have exposed yourself as:

    1. Younger than the smartphone
    2. Never watched a 90’s movie with a security guard in it
  • Krafty Kactus
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    287 months ago

    I mean they literally are, you can watch literally any tv show or movie on them so I don’t see a difference.

      • partial_accumen
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        167 months ago

        So really its:

        Because of primitive battery technology, ubiquitous pocket TVs were never a thing.

      • @brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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        47 months ago

        I disagree, the watchman and clones existed into the 2000s and were tech found in several households. Ours ended up with some of the tornado kit so we could get news broadcasts in power outages and other emergencies.

        Gimmick/niche isn’t an appropriate description for technology that was superceded by smartphones, even early ones.

    • Carighan Maconar
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      137 months ago

      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!

    • @bitchkat@lemmy.world
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      47 months ago

      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.

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️
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    257 months ago

    There absolutely were pocket TV’s. As a kid, even, I owned two of them. They are now of course functionally useless because they predate the switch to digital television by a significant margin. Both of mine were Realistic brand ones, which was an in store label for Radio Shack. Color LCD displays, telescoping antenna, and they ran off of 4 AA batteries. They were about the size of an OG Gameboy or a large Walkman.

    I might even still have one in a box of tech junk somewhere. I believe the second one was a Realistic Pocketvision 27.

    You can still buy a portable digital TV. These were always a bit of a stretch for a “pocket” television, more the size of a small tablet but thicker. But they totally did, and still do, exist.

  • BruceTwarzen
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    217 months ago

    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.”

  • Boozilla
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    117 months ago

    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.

    • NoIWontPickAName
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      57 months ago

      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.

      • Boozilla
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        17 months ago

        Love Technology Connections. I learned way too much about pinball machines thanks to thay guy.

    • NoIWontPickAName
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      17 months ago

      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.

    • @BeatTakeshi@lemmy.worldOP
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      -57 months ago

      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

      • MxM111
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        77 months ago

        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.

    • @BeatTakeshi@lemmy.worldOP
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      7 months ago

      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 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.

  • originalucifer
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    67 months ago

    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.