Use Phone For "Over The Air" HDTV

**stokobr** · 10-04-2009, 09:40 AM

Today, I'm going to miss all of the football games because I will be running around with my family (with no access to a TV). This conundrum has spurred me to post this thread.

This is an idea that I've been thinking about for a while... but I don't know enough about the technology. We now have over the air digital tv, which provides HD television. Since this is digital information, I'm wondering if it is possible to pull this data with an Android phone? If so, someone needs to build a tuner application, so we can watch regular TV from the phone.

Looking forward to your thoughts.

**Crashdamage** · 10-04-2009, 09:55 AM

Real, high-resolution HDTV uses too much bandwidth for 3G. And there's no antenna in phones that can be used for over-the-air HDTV so a 'digital TV tuner app' is not possible. So not gonna work.

Screen resolution on smartphones isn't up to HDTV standards anyway, not even the 800x480 screen on the Nokia N900 I'm waiting for. An iPhone, G1, MyTouch, etc. are much lower resolution than that.

Lower resolution TV can be streamed to a phone though. Verizon and Sprint offer limited TV for an extra fee, though maybe not for much longer. On my N900, I'll be able to watch TV via websites like Hulu.

Doesn't help with your games though...

**stokobr** · 10-04-2009, 11:33 AM

Bummer. I'm mainly thinking about using the dtv stream through a phone antenna.

HD quality is not a 'must-have'. It would be cool if there was a way to use the same data stream that's being delivered to the dtv tuners. Again, my knowledge of the technology is low... would the data have to be converted it to a low res stream to be consumed through phones if there was an antenna?

Any idea if future phones will contain antennas?

**Crashdamage** · 10-04-2009, 12:12 PM

Originally Posted by stokobr

Bummer. I'm mainly thinking about using the dtv stream through a phone antenna...Any idea if future phones will contain antennas?

Not built-in antennas. DTV is designed to be received by rabbit ears or rooftop antennas previously used by analog TV, so I'd think a portable DTV would need at least a folding telescoping antenna. The portable DTVs I've seen have those. Maybe it could be possible to use a headphone cord for the antenna like FM radio does since DTV uses the old analog TV frequencies (which is why analog TV is toast) and they're close to FM's frequencies. Gut feeling is I kinda doubt that would work due to poor signal strength. But I'm no expert on this stuff.

**deserttopping** · 10-04-2009, 12:49 PM

i use a USB tuner card on my home pc for DTV. it's really small, about the size of a bic lighter, and gives a great picture, full 1080p. best $99 bucks i've spent. it came with an antenna, but i tie into a roof antenna. seems like there might be a way to run DTV on a phone with one of these tuner cards and an antenna, but whether the phone's processor could push the video output is another matter. little thing gets pretty warm, too.