Whatever happened to Handheld TVs? 

I had 2 black and white portable TV's when I was a kid. After school I would climb up to my treehouse and watch PBS kids. Of course I could go in to the house to watch it in color, but it was the novelty of watching TV inside my treehouse that kept me coming back.

I wanted a handheld tv as a kid so bad in the early 90’s. I thought they were the coolest thing ever.

"Awww I wish I had a handheld digital tv" he said, watching this video on basically a handheld digital tv.

My wife gave me a Casio/Radio Shack mini color TV for Christmas of 1990. She thought enough of me (understating it actually) to buy the three year extended warranty. I have this TV still and the fading receipt to this day. Some small dust particles infiltrated the inside of the screen over the decades but as my wife passed away in June of '02 I have preserved it as an artifact. I used the little TV many times at work on the overnight shift but it really proved its value when my coworkers and I were huddled around it to watch Operation Desert Shield become Operation Desert Storm throughout early 1991.

Correction: At approximately 33 seconds into the video, please substitute the spoken word 'digital' with the intended word 'analog'

Dear Techmoan,I live in South Korea, and the Galaxy S8 sold locally still supports DMB. The headphone cable serves as the antenna, so it has to be plugged in in order to use DMB - there has not been any aerial built into smartphones for years now. My Korean-spec Galaxy S5 was working in the same way. I occasionally still see people watching DMB in public, although streaming services are taking over. With the fastest mobile network in the world, the image quality of streaming surpasses that of DMB a great deal. Oh, and they both work in the subway, too!

This still sounds like such a good idea. Imagine being able to watch local channels w/o using data

I remember those phones with a mobile TV when I lived in South Korea, but the only people I ever seen using it were middle-aged taxi drivers who would watch TV when on the job 😂

This is the problem with digital. If you don't have good reception, you can kiss goodbye to watching TV overall. With analog, you can at least see through the layer of static or something...

In 1983 I had a Boombox with a 5" black & white TV screen. I was in the Royal Navy so having our own TV was not really allowed but Boomboxes were.

“The stickers look like they were thrown at it from a distance.” I’m losing it.

Little piece of advice from somebody that got stuck with one of those things for a few months. The antennas are supposed to be attached to something made of metal (their base is magnetic) in order to boost their signal. I had a metal bed frame, so I tried using it and the signal was strong enough to pick some channels, and they would, sometimes, look good. But since, as life goes, you could watch that thing for hours whitout problems, but when your favourite show is coming up the signal will go away, one night I got really pissed off and started making some experiments. I was very happy to find that you can make one of these antennas work VERY reliably by putting it inside a pot, and then pointing the pot to the bradcasting station, pretty much like roof antennas are. Eventually I found out that a simple bottle cut as to form a "mirror" covered with aluminum foil would make a very effective replacement for my precious pot.

In addition to South Korea, mobile television is still supported well in Japan. The Japanese standard (ISDB-T "1seg") piggybacks the mobile signal on the regular TV broadcasts so it doesn't require any separate infrastructure, and all the regular broadcast channels are available. Also the Japanese model of the Samsung Galaxy S8+ does support 1seg, although you have to plug in an external antenna wire (kinda like how portable FM radios use the headphone lead as an antenna)

I remember back in 2004 when we had to go on a school trip when I was in high school and my buddy brought a portable hand held TV so we could watch a specific anime during the time it aired since we knew we would be in the bus. People called us losers for bringing a tv but once we started watching, those same people that called us losers were pretty much watching the show with us. It was a simpler time, no RU-vid and no smart phones or any streaming service at that. Now watching stuff on your phone or tablet is so common and if I told my 15 year old self about our technology now, his head might explode.

When I scan, I scan analogue and digital still. It's like reaching out to a distant star with hope.

I remember my Sega GameGear came with a TV tuner that turned it into a handheld TV. It never worked, although back in the day I’m sure it functioned fine. I got the whole console with all the accessories around 2008 or 2009 at a garage sale for $5, and the kit had seen some serious use by then. The thought of having a handheld TV fascinated me though.

9:09: I love that the remote control is so cheap that the buttons are labelled Red Green Yellow Blue instead of them actually being those colours. :D

The live picture of the Death Star made me think: "That's no moan!"

This is one of the advantages Analog TV had: the range from the transmitter/repeater was many times better than even the longest-reaching digital signals UPDATE: ATSC 3.0 is rolling out and promises some massive range improvements over ATSC 1.0

The stickers look like they've been thrown on from a distance 😂 I love how calm you roast the shit out if this 🤣

When I was a child, I always wanted a portable TV. Now I have one!... in the form of a smartphone. And I just watched this video on it, in a car park. With RU-vid over 4G and several gigabytes to play with, I don't see myself ever using the portable TV I dreamed about in my youth. Phones are so much nicer. Though for what it's worth, I chose this phone for its TV-like screen. My inner child is happy. XD

Your reviews are some of the most interesting and most honest feeling on the internet. You don't review uninteresting fads (at least not modern ones, hahh) just things you find interesting and think we will too. I think I speak for all of your fans when I say that we are very grateful for that.

In korea a lot of cars have TVs in them! It's really cool! You can watch news while your parked or at a light!

Obviously, when it works well, it's great, but I really kind of miss the analogue TV signals. I used to have a scanner as a kid, and it thrilled me when I realized I could listen to television on the scanner. Also, you had to deal with snowy audio and picture, but analogue tv was at least watchable with spotty signal. Digital is much less so. I suppose it's like most of the digital modes of radio technology: it allows greater information at lesser bandwidth or lower power, but the tradeoff is packet loss rendering received information useless in digital modes relative to rendering it extremely noisy in analogue ones.

In the Philippines, TV phones are still being used and made. Local brand phones are the ones making them and it appeals to a lot of people who can't afford a decent smart phone.

"Not a sausage. Completely sausageless."

I’m not sure why, Mat, but your outro song gives me this strange, nostalgic, warm feeling. If only I could experience again those feelings for real I once did years ago. Been a fan of yours for years.

When “lcd picture frames” were a thing (about 10+ years ago) I bought my mother-in-law one as a present and that had a DVB-t tuner in it, in fact it looked almost identical to the one in this video but didn’t have built in battery and the menu was a lot more basic. I think it was around £15-20.

Yep I was upset when the US cutoff the analog signals rendering my sony watchman handheld tv useless. I feel like someone owes me.

Here in Portugal, all our ISPs have Android and iOS apps that let you watch close to 200 channels, and usually it doesn't consume mobile data. So I guess that, in a way, that's a natural successor of the handheld TV.

When I was a kid having a portable TV was the most space age intense flex you could have, I remember being nostalgic to get that feeling back and looking into buying one of these recently, then I realised that I have a smartphone and I do it all the time anyway. How times have changed.

I remember when I was young and had my first game console, the Sega game gear. There was a tv tuner extension for it that I was never able to get my hands on. It was way to expensive new and I only ever found 1 second hand and the seller stopped responding to me after agreeing on price. :'(

Those little aerials you're having trouble with are magnetically mounted. You have to actually place them on a large metal surface for optimum performance.

I’m 15 now, but when I was 8, I remembered my grandparents had one laying around in the closet and I remembered the only channel they had were the Spanish channels. Over time the channels were going away until I couldn’t find anymore

I remember sneaking in a handheld TV to school to watch the world cup, good times

Some dude on hoarders was using a handheld television

Here in Brazil, mobile TV is very common, most of the low-end and middle-end phones come with the TV tuner, but not the high-end phones, and it's very popular, many people really use it, as here we have the japanese digital TV standard (ISDB-T), which have the mobile TV standard (1seg) already in the standard, and all of the channels work with both the HD and mobile signal. I had two phones with digital TV tuner (had a low-end feature phone back in 2009, and a Xperia Z1), and worked great almost everywhere. Now i have a mobile TV tuner from Tivizen, which works even better than the built in tuner in the phones, as it's wireless, and you can put it in the place which have the better reception, and the app is avaliable for Android and iOS.

Completely sausageless is a great expression.

I think the whole motivation in switching to the digital broadcast is that it would be harder to receive the broadcast. Forcing people to pay for cable or a streaming service.

I bought a Philips portable dvd player/TV tuner for 75 bucks about 10 years ago. Now it is selling for 300 bucks on ebay. It still works and the TV tuner works surprisingly well. I used it for 2 months when I moved into my new place.

Forget the TV, where can I get one of those Death Star balls?

Leadstar hires only the best people to apply stickers to their products.

I remember some of the very first ones that came out in the 1980s I think it was. They had a display tilted at an angle inside at the top for some reason. Radio Shack sold them. They would have been ok, but back then LCD panels were badly washed out and had a pretty bad rerfresh rate (the pixels were blurry when changing - same problem for handheld game systems too). I owned one of the first 1990s models when the price finally went down around $100. More than anything, I couldn't use the one I got because no signal much at all to pick up. Like many American towns there wasn't a good TV station anywhere close enough so there was a constant fight to try to get a decent signal. Same for FM radio where I lived - on a good day I could get a decent signal from Atlanta. A good idea in principle, but just not workable in reality.

I once had an analog handheld TV, these days RU-vid is my TV channel, my phone is the receiver and my unlimited data plan is my antenna

I miss anolog TV. It was more reliable than digital. Sometimes I could pick up stations a hundred miles away, with Digital, there's one I can't pick up 30 miles from here. I know I know, I can watch stations through my DirecTV, streams, etc but it was a fun hobbby for me, picking up distant stations (DXing). I' kept an antenna (Ariel) conneted to my TV to do just that. A battery operated handheld seemed perfect if there's an emergency and your power is out , but now your choices are a digital signal that barely works (if at all), or using data ($$$$) to watch on your phone. TV stations should have at least temporary anolog signals for said emergencies.

Weirdly I keep having dreams where there are old B&W portable TVs that still work, because for some reason they kept broadcasting 1 or 2 channels still on analogue. Yes, most of my dreams ARE this fascinating, thank you for asking.

Japan still broadcasts its mobile TV signal right now, and devices supporting 1seg signal can be find easily even in today - GPS Navigator, Japan-based phone before 2021, or even handheld TV and radio. Some of these devices even supports Full seg (the one uses for home TV) reception, but might requires a separate antenna.

Thanks for your interesting and informative video. I purchased a DSE (Dick Smith Electronics) portable digital TV some years back. It does work, but not much inside moving vehicles. The only way to check reception when travelling is to stop at a place and then the digital TV can be received. We really need working hand held digital TVs especially here in Australia, where all portable digital TV' receivers have since completely disappeared off the market. For an antenna, I use a separate Tandy portable battery operated amplified antenna, which also is no longer available.

I think the biggest problem was the fact that a separate network had to be built for hand-helds. The old analog receivers could tune into the normal tv signal your big tv would use. That is why the old handhelds were great. With digital, you can build a tuners small enough for a hand held but the radio transmission standard was not great for units with small antennas or where the unit was roaming like a person watching tv in a car. Both the us and European dtv systems suffered this problem. Japan’s dtv standard on the other hand is different. They used the lessons learned from the us and European and rolled out a 3rd gen system called 7-seg. (Europe glad 1st gen and Us 2nd gen.) the standard allowed for tv signals to be received by mobile devices like the South Korean phones. When I was in japan in 2008 I was able to play with such a unit at a store and it worked well inside a building. I personally saw people watching tv on the phones on a bus. The 7-seg standard was designed so the radio signal would be received via a smaller antenna (I think) and would work when user was moving. To summarize 7-seg did not suffer from many on signal drop issues with digital tv signals as the us and European standards. Analog tv signals had more tolerance to signal drop, etc and were thus seems “ usable”. Such portable dtv units are still sold here in the us. Heck, I have one. But I think 4g pretty such wiped out any interest here in the us.

15:47 "HUNG PARLIAMENT"!?! WOW, their wives must really be singing their husband's praises!

RIP analog TV in Malaysia Switching start from 31 October 2019 nationwide. The interesting fact is the name for the DVB in Malaysia is called freeview as well.

The REAL main reason that portable "freeview" TV isn't available anywhere anymore, (especially on cellphones), is that the companies can't make any profits off of charging a monthly subscription fee for the service!... Nowadays it's all about profits and greed, not about offering really cool tech to the general public for free, especially not for the long term!... It's the same kind of thing that has happened with stuff like computer printers, etc., where the device itself is a really cheap initial investment, seemingly a great deal, but it's the ridiculous cost of the extremely tiny capacity ink cartridges where the companies make the real money off of you! It's really rather disgusting!

Great video but with one big gap. Here in Japan we've been using OneSeg digital TV for about 10 years. The first system was low quality at about 15fps. Around 5 years ago a new updated system came out with full HD image at 30fps and digital menus, subtitles, recording and the rest of it such as interactive options. The phone I'm typing this on also have the HD OneSeg system. It's a Xperia ZL2.

Hey Techmoan, your channel is really one of the best, I remember watching your reviews about those tiny hidden cameras. Thank you very much and success forever! From Brazil.

In the Czech Republic, you used to be able to watch the Publicly funded ČT1, ČT2, ČT24 and ČTsport on DVB-H compatible devices. The service was shut down on 1. 1. 2020, just like DVB-T in favour of DVB-T2.

I have an ATSC version very similar to this. On mine, the antenna was magnetic and worked substantially better when stuck to something. Unfortunately, after many years of extremely light usage the unit will no longer tune anything. When new, the battery lasted at least a couple hours.

A [nearly] 20-min video about a tv with only a 20-min battery life. I had no idea they made those! Alrighty!

I miss those days when we used portable TVs to watch our fave programs while away from our residence

Portable TV with 20 minute battery life and you need to plug it into your house antenna. Where can i buy this thing?

Both antennas have magnetic bases therefore need to be attatched to metal for a decent earth just like cb radio antennas.

My experience with over-the-air digital in the USA was that the signal was very finicky. I tried several small antennas in a basement for the mother-in-law and got broken-up gibberish. Went bigtime, installed a fullblown aerial in my attic [I ain't going on the roof y'all] and get like 100 channels perfectly. Digital is digital - when it works it's perfect. When you're one bit off you know it error-correctly parity algos. and all.

Who needs TV? There's no Techmoan there!

Seems you have made me into an expert, I had an ITT TV/radio/tape in a van on White Horse Hill in 2008, then as I moved on to a narrow boat I purchased a SONOS not to be confused with SOVOS, same spec. as yours but the lithium bag battery lasted 45min but the ground plain is an issue, conclusion is DTV and 12v systems is only for those who want to spend more on battery refueling then the cost of a license and privilege of a 240v supply. in 1993 I swapped my GameBoy TV and magnifier at Watford market for a GameGear "Colour" + TV adapter Both went through AA batts in "no time flat" pun intended.. But why is TV online so frowned apon....? Great show ..Loved the 1960 HDD and I don't recall the Lavender Flairs but swapped "like a fool" a LED watch that cost me in 1984 £1 from Chard Guildhall flee market for a Casio poop... Arr the good old days .. Still not able to complete Ghost'snGoblin's Keep it up...

My folks had an old CRT portable from the 1960s with about a 10" screen, it had a big battery cliped to the back, huge telescopic arial, and a radio dial on the bottom. Worked flawlessly all the way up until 2007.

What happened to handheld TV's? Answer: We got youtube on smartphone and haven't looked back.

Is the UK standard as bad as the US? Image wise, its good... but being a digital signal its extremely vulnerable to interference. Basically if you grew up in an area with a so-so tv analogue signal that was watchable you got shafted when everything went digital.

Remember my poor son (was 12/ 13 ) Saving & saving for a portable hand held TV - £120 back in late 1990s ~ Richer sounds were having a sale and he got one for £78 & He loved it ! - watching it everywere ! - But when this digital system was unveiled he was sickened ! - As he could not watch his gadget no more ! - No input jacks on it - So its now just a piece of junk - Believe my sons still got it stashed somewhere ? But hey thanks for showing these new hand held tvs ! - Lotsa info as usual Thankyou ? SB British Isles

"What kill Handheld TV?" *Me, a bitter Indonesian:* Soap, Reality TV, Soap, Infotainment, Soap, Pseudoscience, and soap. And did I say Soap?

Hehe, I see you found a use for the Death Star clip I made for you. It turned out pretty good, didn't it? :D

the sound of digital TV breaking up is one of the most annoying sounds I've ever heard.

I still use portable Analogue Portable TV's. Like the Sony Watchman FD-210. My Bell Fibe Cable box has an RF Output port that outputs to Channel 3 or so. I can watch TV in Black and White on a small screen at home, some Portable Analogue TV's have an external Antenna Port, I connect my cable to the Portable TV with that port. Watching TV on an old Analogue TV really brings me back to my childhood, it makes me happy, pure bliss.

I remember people watching professional starcraft games on the subway in Seoul Korea on their phones using dmb. Today dmb is incredibly uncommon here because everyone has high speed unlimited internet. There is no point in paying for digital dmb tv when you can get anything available on the internet on the newest phones.

Certainly a handheld TV solved a major issue: "Ten minutes to Wapner"..... "Five minutes to Wapner"..... "Uh-Oh, only two minutes to Wapner!"

Dear old Clive Sinclair was the force behind the miniature TV since the mid 1960s. He loved, as we know, to make things as compact as possible. The hand held TV was something really sci fi in the 50s and 60s. He paid for an advertisement in the technical journals during 1967 showing the Sinclair miniature portable television, being held in the hand of the viewer. This may have been a mock up, and I'm not sure what his intention was. This one though never saw the light of day. He would have stumbled over the usual technical issues. Battery life, visibility in daylight, reception with the constant movement...So much R and D later... He managed to make a proper working TV after ten years, unfortunately a tiny B&W screen was no longer in the sci fi realm and Sinclair was maybe five years too late to capture the imagination. He didn't give up and another followed, smaller and even more portable with the extraordinary 2 inch 90 degree 'bendy' tube technology developed purely for this application. A man ahead of his time. Edit: Except he wasn't with the TVs was he? LCD was arriving to steal the win. The 'Matchbox' radio. First truly pocketable calculator. The Black Watch digital LED watch. First PWM amplifier for audio. First computer for under £130. First computer under £40 First colour computer under £100 Miniature printers and removable high density storage devices The battery powered personal transport...Just 40 years too early??

Had one in 1999 -2000 was so useful when I was in homeless place. It gave me peace of mind.

3 seconds into the video, I'm already drooling over that Death Star on the desk.

Will you make "Whatever happened to TVs"? I remember it being quite a big thing in the past.

DVB-H was used in South Africa to broadcast our local pay-television giant's mobile viewing service called DStv Mobile. This service ran from 2012 to 2018 when it was replaced by an internet streaming service.

The early 2000s were a weird time to grow up in i remember how suddenly things changed fast

WHERE ARE ANNOYING CHILDISH NOT-FUNNY MUPPETS?! I LOVE THEM

Those magnetic base antennas are meant to sit on a large, metal surface like the roof of your car. The metal surface acts as a ground plane. Without that ground plane your antenna isn't going to work to it's full potential. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_plane

I always thought the Sony "mega watchman" was a hilarious concept. The whole point of a watchman was to be able to have a handheld television. And with the mega watchman? Congratulations you just invented... A television set.

I was looking for a show called teknoman and found this channel by mistake but fell in love with this channel instantly. Hooray for poor comprehension!!!

Seems you completely forgot about Japan where we had digital TV on cellphones much before 10 years ago (I remember mine, very useful). Nowadays you still can find models having it. Also, most of the (stock or not) Car Entertainment Systems, today too, Japanese or even German, can receive digital TV on the dashboard screen. I see everyday people watching TV while driving (I don't say it's a good idea though). Otherwise very nice video. I remember having the model you showed back in the 80s.

I see you got some custom content running on your Worldeye. Nice!

As always one of the best channels for me on RU-vid which delivers good content from someone knowledgeable. Should be more of it.

I have very faint memories of being a kid in the late 90s when I was very young, my parents would sell stuff in fleamarkets and we had one of those. I don't really even remember watching it, just it being there. I remember once we were around the car at one of these fleamarkets and I climbed into the drivers seat. Since the keyes wernt in when I turned the wheel and it locked. I started bawling thinking I just broke the car. Its still really weird how things like this make you remember non extraordinary stories you haven't thought about in years. It's even weirder how those memories make you feel. As always thanks Techmoan

I had a cell phone that had an antenna and could watch about 30 channels under Verizon wireless back in like 2007 I think.

115 channels over air? WOW

i thought you were gonna say why don’t they make pocket tv’s anymore ? “ they do.... they’re called i phones “

I purchased an iVew 368-PTV back in 2012'ish. It is tiny, portable, takes 4 AA batteries and has a built-in rabbit ear antenna. It was readily available back then and I got it because it was not only portable but it took 4 AA batteries. I find it much more difficult now to locate portable TV's that aren't rechargeable (I like ones that take batteries since you aren't left with a dead device 5 years later). The reception to this day is great. I take it to various places to be able to sit it on a table and watch TV (sports games, etc) and it lasts a few hours on new batteries (similar time for high-end rechargeables you can put in if you don't like to waste). The TV also allows video out so you can use it as a temporary replacement set-top box on a larger TV (I hosted a Super Bowl party one year using a set-top on a projector and the set-top broke so I used the small TV in a pinch -- Super Bowl? Like the World Cup final match :-/). It certainly is as portable as the ones that were analog (I still have my tiny Radio Shack Pocketvision 34 which is the same dimensions as the iVew but with a screen half the size). I think the one issue that you alluded to indirectly is the difference with digital (ATSC in the US) vs analog in that digital, as is implemented in all the various regions, doesn't work when the device is in motion and there was some work done in all regions to create standards that would help the signal from cutting out if the device and antenna were moving at a more rapid pace than say walking. I believe with analog there was no need for a special standard because the analog signal worked well when the device was in motion (though it would still cut out at times -- or I guess not "cut out" but "get worse reception" since the idea of cutting out is what we live with now in the digital age) perhaps by its nature of being analog. In the US, around 2007-2009 I remember finding it interesting that there were manufacturers still selling portable analog TV's. I wrote to the FCC (US regulatory agency) about this. I thought that something ought to be done because if you asked manufacturers (and or their distributors) that were selling analog TV's during that time what to do about the impending switch-over they would say (even in their advertising) that it was of no worry since the government was giving out free conversion boxes (they gave out one or two $40 coupons) and since many folks were used to already having cable boxes on their TV's, it wouldn't be so bad to have a free set-top box. Of course that made absolutely no sense for portable TV's since no one in their right mind was going to lug around a set-top, even if it was free, to hook to their portable unit. Yet some manufacturers continued to sell the portables up until the cut-off date which I felt was fraud -- sure, buyer be ware, but I thought anyone not understanding what was happening and assured by a free solution from the government might have bought one of these only to discover they were screwed. I think once the switch-over happened, remaining stock was dumped and now seems to appear on eBay. Suffice it to say, the FCC never responded to me...probably on an internal list of "keep an eye out" :-)

126 channels? I'm in the U.S and get 6, which is the most I can get in my area.

Great video and here is some additional information for you Techmoan. 1. Use MKVToolnix program to "split" large mkv files over 4Gb, that way you can store the stuff you have on your internal storage on whatever device you have. A way of getting around the FAT32 file size limitation. Program is free and easy to use. 2. DVB-H was a good technology but the main problem was coverage, there are to few masts and the signal is to weak. It would have required building more masts for better coverage, just like you have for the mobile phone networks. You had problems with reception and it only works in some places as you said. Nobody is going to walk around with a YAGI antenna in order to watch TV on a smart phone !!! But then again lots of smart phones do not even have FM-radio built in. If there is going to be anything of this EU will have to force manufacturers to include DVB+ chips into all smartphones, transition over to DVB+ radio and expand coverage so it works underground on the tube and else where. Also for FM reception in a smartphone you need a 3.5 jack (or 2.5 if they had used that) plus headphones as that is the antenna used for reception. But a lot of phones do not even have that any more. No wonder DVB-H died out, and no wonder radio is going the same way. Everyone is talking about streaming but for radio the old FM network is still the better technology even if it does go digital in the future. Always on, always there if you need to listen to it. Streaming only works if the mobile phone network and internet works, back in the day radio was the most important medium for information during war times etc. And it still is, streaming is better for some things but it will never defeat radio ! Great video as always, such great content on your channel :-)

Falls between two stools! Love that, never heard it before. I wonder why small antennas are so awful for digital TV. I would expect them to be worse for sure, but they seem to be good for nothing.

I love your Death Star decoration in the background.

That's no moon behind you ...."It's a trap!"

I personally would like a portable TV. I don't want to waste data on a phone during travel; I just would like a portable TV that plays shows through an antenna.

The more I watch your videos the more I want to spend on retro tech. This video alone made me buy two Sony Watchmans :D

What happened to handheld TVs? Those turned into smartphones. 🤣

here in Italy all TV channel are in digital, but if you use an rtl-sdr and Aerial TV you can watch TV on your smartphone (android only)