Hands On With Tivit: Free TV for the iPhone
Gadget tunes in digital TV for iPhones, BlackBerrys.
I'm doing it with a Valups Tivit, an attractive little green box that serves as an external TV tuner for the iPhone. It works with BlackBerrys and PCs, too, and will soon work with Android phones.
The Tivit is the first killer device I've seen for Mobile DTV, the new free TV system which will beam local TV stations to handhelds beginning in 2010. It doesn't require you to buy a special phone or a portable TV, .
Rather, the Tivit works with the phone (or PC) you have. It's pretty simple. The box itself is about the size of the iPhone's screen. Extend the absurdly long, nine-inch antenna, turn the little gadget on, launch an app on your iPhone, and for the next three hours or so (until the Tivit's battery runs out), you have TV.
The Tivit broadcasts its own little Wi-Fi network in about a 50-foot radius. That network doesn't have any Internet connection, just the Tivit's TV signal. You have to connect to that network to get the signal on your iPhone. So you lose your existing Wi-Fi connection while you're watching TV, but of course you're still connected to the Internet with 3G. Only one iPhone can connect to a Tivit at a time, alas.
In my hotel room in Las Vegas, I got a choice of eight channels. They're a mix of what I would consider broadcast (like the CW) and what I would consider cable (like FOX News). That's one of the interesting twists with Mobile DTV - if Fox owns a local broadcast station in your town, they could decide to send a "cable" channel over it. Tuning in a channel takes several seconds.
The TV signal looks sharp, plays in full screen, and runs smoothly. I received TV reception where I couldn't get AT&T 3G signal on my iPhone, thanks to the TV signal's lower 700-MHz wavelength.
Tap on the screen, and you get some pretty basic options to change volume, flip channels, or check your signal strength. There's no option to record TV.
Tivit's software right now is pretty rough, and it's missing critical things like an electronic program guide so you know what the heck is playing. The EPGs are transmitted by stations and will be available when the gadget is launched commercially, Valups execs said.
The Tivit will go on sale later this year, as Mobile DTV stations roll out. It will cost $90-120 - and there's no subscription, as the TV programming is free. For more on Mobile DTV, read our .