Both of these devices look at first glance to be ordinary PMPs (Personal Media Players – you know, portable DVD players with screens), but they have a secret up their sleeves – TV!

I suppose it makes perfect sense. PMPs are already popular devices, but they’re limited by the content you can store. Once you’ve watched all the DVDs you’ve brought with you, what do you do then?

Watch TV of course!

LG DP570H Mobile DTV

The appallingly-named LG DP570H Mobile DTV is one of the leading devices in the field, with LG having worked on Mobile DTV technology for while now. The LG DP570H is a 7″ model with DVD player, stereo speakers, and battery life of 2.5 hours continuous TV watching, which isn’t exactly stellar.

Philips PET749 Mobile DTV

Another contender is the Philips PET749 Mobile DTV, which seems to do more for less. Specifically, the PET749 offers an 800×480 display, DVD player and Mobile DTV for just $179.99

Can Mobile DTV succeed where Mobile TV failed?

In 2007, mobile TV was meant to be the next big thing in mobile phones. It wasn’t, of course, so it’s odd to see LG, Philips and the like trying to push the same service to different devices using different technologies!

Mobile DTV can simply be thought of as a device that used to be called a PMP or Portable DVD player, but which now also support the new Mobile DTV standard. The result is a PMP that plays TV programmes, or what you could think of as a portable TV!

Who said there were no new ideas in the world?!

Actually, this is nothing new – you can already watch TV on some PMPs using an aerial and a TV tuner, but this doesn’t work so well when travelling at speed. In contrast, mobile DTV does, which seems to be its only advantage over ordinary TV.

Of course, it doesn’t work so well in a plane (another place you might use a PMP), so the only advantage I can see of mobile DTV is the ability to watch it in the car or the train – and is that really an advantage?!

Fortunately, the devices aren’t that expensive. The LG DP570H, for example, is only $249, while the Philips PET749 is even cheaper at $179.99. ANd the technology can be squeezed into a single chip, so I’m sure all PMPs will soon be Mobile DTVs come CES 2011!

[Source: CNet]

Orb is familiar to us for its music, video and TV-streaming abilities, it can even turn your Wii into a media center (update: new article Wii media centers), but now the folks at Orb have moved on to the iPhone and iPod touch with a new application called OrbLive. Everything you could do before can now be done on your iPod touch or iPhone, including streaming live television.

Orb works by indexing the media on your PC and publishing it to a web site which you can then login to from any device that can access the internet. OrbLive goes one step further, rather than having to go to a web page you actually get access to all the media from an application installed on your iPhone or iPod touch. This means you have a nicer interface to search and view your media on and the whole feel and look fits better with your device. One downside is to install OrbLive you will need a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch, but if you don’t want to do that you can still use Orb’s original tried and tested method and just go to the website.

The sweet point is you can get any media to your device, movie, music, picture or live TV without having to worry about the limited size of you devices hard drive space. Now we have overcome one of the great hurdles with mobile devices, namely hard drive space, we just need to solve battery life, anyone know a web site you can stream power from…?

[Source: OrbLive]

Add to that 5.1 sound support and a TV-Out, and the HTV-200XU seems like a mobile home theatre system. But no, there are more strings to the Yamada’s bow than that…

In addition to its home theatre credentials, the Yamada HTV-200XU (why don’t the electronics companies give their gizmos better names?! Why not call it the “Yamada Yoda” or something?!), also features some nifty Hi-Fi features, too, including the ability to rip your CDs and play MP3 files, and comes with an FM tuner and 30W RMS speakers to boot.

As if all that wasn’t enough, you can even hook the Yamada Yoda (for that’s that I’m calling it now!) up to your PC via its USB port, so you can play your MP3 tunes directly from your PC (or your MP3 player, for that matter).

And the price of all this super-boombox genius? Just 220 Euros – bargain!

[Source: Coolest-Gadgets]

More details of the Pinnacle PCTV after the jump.

Programs are received via DVB-T signals, and can be recorded in either MPEG-2 or DivX format. You can record your TV programs onto your PC’s own hard drive, and even time-shift and record live TV. As if that wasn’t enough, the Pinnacle PCTV lets comes with its own Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) and mini remote control and antenna, meaning everything you need for watching and recording programmes is included within its tiny dimensions. You can even record your programmes direct to DVD.

The Pinnacle PCTV should be out now, priced £69.99.

[Source: Pinnacle Systems, via TechDigest]

To begin with, the character, which has a woman’s voice (I’m saying nothing says things like “Don’t you think it’s a bit too bright?” or “Are you just changing channels for fun because it’s annoying!”, but as time progresses, she’ll brighten up a bit, lay off you, and start saying nicer things like “Oh, you’re back!” or “Yep, turning up the brightness for you now!”

In the realm of “odd things to add to a gadget”, this must surely be king, but Takara-Tomy reckon they’ve hit on a great idea, and intend to release other TVs with characters with different personalities.

It’s a novel idea, and certainly makes your average gadget a but more fun, though of course the novelty may quickly wear off if there’s only a small range of comments. Being chastised tends not to be much fun in general, but getting the same nagging comment every time you change channel would be really annoying.

The TV itself features a small 3″ QVGA TFT screen, receives One-Seg DMB TV signals, and can run on alkaline batteries, which are good for 4 hours of continuous use.

One other neat feature is the ability to record your favourite programme onto a microSD card for later viewing, or use in some other similiarly-equipped media gadget.

Should be released in Autumn 2007, in Japan only worse luck, for about $200.

[Source: GearLog]