USB HD tuners for a mobile screen near you
Since we don’t have the mobile digital TV airwaves covered like they do in the Far East, it’s nice to see some manufacturers stepping up with some ATSC, or High-Definition USB tuners! Even if your mobile screen can’t handle a 1280 x 720 or 1920 x 1080 resolution for full high-definition, you can still get a high quality digital television (DTV) signal from an ATSC tuner. (Fact for a future "Jeopardy!" question on HDTV: DTV has 18 different formats here in the US under the ATSC standard: HDTV is just one of those formats and they’re all better quality than SDTV or standard definition!)
Artec offers their T14A ATSC USB tuner for around $90, while FujiPlus has the FD-USB728 for around ten clams more. Both offer tuning capabilities for free local digital and high-def broadcasts over the air. If you live in or near a major city, there’s a good chance that you can pick up these free signals in all of their digital glory. I personally dropped my locals from Dish Network because I can get the same local channels in a much higher resolution (1920 x 1080) for free even though I’m 25 miles from Philadelphia.
You’ll need to attach an antenna to either of these USB tuners; each of them include one, but unless you live within a few miles of your local broadcast towers, you might need an amplified antenna. The USB 2.0 interface at 480 Mbps is plenty fast enough since MPEG-2 encoded high-def requires about 19.4 Mbps of bandwidth; yes, you’ll need that "Jeopardy!" too. Both ATSC tuners appear to include software that provides recording capabilities so you can time-shift that episode of "Oprah" you were planning to watch this afternoon. Or was that "Dr. Phil"? ;)
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