Digital TV

The prospect of watching live, local TV shows on mobile phones and other portable devices is getting closer. Manufacturers this week are showing off gadgets can receive a new type of digital TV transmissions.

"Mobile DTV" gadgets will be available this spring for consumers in the Washington, D.C., area to try. The devices include a cell phone made by Samsung Electronics Co. and a Dell Inc. laptop. There's also the Tivit, a device about the size of a deck of cards that receives a TV signal, then rebroadcasts it over Wi-Fi so it can be received by an iPhone or BlackBerry.

The prospect of watching live, local TV shows on mobile phones and other portable devices is getting closer. Manufacturers this week are showing off gadgets that can receive a new type of digital TV transmissions.

"Mobile DTV" gadgets will be available this spring for consumers in the Washington, D.C., area to try. The devices include a cell phone made by Samsung Electronics Co. and a Dell Inc. laptop. There's also the Tivit, a device about the size of a deck of cards that receives a TV signal, then rebroadcasts it over Wi-Fi so it can be received by an iPhone or BlackBerry.

You have to really love TV to spring for a portable TV like the FLO TV Personal Television I've been testing. While you can already "snack" on live and pre-recorded mobile TV offerings on some cell phones, this brand new FLO handheld is a dedicated television you might schlep in addition to a phone.

TVs that blend video, 3-D animation, graphics and interactivity. That vision of the future of television was described by Intel Thursday during its unveiling of the Atom CE4100 media processor. The announcement was made at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

The CE4100, also known by the code name Sodaville, is the company's newest system on chip. Intel executive Eric Kim said the chip provides the processing power that is "the center of the TV evolution," featuring high performance and high-resolution graphics capabilities.

The shutdown of U.S. analog TV service on Friday appears to have gone relatively smoothly, but as expected, a lot of viewers are having problems getting the stations they want.

The problems have ensnared even the technologically sophisticated.

Wally Grotophorst in Hamilton, Va., got a "digital" antenna for his digital TV last year. But on Friday, he lost the Washington-based ABC and CBS stations, channels 7 and 9, which he could pick up digitally before the transition.

On Friday, the United States brought a formal end to more than 60 years of analog broadcast of television signals, when television stations across the nation complied with a Federal Communications Commission order to switch to digital transmission.

The last major TV stations that are still broadcasting in analog will turn those signals off Friday and go all digital. And this time, they really mean it.

The original Feb. 17 deadline for the shutdown was delayed by the Obama administration after funding ran out for $40 coupons the government offered to help people buy converter boxes for old TVs.

Now officials say the country is much better prepared than in February, though they still expect some viewers to be confused.

Mobile-device owners in the Washington, D.C., area will soon have free mobile access to some of their favorite television shows, thanks to a new program slated for this summer.

People can tune in to American Idol and other shows under a pilot program being launched to bring free digital mobile television to devices, the Open Mobile Video Coalition announced Monday at the National Association of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas. The OMVC is an alliance of U.S. broadcasters focused on the development of mobile digital television.

Interim Federal Communications Chairman Michael Copps warned the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce's Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet that the scheduled transition from analog to all-digital television on June 12 "will not be seamless."

The House and Senate have approved a bill to delay the nationwide switch from analog broadcasting to digital television. President Barack Obama, who has been calling for the delay since before his inauguration, is expected to sign it into law this week.

The Senate approved the bill last week and the House passed it 264-158 on Wednesday. The delay moves the switch from Tuesday, Feb. 17, to Friday, June 12, to give the Federal Communications Commission and viewers more time to prepare.