A new crowdfunding effort has caught my eye this week with a project to turn your television into an Android tablet. It does seem a bit counterproductive at first since I can buy quite a few tablets for the cost of my TV but on looking at the details it seems that if it is priced right it could make a very solid tool for people on the go, work wise and for vacation.
However the Pocket TV is an interesting device. The builders have created a computer on a dongle powered by a 1GHz Cortex A9 processor that runs the Android 4.0 operating system and is designed to plug into a TV’s HDMI port. Once connected it permits you to display your Android environment on the big screen.
The dongle enables you to bring the environment with you wherever you go so that you can use it in say a hotel room and it would give you video conferencing capabilities if you so wanted. It also allows you to access data and videos that you have stored in the cloud, giving a traveler even more flexibility. Included with the dongle is a standard IR remote that enables you to control the device while using the big screen since it does not convert it to touch screen capabilities
The funding process is going quite well for the effort. As of this morning it had a bit over $94,000 pledged of the $100,000 that it is seeking and it still has 33 days to go, so it looks like it will reach its goal with time, and possibly money to spare.
The more I learned about the device the more interested I was in Pocket TV. I can really see this as a boon when you have short trips and just need something to respond to check social media, play a game or two or respond to email but dislike carrying a notebook or tablet, and with the large screen it can be much more convenient than a smartphone in some environments.
The Pocket TV is the first from a startup called Infinitec, a technology developer that is based in Dubai, making it the first high-tech project I have seen from that country. It has been around for some time, having opened its doors in 2008 and was founded by Ahmad Zahran and David McKern and got its start developing USB memory drives.
