New Technology TV

There have been a lot of developments over the years that have greatly improved the ability of TV enthusiasts to take the TV programming that they love with them wherever they go. This ability to make TV portable is a boon to people who love TV, but lead busy lives. This is especially true for people who spend a lot of time traveling because of all of the down time that traveling offers the well equipped TV fan to catch up on his or her favorite shows. Most of the developments that make TV portable and convenient can be attributed to computer technology. One great example of this is the laptop computer. As laptops and the software that they're outfitted with have become more sophisticated, they've been better able to be sources of entertainment as well as platforms for getting work done on the go. While graphics cards have obviously improved over the years, there are four major developments that have made laptop computers contenders when it comes to a source of TV type entertainment. The first is the active matrix screen. The active matrix LCD screen presented a tremendous improvement on older technology when it came to displaying faster moving graphics without blurring. The second development was the DVD drive. Having DVD drives built into laptop computers allowed their users to watch movies from DVD right on the computers' screens. This was a tremendous aid to being able to watch TV and movies while traveling. The third and fourth developments went hand an hand. They consisted of hard drives large enough to contain motion picture sized movie files and the software to play them. In many ways this combination took the entire experience of watching video on a lap top computer to the next level by allowing the computers to store multiple movies and TV shows that could be accessed without the added bulk and inconvenience of carrying multiple DVD's.

Of course in many ways laptop computers aren't the ideal traveling companion for the TV enthusiast. After all, lap tops tend to be bulky and expensive, which makes portable media devices a viable option. Portable media devices take advantage of compact new hard drive technologies in order to store and display video (along with other types of media) on devices that are about the same size as the MP3 players that were their ancestors. These devices will typically store upwards of twenty hours of video- some will store up to one hundred and sixty hours of video- and have battery lives that typically supply about four hours worth of video watching on a charge. The video for these devices is typically downloaded from the Internet, but there are a few devices that download video from digital video recorders or even act as digital video recorders themselves.

The major disadvantage of portable media devices when it comes to watching video on them is the fact that they have such small screens. The screens- which typically range in size from two to seven inches- are often simply too small to detect the subtleties that can make or break a TV show or movie these days. The good news about that though is that most portable media devices can be plugged into a full sized television screen so that their video can be watched in a reasonable scale. Of course having to find a full sized TV screen can severely limit mobility while traveling.

At least people who love TV have more options when it comes to enjoying TV while traveling.