3 posts tagged “television”

Rabbit ears are back.  Dick's parcel arrived during the recording of last Friday's show, and it's the RCA ANT 121 Universal Indoor Antenna.  It boosts UHF, VHF and FM signals, and provides a 12-position knob for fine tuning.  No cable fees because you're not getting cable.  No sateliite fees because you're not using satellite technolgy.  It works indoors like ordinary rabbit ears, and captures signals right out of the air!  As long as your television has an ATSC tuner (which all television sets regardless of size sold after 1 March 2007 in the States must have), you can get over-the-air digital TV signals, including HD channels.  Dick uses it on his 20-ft boat and it works like a charm.

Winter on the Hudson
The snow in new York has disappeared - which reminds Leo of the well-known saying "March comes in like a lion and goes out like a gefilte fish."  Dick at a younger age had a Boston Whaler.  In the winter he would drive the boat towards an ice sheet floating down the Hudson, and just as it hit the ice, would stop the engine and just let the boat glide across the ice sheet over to the other side.

St Patrick's Day in Ireland
Donal from Dublin, Ireland, remembers Leo asking on St Patrick's Day last year (beginning of Episode 526) whether they celebrate it in Ireland.  Yes, they do, massively, over 3 days, including climbing Croagh Patrick.  By the way, Leo's Irish accent is the worst, Donal adds.


Listen to Episode 786
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Link: A Short History of Pocket TV

From 1984, Panasonic released this Travelvision TR-1030 in Japan, selling for ¥29,800 (which was worth about US$125, according to Wikipedia's historical exhange rate of the Yen).  It was a black and white portable television set. Its dimensions were about 3" wide, 1.5" high, and 6" deep, with a 1.5" screen.  There was also a 1.3x magnifying lens add-on which increased the screen to about 2".  Panasonic started with the model TR-1010 in 1981, and Dick got his model in 1985.  It was still using a CRT for display, and was then the world's smallest CRT TV.

With the imminent conversion to digital TV, these old analogue portable TVs are not going to work, although you can get a Winegard portable battery pack for one of their digital TV converters.  For details, go back to Episode 675.

Ken Ronckovitz heard Leo surmise that they would still be doing podcasts in 2020.  Ken suggests that they can do that now.  Just pick any current gadget, laugh about it and they will have all the Gadget Warehouse podcasts they need for 2020.

Ken started listening to some of the old shows and heard the old Visa ads.  He thinks Leo should remind the sponsors that their ads keep on getting new listeners.  Leo knows that only too well, but sadly sponsors only pay for downloads in the first 3 months, and only for those in the US (when 30% of TWiT's audience are from outside the US).

Dick has posted the DGW "Future of TWiT" Button (see Episode 747) and the Inauguration Avatar on his website.  You can't buy the Button, but you can buy GizWizBiz Caps with LED lights from Dick.

The gadget with the lowest tech and lowest price, according to Dick.  The TT Pack is a restroom kit which contains a toilet seat wipe, toilet seat cover, hand wipe, tissue, paper towel and disposable gloves.  Brought to you by Eye 2 Eye Ideas.

Are We Related?
Trevor from Sebastopol, Australia was glad to hear that both Dick and Leo are watch junkies.  So is he.  He's got loads of watches, most of which have flat batteries.

Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair has done a special on Mad.  See the article, with early Mad covers, online.

Spork Commercial
At Dick's request, Leo plays the Spork TV commercial.


Listen to Episode 558
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