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Infinitec Pocket TV; a Smart TV that looks like a USB dongle: Smart TV Tuesday

A late but nonetheless worthy addition to Smart TV Tuesday is Infinitec’s Pocket TV. Pocket TV is a tiny little device that looks a lot like a USB dongle. It slots in to the HDMI port of any TV set and converts it to a Smart TV.

Running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the Pocket TV basically turns your big 50-inch TV set into a giant, non-touchable Android tablet. With access to Google Play built in, you can not only watch movies you’ve rented but download apps like BBC iPlayer, BBC Sport, Netflix, LoveFilm and other video streaming apps.

Infinitec Pocket TV; a Smart TV that looks like a USB dongle: Smart TV Tuesday

If you’ve got a SlingBox set up at home then the Pocket TV would be perfect for catching up with EastEnders and whatnot in hotels overseas. Just plug it in, connect to the hotel Wi-Fi and you’d avoid any hefty charges (unless your hotel Wi-Fi isn’t free).

As well as working with TVs, Infinitec says the Pocket TV will work with projectors as well, meaning you could use this to load presentations. There’s a microSD card slot on the side or if you’re a Dropbox user you could just load your presentation from the cloud.

The Pocket TV can be controlled by an Air Remote peripheral which features a Qwerty keyboard and a gyroscopic sensor. This lets you control the position of the on-screen cursor with hand motions, Wii Motion Plus style. Bluetooth is also supported so you ought to be able to use any wireless mice and keyboards you have.

As well as this, there’s a more traditional remote (which looks a bit like the Apple TV remote) for when you simply want to scroll through menus and playlists (and for when your arm gets tired).

Infinitec Pocket TV; a Smart TV that looks like a USB dongle: Smart TV Tuesday


Infinitec Pocket TV: Stream music, movies and pictures from your desktop, laptop or NAS

As well as piping Android 4.0 on to your TV screen, the Infinitec Pocket TV can act as a streaming device for music on your PC, laptop or NAS/home network drive. The same goes for any movie files you’ve got stored or holiday snaps you’ve got. Video streaming up to 1080p HD is supported making this ideal for streaming movies from your own drive or from Netflix.

 

Infinitec Pocket TV Specifications

Spec for the Infinitec Pocket TV is as follows:

Dimensions: 86 x 31 x 14mm

Weight: 35 grams

OS: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

CPU: 1GHz ARM Cortex 9

GPU: Mali 400MP

RAM: 1GB

Internal memory: 4GB

MicroSD: up to 32GB

Connectivity: Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n) Bluetooth (via external USB Bluetooth connector) USB 2.0, HDMI 1.3


Spotted over on Kickstarter, the Pocket TV has received over three times the amount of funding. Meaning that it’ll be a Real Actual Thing you can buy at some point. The first run is expected to ship in October this year. There’s still time left to become an investor (funding finished on Monday the 9th of July) which will see you guaranteed to get one, provided you shell out $110 (roughly £70) or more.

Pocket TV might not be as pretty to look at as the Google Nexus Q but at least content isn’t locked down to Google Play out of the box and it’s a damn sight more portable.

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