February 28, 2006

Microchip 3-in-1 TV Tuner - A Cheap Chip for All Types of Devices

So, the other day I was refrigerator shopping with my wife at Best Buy when we ran into this beauty. Yep, we found a $3200 fridge with a 13.1" cable-ready LCD TV. The only thing I can say about that shopping experience is that wives can be so unreasonable.

Still, I have no plans to give up on having a fridge with a TV. In fact, it won't be long till it'll be cheap enough to put a TV tuner in every device. According to Gizmodo, Microtune is getting ready to roll out a cheap and tiny TV tuner:

They call this little hotshot “three-in-one” because it can handle garden-variety NTSC TV signals, ATSC (which encompasses all the HDTV standards), and then digital cable-ready (DCR) standards, too. All this TV tuning goodness for $3 apiece? Remarkable. Coming soon to a video-capable device near you.

Maybe I can get one of the chip thingies implanted right into my head? Guess I better start shopping for a helmet like Al Franken's.

At Gizmodo

Microtunes Website