A few days ago Janet posted about Mini X TV Box from Brando that turns your TV into a smart TV by making it a monitor for Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). I thought it sounded like a really cool product until I heard about a new Kickstarter project called Pocket TV. The Pocket TV is an HDMI dongle that when plugged into your TV, will turn it into a large screen Android Ice Cream Sandwich device. The dongle packs a 1GHz processor, WiFi, microSD card slot and a USB host connector into a very compact package. I was also very excited to see that the Pocket TV has access to the official Google Play store so that you can easily install apps. This Kickstarter project was just announced a few days ago and has already been completely funded. A pledge of $110 will get you a Pocket TV with an IR remote and a pledge of $135 will get you a Pocket TV and the wireless air remote. Either way, this product will be shipping in October. I want one!
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Very cool!!
I’ll have to keep track of what I’m doing on my phone apps over the next couple days to decide if this would be of use on my 42″ tv.
My Samsung has a USB port in it to plug this into.
Andy I’m trying to kick the cable bill with other options.
@Andy the Pocket TV plugs into an open HDMI port, not a USB port. I made the same mistake when I first saw the device, thinking it needed a USB port. 🙂
The USB is usually for powering the device and with a HUB you can also use it to connect peripherals. Most of these dongle systems will have a mini or mini USB on the side for providing the power and connectivity to a PC or an optional DC jack.
Some products like the FXI Cotton Candy actually make use of the full USB port USB as well by generating a VM Window on a PC. So you can use it on a existing computer, while also still mirror outputting to via the HDMI.
These devices are, however, not very powerful and expectations should be limited. Especially if planning to run something other than Android.
Since some of these devices also support porting Linux, like those using the Allwinner A10 SoC for example.
Running things off either the internal Flash memory or a microSD card though is pretty slow though for running a OS off of… So it can take up to several minutes just to boot say Ubuntu.
Yes, but this uses HDMI port as Julie said, not USB.