Equinux Tizi iPhone TV tuner

There’s no shortage of TV tuners available these days, ranging from cheap and cheerful USB gadgets to more expensive network-enabled devices such as the Slingbox range or Elgato’s Netstream. However, the Tizi is the first TV tuner I’ve seen that is exclusively designed for the iOS platform. Equinux Tizi Portable TV: Equinux' …

[Dave 120]

Or alternatively

You could use tvcatchup instead for free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except using TVCatchup for free isn't without cost.

As the article says this product allows you to "...watch live TV in any location that has decent Freeview reception without the need to find a Wi-Fi hotspot or thrash your 3G..."

That is actually pretty important in these days of increasingly limited data allowances. If you are on one of the many 500Mb of inclusive data plans you will find that TVCatchup uses your inclusive data up at a pretty frightening rate. Even Wifi has a cost, be that your monthly subscription, a time based access fee or even the cost of a latte in a coffeeshop.

[Campbeltonian]

Only if...

Only if you're using WiFi. If you're streaming over 3G, it can't really be described as free. And if you've only got 2G connectivity you can't stream anything at all.

[Brian 6]

Watching TV at Home.

"Tizi was simply no use at all for watching TV at home...." U could of course use your TV to watch TV while your at home.......

[JDX]

External aerial

If you're in a room with a socket for regular TVs to connect to, perhaps you could find a TV in that room. Carrying a length of coaxial cable in your pocket to plug your phone "into the mains" doesn't seem what this is designed for.

And Dave, is tvcatchup legal?

[Arthur Daley]

as above

iphone.tvcatchup.com

[Anonymous Coward]

£150 !!!!

If this was £20-£30 I might be interested, but since it's basically a Freeview tuner and WiFi module with no display I can't see why it would cost any more. For £150 they must be having a laugh. I mean really, a device that is tied to maybe one generation of a specific device and has severe limitations in when and where it can be used (it's much easier to get a 3G signal than Freeview in most places and you can't use the iOS device for anything else at the same time)....

The alternative is TV Catchup. At the common cost of £5 for 500 MB gives you 15 GB of 3G data for the same price. Online estimates put the mobile version of TV Catchup at 155MB/hour, so for the same cost you could have over 96 hours of TV.... or for brief viewing, possibly nothing extra if you're on a iPhone/iPad contract anyway.

IMHO this device is pointless for casual use and if you need to watch more TV than that your money would be much better spent on a small LCD TV with Freeview, leaving your iOS device free to browse the web.

[Tempest]

Is the investment worth it given the trashy TV wasteland?

The programming on TV is pretty trashy and apart from the wasted time, is it really worth the investment?

The biggest drawback is a matter of physics - how can a wideband digital TV be received on such a puny antenna - the answer will always be a compromise.

Come to think of it, given this device is only for iOS, iPhans with Lemon 4's are used to antenna problems so it, and the programming, might just fit their bill.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jaitch?

"The programming on TV is pretty trashy and apart from the wasted time, is it really worth the investment?"

or:

The content on the internet is pretty trashy and apart from the wasted time, is it really worth the investment?"

So... stop wasting you time on the internet and part-ex your dongles/phones/routers?

Also - "iOS, iPhans with Lemon 4s" is that Jaitch? Have you changed your name? The bitterness is strong with you?

[Mage]

Overpriced, Incompatible

Badly thought out "glizty" product let down by lack of compatibility and MHEG5

http://www.saortv.info/terrestrial-saorview/the-black-list/

Most places won't have good enough signal.

Waste of money.

[Tom 35]

What if

Apple decide they don't like it and kill off the app?

It's also way too expensive, and the battery life is not very impressive.

[Gordon 10]

Baffling limited market

How much harder could it have been to make it OS independent?

[The First Dave]

Aerial

"the Tizi can’t be connected to an external aerial"

Did you try it? A bit of electrical tape to join one to the other would certainly have been worth trying.

[Robert Heffernan]

Agreed

I have often seen speaker wire, and in one case, a hacked up mains power cable connecting the roof antenna wall socket to the device.

Often one end was stripped and shoved into the center pin of the wall socket and the other end was stripped to a longer length and wound around the end of the telescopic antenna (usually the telescopic was snapped off and the wire wrapped around it's stump) and the signal was perfect.

Lesson here, never underestimate the engineering capacity of a bogan (aus) / chav (uk) / redneck (us)