As a kid I imagined the future as being able to hold a TV in your pocket, and flying skateboards. For the latter I guess electric scooters will have to do

    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
      13·
      2 months ago

      And actual pocket TVs. Interesting to see OP think they were never a thing. Don’t get me wrong, they were shit, but they did exist!

    • bitchkat@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      I used one as recent as the mid 2000’s. There was some sporting event going on (probably women’s world cup) and I wanted to watch the game while playing in Ultimate league. Streaming wasn’t as prevalent as it is now and the game was on OTA channel.

  • Guntrigger@sopuli.xyz
    14·
    2 months ago

    As most of the other comments point out, pocket TV did exist and you have exposed yourself as:

    1. Younger than the smartphone
    2. Never watched a 90’s movie with a security guard in it
    • BeatTakeshi@lemmy.worldOP
      03·
      2 months ago

      Both wrong

      1. 1st smartphone Galaxy Spica age 26

      2. These TV wouldn’t fit in your jeans

      You missed the point of my very unelaborate shower thought. I see how not being a thing could be understood as never existed. I meant a big thing like, you know, smartphones

  • Krafty Kactus@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    12·
    2 months ago

    I mean they literally are, you can watch literally any tv show or movie on them so I don’t see a difference.

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        Absolutely! (Same as playing a regular game on a Game Gear.)

        I had both an AC adapter and a 12VDC car adapter for mine. Without those (considering the sorry state of rechargeables back then), the cost of batteries would’ve made actually using the damn thing untenable.

      • TheAgeOfSuperboredom@lemmy.ca
        1·
        2 months ago

        Probably! According to Wikipedia you get 3-5 hours off of 6 AA batteries. Not sure how that changes with the TV tuner but battery life wasn’t great.

  • dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world
    4·
    2 months ago

    There absolutely were pocket TV’s. As a kid, even, I owned two of them. They are now of course functionally useless because they predate the switch to digital television by a significant margin. Both of mine were Realistic brand ones, which was an in store label for Radio Shack. Color LCD displays, telescoping antenna, and they ran off of 4 AA batteries. They were about the size of an OG Gameboy or a large Walkman.

    I might even still have one in a box of tech junk somewhere. I believe the second one was a Realistic Pocketvision 27.

    You can still buy a portable digital TV. These were always a bit of a stretch for a “pocket” television, more the size of a small tablet but thicker. But they totally did, and still do, exist.

  • BruceTwarzen@kbin.social
    2·
    2 months ago

    What are you even on about? I have a screen in my pocket where i can watch quite literally every movie that exists.
    Imagine being a time traveller and someone asks you if you have any cool tech like a pocket tv.
    “Hah, no kiddo, we dont. I have that screnn with access to movies and tv shows tho.”

  • 🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.netEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    I mean… They were a thing before smartphones.

    I thought it was random as fuck when I worked at Walmart, I was asked to clean out the traps in the freezer (like a liquid channel for spills) and I found a pocket TV from the 90’s stuffed in there, still in the packaging. This was only a few years ago; that thing had to have been in there for at least 2 decades.

  • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
    1·
    2 months ago

    i had several battery operated ‘pocket’ tvs of various sizes… 80s/90s… the best being the watchman…

    somewhere around 2005 i saw one in a mall, used, for sale. i remember thinking it would only be valuable for a few more months as they were about to switch everything to ‘digital broadcast’ and it would be completely useless.

  • UpperBroccoli@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    1·
    2 months ago

    I had one that had the same form factor as a gameboy. It was black, the screen had a resolution so tiny you could not really make anything out, and it was almost impossible to get a stable signal. But I loved it when I was 12 years old, because I was only allowed to watch tv for an hour every day, and nobody knew I had that tiny TV which I bought from the money I made delivering flowers. I still have it in a box somewhere.

    Edit: this

  • snownyte@kbin.social
    0·
    2 months ago

    And tablets killed those digital picture frames. Because why have those when you can just prop a tablet down and have it on slideshow mode.

    • Meron35@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      No? Searching for “digital picture frame” brings up pages of results. These are popular enough because they are much cheaper than an equivalently sized tablet, e.g. a 10 inch digital picture frame details for around $150, which is less than half the price of a crappy android tablet.

      Also, tablets don’t really exceed 12 inches or so in size, but you can get digital picture frames as large as TVs.

    • NoIWontPickAName@kbin.earth
      0·
      2 months ago

      No, because your smartphone needs internet, tv signals reach way more places, and more reliably.

      Especially since broadcast tv, in America ya damn Limeys, is free, while internet is either very localized (WiFi, etc…) which may or may not be free, or wide spread (Cell phones, Satellites, etc…) which are definitely pay.

    • BeatTakeshi@lemmy.worldOP
      0·
      2 months ago

      I know it’s semantics, but if your great-gramps would time travel to today, he would ask about your pocket TV, and you would reply nah, it’s a smartphone

      • MxM111@kbin.social
        1·
        2 months ago

        Which is actually not smartphone, but a general purpose computer with cell internet connection that can be used for many things, one of those is actually calling.