It's hard to miss the variety and depth of live entertainment streaming into the home, some you pay for, some you don't. On the last night of June I paid $9.99 to "attend" She Loves Me, an as-slick-as-they come Broadway musical performed by the Roundabout Theatre Company at Studio 54. Minutes before the 8 p.m. curtain I typed my credit card info into BroadwayHD.com and ended up having a rip-roaring time. Put in the form of a pull quote: "The best musical I ever saw in my underwear!"
At A Glance Plus: Watch broadcast TV while commuting Steady reception in motion Works without Wi-Fi or a mobile data plan
Minus: Limited channels Reception spotty in buildings and locking in stations can be frustrating
The Verdict
Lets you watch TV while on the on the go but programming options are limited and reception is not a sure shot.
Though the picture quality of over-the-air TV can surpass cable, you’re likely to get no reception at all in a moving vehicle. That’s because broadcast DTV was conceived for stationary screens—not today’s legion of mobile devices.
Stroll through any large store that sells audio and video equipment, and it's mind-numbing how similar the products in each category look. If you close your eyes, point to any receiver or DVD player, and guess "black and boxy," you'll almost certainly be right.
Conventional wisdom dictates that there are good reasons why A/V design is so homogeneous.
If brown and dirty is your idea of a stocking stuffer, you won’t have far to go. Bed Bath & Beyond offers the Bluetooth Poop Emoji Speaker ($20, in brown), while Staples sells the Poop 4K Emoji Powerbank ($15, you already know the color) for charging your phone. And Macy’s has the EmojiNation Backpack for little girls and big girls ($35) decorated with a variety of emojis including a poop wearing a crown.
When Dr. Amar Bose visited the magazine where I worked in the early 1990s, he teased staffers by hiding under a cloth the source of the luxurious-sounding music filling the room. Moments later he revealed that it was actually emanating from an unassuming clock radio. Since then, the Bose Wave radio has landed on countless tabletops and nightstands.
It didn’t rise to the level of Kasparov versus Deep Blue, but still, it was another example of man vs. machine. This time it was radio DJ Charlie Bermant playing music from 1967 versus playlists I asked two different smart speakers to generate.
The mutual embrace of A/V and PC got considerably tighter at this year's CES, most visibly with the proliferation of devices that let you experience all kinds of music and video entertainment on your TV and stereo. And almost every one of these products could connect to some kind of wired or wireless network - yet another sign of how deeply the PC mindset has taken hold in the home.