Television By Air

By | January 20, 2004

Is this the future of browsing? A gadget that will capture whatever you want to capture — whether it’s TV, websites, movies or other stuff — and then pump it to you, wherever you are, via its removable display?

AkibaLive say Sony Japan will release the Air Board (LF-X1) on March 12. The Air Board (sometimes called AirBoard) is a 800×600 TFT LCD color display, that comes with a Wi-Fi integrated base station. The television display panel can be used anywhere there’s a Wi-Fi connection to view whatever you’ve saved on the base station.

That does sound kinda neat. The trick seems to be in the speed: AkibaLive say the Sony Air Board utilizes a special version of Wi-Fi called Hi-Bit Wireless that uses up to seven channels simultaneously.

Sony appear to be about to launch the gadget in the U.S. too. But it raises some questions: This is definitely NOT a PC, so where, exactly, does it compete with the TabletPC and other portables? If it’s on price, that’ll be a first for Sony. Secondly, I’ve never been happy buying Sony because of the way they lock you in to proprietary stuff, such as the MemoryStick, software and cables.

Here’s some more on it from Sony and here.

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