Battery Powered TV’s Vs. Digital Switch

Hurricane Season Battery Powered TV's of the past will be obsolete after June 12th.

by Jene' Young

Published: Fri, May 22, 2009 - 3:44 pm CST Last Updated: Sat, May 23, 2009 - 4:10 pm CST

No one knows how the 2009 Hurricane Season will turn out, but if you tune in on your battery powered TV, you won't pick up any stations.

Randy Wendt, a News 5 engineer says you are out of luck.
"Battery powered TV's of the past were analog. Our analog signal will go away, as will everyone else's come June 12th, so those units will no longer operate."

There are a couple options when the weather disrupts your signal.
John Hatten, a manager at Radio Shack says, "The option is going to be to get a battery powered digital TV for one. Or get you a generator with a converter box for your TV, make sure you have an antenna for that.”

If the power stays out for a while, you may need to charge your portable D-TV battery in your car.
"With the D-TVs, the battery is going to last 4-6 hours. It comes with a car adapter or ac adapter."

The cost starts at around 100 dollars and goes up from there.
Now if you don't want to purchase a portable digital TV, there are other options. You could buy a laptop/desktop computer adapter. The problem is with a laptop, you're going to get three or four hours of charge time.

If you don't have a generator, and you can't purchase a portable D-TV or laptop adapter, there is one cheaper option for keeping up with our storm coverage, a weather radio or am/fm radio.

News 5 simulcasts on several radio partners in the area.

If you go to the store to buy a portable, battery operated TV, be careful about what you buy some stores are still selling models that will not work after the digital switch on June 12th.

As for what you can do with your soon to be obsolete battery powered TV that you have relied on for so many years? Recycle it. In Mobile County, Keep Mobile Beautiful is having their next free electronic recycling event is in November.

On June 6th in Escambia County Florida, there is a recycling event at Pensacola High School. For more information for this recycling event, click here.

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