Do an online search for in-car digital TV tuners and antennas and you’ll be pretty disappointed. Other than companies like Winegard with their RV antennas (which would look more than a little out of place on top of your sedan), there isn’t anything on the American market yet for in-car over-the-air digital television.
I wrote a story in our June issue (http://www.caraudiomag.com/specialfeatures/caep_0806_in_car_tv/index.html) about the challenges of in-car mobile television and the looming analog-to-digital transition. All those analog signals we grew up with will be phased out by February 2009. That means those of us who currently have TV tuners in our cars will be out of luck.
Home TV watchers have it easy. They simply need to have the right sort of antenna (or cable/satellite service) and an analog-to-digital converter box (which the government conveniently provides a $40 rebate towards purchase) so they can watch digital on their old analog TVs. I suppose we could apply that rebate towards a box for the automobile, if there were one on the market.
It seems that those of us itching to use up our economic stimulus check towards a new mobile video setup will just have to wait in regard to terrestrial TV. Once the US has a mobile standard in place, like those already functioning in Asia and Europe, we’ll be watching free over-the-air digital TV just like we can at home. In the meantime, we’ll just have to twiddle our thumbs and watch DVDs.