Personal TV

Japan's electronics giant Sony unveiled the new card size digital TV "XDV-100," recently which measures 98.3 x 61 x 15.1mm (that's 3.8 x 2.4 x .5 inches) and weighing only 110g. It has a 2.83-inch LCD display and 5.5-hour digital TV program with a built-in Li-ion battery at the company's headquarters in Tokyo. Sony will put it on the market 10 April with an estimated price of 40,000 yen ($340 USD).

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I'm a sucker for old school Personal TVs - all you have to do is add a splash of color and I'll spend all day dreaming and giggling about them. Much like the huge PanaPana Personal TV, the Panasonic Personal TV (1984) is at least 40 times the size of today's video/MP3 players.

The popularity of "handheld TVs" didn't make it big until the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the first pocket-sized TV, called the MTV-1, was released. Of course, Sony released the first Watchman in the 80s and soon every businessman and hipster needed their very own handheld TV. And to think, these days we can watch Justin Timberlake around the clock on our tiny cell phones. For a full gallery of fun Personal TV pictures, just read more

Today we are utterly spoiled with our video iPods and portable MP3 and video players - always looking for something smaller with a better picture and better sound - but there was a time when having a "personal TV" meant lugging around a hefty machine. The PanaPana, a colorful and curvy personal TV, which made it big in 1972, was perhaps, the video iPod or Zen player of yesteryear.

While the PanaPana was about 50 times the size of the original iPod - which was no Tiny Tim itself - it was quite innovative in its day. For more PanaPana photos, just read more