Japanese iPhones get mobile TV through Softbank’s new 1-seg tuner

David Gonzales  By on 30 Oct 08

Though you can’t say mobile TV is one of the top missing features of the iPhone 3G, the good folks at Softbank in Japan have cooked up a new 1-seg tuner that enables the said feature anyway, and it all works via the magic of Wi-Fi.

Softbank’s new 1-seg tuner is actually a separate, wireless-enabled device that will first be the one to receive the TV signals, and then retransmits the signals to the iPhone via Wi-Fi, and nothing else. The 1-seg tuner is a rechargeable device itself, and it also works as a pseudo-iPhone dock that will charge it at the same time.

This 1-seg tuner will work for about three hours on a single charge. But how do you control it? There’s a dedicated iPhone app that’s gonna work with it in the near future (it’s scheduled for release in mid-December), with a suggested price of about $100. It doesn’t say if the Wi-Fi streaming 1-seg tuner is at least free, but since it’s hardware, it’ll probably cost a sum too.

Via Gizmodo

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