Another fly in the ointment is the inability to view what your LocationFree box is 'broadcasting' on anything other than a Windows XP PC or a PSP. Mac? iBook? TV? Forget it. So while beaming to a PSP on other side of the world (a distance of 12,450 miles) is possible, beaming 15 feet from living room to the portable in your bedroom isn't.
So anyone hoping to use LFTV as a simple way to sling TV and video around their homes had best look elsewhere. We did ask if there were plans to produce an 'out box' (a simple mirror of the LFTV's base station but with 'outs' instead of 'ins') but were told that there were "no plans" at present.
Above: Another moody shot of the box everyone's talking about. Expect much of its functionality to be built into PS3, though that will lack the inputs present on this LFTV box
And as for the quality of the image? You'd be surprised. TV on PSP looked like a ripped DVD (ie chunky and flat with a fair wodge of compression) but, in short, perfectly watchable. A clever monitoring of the bandwidth available to the system adjusts the bitrate of the compression on the fly in order to deliver a consistent, smooth(ish) signal. There were a few momentary freezes but the sound remained glitch-free throughout.
It's worth pointing out that you could feasibly connect an audio device too. An iPod in a cradle could easily be hooked up and controlled too. Overkill perhaps (you could always just stick that in your pocket too) but possible.
