Monday, January 16, 2006

Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For...

You'd think that if I wanted a particular piece of electronics, someone would go to the trouble of making it...

I'd been considering replacing the kitchen television, an old 13" tube television, with an LCD flat-screen, 20" or so. What I was looking for was a television with a built-in hard drive or pcmcia memory card slot that would allow some basic recording or time-delay features. I don't really want to save programs on the kitchen tv, mind you--but I would like the ability to back up the broadcast for a minute or two if I miss something. Let's face it: the kitchen is one of the most likely places for a viewer to be busy doing something else that has him/her looking away from the screen. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a reference to something on television that I'd like to have seen, but I was working at the cooktop, or getting something out of the oven, or putting cat food in a bowl, and by the time I looked up, the image was long since gone.

Sounds like a reasonable request to me... but I may as well have asked for a matter transporter. It seems that no one is putting hard drives in an LCD screen that's less than 42" in size. From what I can tell, Sharp once offered a 20" set that used a 5gb PCMCIA card for such storage, but it seems to have been discontinued and is now unavailable anywhere.

If anyone with an electronics "in" can point me in the right direction, or give me some information regarding any units that might do what I need, it would be much appreciated!

(And yes, I'm aware that I could get a standalone Tivo and it would do the same thing, but the idea here is to reduce countertop clutter in the kitchen--and replacing one television with two pieces of electronics doesn't seem to move me towards that goal.)

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