We’ve previously covered tuners or small boxes that allow you to watch free-to-air TV on your smartphone or tablet with products such as PT115m/PT115e or DTV Link box, but I’ve just noticed GeekBuying added TV030 DVB-T tuner that connects to the micro USB port of your smartphone, and sells for just $10.99 shipped.
TV030 TV mobile stick specifications:
- Signal: 75 Ohm Digital TV Aerial Input
- Punctured Codes: 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, 5/6 and 7/8
- Receive Frequency: DVB-T: 474 ~ 858 MHz (UHF)
- Input: DVB-T
- Bandwidth: 6/7/8 MHz
- Dimensions – 27 x 18 x 7mm; antenna: 210mm long max
- Weight – 14 grams
The stick sells with an antenna, and a CDROM apparently containing the Android apk for EZTV app. It requires Android 4.1-5.0 or greater with the following minimal requirements to watch:
- SD TV – Cortex A8 @ 800 MHz with 512MB RAM, 20 MB flash, 800×480 display resolution
- HD TV – Cortex A8 @ 1.2 GHz with 512MB RAM, 20 MB flash, 1024*600 display resolution
With this type of requirements, it’s clear the tuner is not a new product, and I could find it on Banggood too where they provided the content of the CD with padtv_v1.0.1_933(isdbt).apk. Make sure DVB-T is a supported standard in your country, as I regularly receive emails from people in the US asking me why they DVB-T2 TV box is not working… That’s possibly why there are several bad reviews on Amazon and eBay, where I also found the cheapest price ($9.99). TV030 only supports DVB-T, not DVB-T2, but Banggood points to MyGica PT360 if you want the latter. It’s out of stock in most places, but Aliexpress still has it for about $23. The review below (really starting at 1:00) shows Mygica PT360 in action. Note that TV030 and PT360 use different apps.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
Support CNX Software! Donate via cryptocurrencies, become a Patron on Patreon, or purchase goods on Amazon or Aliexpress
These sort of devices always make me laugh, unless you’re living underneath the broadcast antenna then that aerial isn’t going to pick up anything. If you are living underneath the antenna then you probably already get DVB-T fed straight into your brain anyway and there’s no need for this device.
If you want to get broadcast television on your mobile device, invest in a hardware backend of some description and run Kodi as a frontend on the device itself. Currently I am (was, I think the PSU died) running a Wetek Openelec box with a DVB-S2 adaptor and TVHeadend as the backend with Kodi running on any device I want live TV on.
There is one which knows DVB T2 DVB-T DVB-C for $25.50:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/DVB-T2-Micro-USB-TV-receiver-Watch-DVB-T2-DVB-T-DVB-C-TV-on-Android/32808725226.html
I’d be interested to know if these devices are capable of doing SDR like the RTL-SDR DVB-T dongles. Anyone cracked one open to check the chipset inside?
Sweden switches most channels to DVB-T2 standard this year.
Germany recently shut off T1