Now It's Satellite in a Box.

Todd Chanko | January 09, 2007, 04:26 PM

When I saw this headline: “Satellite Television in a Portable Box,” I had to check the URL – was this really The New York Times? For a moment, I thought my browser had meandered to The Onion. Yet, sure enough, in the same week that Verizon announced its deployment of MediaFlo at CES, DirecTV has launched its own bid for portable TV at the fabled Las Vegas show. Yet, the solutions couldn’t be more different. The DirecTV contraption, developed by Rick Rosner, the creator of “CHiPs”, evokes such legendary devices as the KayPro II and the Osborne. While a DirecTV subscriber would have wide access to his or her programming line-up, wouldn’t a SlingBox achieve a similar effect – and worldwide, at that? In fact, anyone that can afford $1300 on DirecTV’s portable unit certainly has a laptop, and can get a SlingBox for a lot less. Verizon, meanwhile, goes to great lengths to advance the cause of its own brand of mobile video by promising simulcasts of such broadcast hits as CBS' Survivor and Fox's 24.

So in other words, the same population that subscribes to PayTV and complains that there is nothing on in the multichannel universe will now be able to take their complaining anywhere. This is progress.

Meanwhile, from the other double-take department: now children of all ages will be able to more fully enjoy the depth and nuance of “Top Cat,” “Tom and Jerry,” and “Huckleberry Hound,” as The Cartoon Network announces its HD launch.

You can’t make this stuff up.