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RCA's Mobile TV Tablet: not a good TV, not a good tablet

RCA's Mobile TV Tablet: not a good TV, not a good tablet

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RCA's TV Tablet is the company's attempt to merge the the best of Android with a comprehensive dual-tuner mobile TV solution. In reality, however, it's not the best at anything. Instead, it's a tablet that feels both heavy and cheap; up front is an 8-inch 1024 x 768 "IPS" display that has terrible viewing angles and was covered in smears and fingerprints that were impossible to remove. It's powered by a 1GHz Cortex A5 processor with 1GB of RAM, and seemed to really struggle with even basic navigation through Android's menus. Loading up apps took longer than necessary, especially for the two bundled TV applications, Dyle TV and "DTV." About those apps: Dyle is a mobile service that lets you view live mobile TV in certain markets, while DTV offers the full selection of channels you'd get from regular terrestrial TV. It's difficult to judge video performance — the tablet was in the middle of a huge convention center and so TV signal was poor — but the apps seemed functional, if very slow and unstable.

RCA Mobile TV tablet hands-on photos

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There's not much in the way of on-board storage from the tablet — 8GB in total, and of that only 6GB was free — and you can't record any of the TV shows for viewing later. RCA says its tablet's battery is good for five hours of continuous TV and ten hours of regular use. It will arrive in March for a staggering $299 — a high price to pay for what feels like a $150 product with an aerial attached.