When I was a kid, miniaturization in electronics felt like the cutting edge. Everyone wanted a Walkman and a GameBoy. Even Casio’s calculator watches seemed advanced. I had one with a built-in soccer game that I played until the rubbery buttons wore away. But there was one miniature gadget I always craved: a tiny TV.
In the 80s, tiny portable televisions were expensive, and I wasn’t allowed one. I remember being terribly jealous of a pal who had one, because he could bask in the warm glow of TV under his covers every night, with an extendable aerial poking out of a gap in the sheets. When I saw the TinyTV 2, an impossibly smol retro television, I simply had to have one.
Too Cute
The TinyTV 2 costs $60 and comes in two models: a translucent version shows the inner workings, or you can opt for the brown retro look that’s reminiscent of the wooden casing old TVs had. Both have spindly legs, two working rotary knobs on the front for volume and channels and a power button on top. The 1.14-inch IPS screen has a resolution of 216 x 135 pixels and can display 65,000 colors. There’s also a front-facing speaker and a tiny working infrared remote control.
It may have a retro aesthetic, but the TinyTV 2 packs a Raspberry Pi RP2040 processor and 8 GB of storage. The 150-mAh battery is good for a couple of hours, but you can also plug a USB-C cable (not supplied) into the port around the back. My favorite feature of the TinyTV 2 is that you can convert and add your own videos to make new channels (you can also delete the preloaded options). Maker Tiny Circuits offers a free video converter app for Windows or MacOS that’s very easy to use.
Photograph: Simon Hill
English (US)