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World's Most Advanced Portable TV
Eric Schlaepfer writes "Here's another great toy for your wish list! ICOM manufactures the highly advanced IC-R3 portable scanner/television set. Besides picking up radio stations in the frequency range of 0.495-2450MHz, the IC-R3 also receives regular television signals, amateur television, and wireless security camera signals."
In case the site (or routes to the site) get slashdotted. Here is a mirror to link one, and link two.
This is hardly new - the IC-R3 has been out in Japan since before I bought my ICOM scanner (I'm at work atm so I can't check, but it's an R5, I think) a couple of years ago.
While the Icom R-3 truly is a cool little gadget, I wish to caution those who are buying one for video monitoring purposes. It has a lot of features, to be sure, but as I found out the hard way, for the hardcore video monitoring enthusiast or TV DXer, it has some serious limitations.
Its sensitivity is lacking, so unless it encounters a very strong video signal (especially on 2.4GHz, where a lot of wireless cameras broadcast their signals), do not expect a very watchable or even decodeable picture.
Secondly, the video screen eats the hell out of the battery life. You'll find yourself reaching for the AC adapter quite frequently. This device tends to use the LCD screen to display a lot of configuration/tuning information, even in non-video mode, so beware if you buy this to use as a general-purpose scanner.
After 10 months of R3 ownership, my feelings are still mixed. It's pretty cool to walk around and stumble on 2.4GHz video, especially from wireless security cameras, but as a general-purpose scanning receiver or for attempting to receive TV DX in these skip-prone months, it falls sadly short.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Still ... $450 for a ultra-wide band WITH a 2" TFT ...
Only better (at 10x the price) would be the AR-one here, almost forgot ... have to be a non-US location to ship to ...
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
C.Crane, $449.95
http://www.ccrane.com/icom_icr3.asp
...I don't think I saw anything mentioned in the article, but the picture I saw of this device made it look like it had a built-in pen.
Is this a standard feature? I remember many a time I've been watching pronography and have said to myself:
"Damn. I need a pen! I should be taking notes on this!"
If this TV has a built in pen, it's perfect for me!
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Well . It's good to see Americans are making Tv's again.
I know someone who has one, had it for a couple of years now and built a helicopter that had a network cam attached to it so he could fly it around and checkout the video feed from it. Very cool hack. If you want to get one with cellular unblocked check out this site.. http://www.radioworld.ca/swscan/swsc.php All though not many people are still using analog cellphones.
Frequency Range:
USA version: 0.495-815.995 MHz, 902-2450.095 MHz
Non-USA version: 0.495-2450.095 MHz
Ok, so where can I buy a Non-USA version? And price.
It said amateur television didn't it? Whats the late night showing of Reform School Girls if not amateur television?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Take a look here for some specs. Unfortunately, this receiver has been out for a few years now, and has never had reviews that are all that stunning. Complaints are generally regarding poor sensitivity, which as a owner of a IC-Q7A (Icom's ham version of the IC-R2), doesn't surprise me one bit.
What always surprised me was the crummy UI on this thing. You've got a full color dot matrix display on the thing -- why isn't there a sophisticated OS, slick icons, and on-screen help guide? Why isn't there a flashable ROM for OS upgrades? How about a smartmedia slot to store screenshots? It's almost as if they're afraid to sell too many of the things, so they cripple it my making it cryptic to use, with a lousy UI, and no features.
I used to own an early model Icom PCR1000 - nice receiver, could hear cell bands, but WHO THE HELL CARES? You get to hear the cell site side of a two way conversation and its usually some yokel who can't afford a digital phone trying to rig a meeting with his girlfriend while his wife is at the grocery store.
Don't violate the FCC's rules to listen to crap like that - just use the thing to tune in to Jerry Springer and you'll see the results of what happens when people make calls on analog cellular.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Christmas.
...
It's one of those secret codewords known only to the secret sect of those who have deciphered the mysteries of the tag.
I forgot to mention this in the submission, but ICOM also makes scanners that you can hook up to a regular PC. Unfortunately it doesn't look like there is any Linux software...
A number of you have noted that the American version blocks the cell phone frequencies, but rumor has it that snipping out a resistor removes the block.
--Eric
ICON IC-R3 $449.95
Extra Battery & car adaptor $119.95
Series1 Standalone TiVo(eBay) $182.50
Car->110volt-adapter $ 35.99
Hacking TiVo Book $ 20.99
AirNET adapter $ 69.25
Watching extracted TiVo video synced from your
house to your car: Pricele..... **CRASH**
New Fender $210.00
Insurance Deductable $300.00
Emergency Room Co-pay $ 50.00
..Jeff Keegan
seven syllables explain TiVo: kee gan dot org slash ti vo
Yeah, but where are we going to get a plumber who speaks Norwegian, Brain?
I'm going to agree with others, this isn't new.. I've been drooling over this radio for something like 2 years now.
One downside that I've found in my reading is that when you're using the bigger lcd (for tv and better scanner control) it drains your batteries much faster. You can control the scanner with the smaller lcd, but I think more complex options need the color lcd to set. If you're running it at home on an AC adapter, then you're okay, but mobile is kinda limited with the effect video reception/display has on battery life.
Then again, if you're the kind of person that drives around with their laptop searching for wifi networks, you might be used to that kind of battery life already.
I think every analog ( that is, tuned with a variable capacitor ) radio out there that can tune these frequencies will do so. So whats the big deal?
If privacy is a big concern, go scrambled digital. Go ahead and listen if you wanna.. it'll sound like white noise to you unless you have its decryption codes. Many of us that have a desire to tune through the cellular bands have no urge whatsoever to eavesdrop on calls - we are trying to find spectral areas where EMI is causing a problem.. say somebody keys some cellphone in an area and something else goes haywire - this kinda thing is often traced to something as simple as a piece of wire that just happened to be cut to resonance.. ( this works in the RF arena just like a loose piece of metal on your car rattles at a certain speed in the mechanical arena.)
Being this thing is such a wide-range receiver, and apparently also functions as a spectrum analyzer, it sure seems like a moot enforcement of what I consider stupid law to cripple it in such a manner as to render it useless for determining RF "pollution" in such a common area as cellphone spectrum. Especially being there are so many other ways of eavesdropping cell calls if thats what you really wanted to do. This thing would probably be one of the most expensive cell phone monitors you could buy if thats what you wanted it for.
This is such a neat piece of engineering. I just hate to see pesky law poke holes in it. For no good reason at all as I see it.
And you cellphone users: if you want privacy, encrypt your damm calls.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Bastards, respecting peoples privacy. Whats the world comming to?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
The problem is that it used to be legal to build and sell a general coverage receiver that covered DC to Daylight. There were laws that restricted what you could do with some of signals you received, such as prohibiting disclosure to third parties, but the general principle was that any American was free to listen to anything transmitted on the public airwaves.
Enter cellular telephony (AMPS), which replaced the old mobile telephone service. Eventually, some bright bulb rediscovered that cellular telephone conversations were transmitted via UHF FM radio signals, without any encryption or signal security. Anyone with a UHF FM receiver, or an older VHF/UHF television set, could listen in on cellular phone calls. When the word got around to the general public that cellular calls were not private, the CTIA (cellular trade association) went nuts. This was a public relations problem that could hurt their sales and profits. Rather than fix the problem of broadcasting cellular calls in the clear, their "solution" was to lobby congress for a law that would prohibit sales of receivers that could listen to cellular telephone frequencies, and would criminalize the act of listening to a cellular telephone call. This was the first time that congress had made it illegal to listen to a radio signal. Of course, none of this made a damn bit of difference as to the security of a cellular telephone call. It just provided the illusion of security, which was all the CTIA was willing to pay for. It also gave a big stick to politicians who were embarrassed by the public disclosure of the contents of their cellular telephone calls. They could demand that the government prosecute the "criminals" who had the gall to embarrass them by publicizing their dirty laundry.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It's also illegal to listen in on cordless phones.
I'm a long-time HAM, and I also have one of the old scanners that gets cellular (old Radio Shack model), and many can be modified to receive cellular signals (though this is illegal... do a google for scanner mods and you'll see how easy it is).
The Cordless phone prohibition came later... I can't recall the year, but a hue-and-cry came about from people scanning the old 49.x mHz cordless phones. Naturally, the newer 900 mhz and 2.4ghz models with spread-spectrum require a bit more technical expertise than the old turn-on-the-scanner-and-listen routine. Even the Donald-Duck-sounding "scrambled" ones used a simple frequency inversion routine that you could easily decode (probably a DMCA violation these days).
The trunking radio systems put a brief dent in the scanning scene, but you can even get scanners to track those now.
Years ago, a buddy of mine lived in an apartment, and had an enormous dipole tacked up in the attic of his building, tuned specifically to the 49.x band... got every cordless phone for blocks. It was a rough neighborhood, so he sometimes got to hear the drug dealers doing business, and the ex-cons talking to their parole officers. I suppose that's the lazy man's way to get to know who your neighbors are BEFORE you invite them over for a neighborhood BBQ. However, before you run out and set up a similar rig, I can tell you that most people's conversations are relentlessly boring. Nosy, boring, and illegal... hardly worth it.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
That sounds like something my 6-year-old daughter would think. Not the part about the middle finger, but about the agency required to enforce a law being the entity that made the law. The FCC does have some leeway in the way they right specific regulations, but they work under laws passed enacted by the legislature.
Analog cellular is blocked in US receivers because of the "Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986". First, some drug dealers were caught because they made plans over the radio, somehow imagining that these radio sets were in fact secure wired phones. They argued in court the patently absurd idea that they had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Of course, they lost (except in the 9th court of appeals, of course). The rest of the stupid people thought that they should have privacy while speaking out loud in public, and rather than being mindful of what they say in public, they wanted, and got, a law making it illegal to hear what a person is saying, unless specifically addressed.
Mind, I don't care what people are talking about. I just think it's absurd that we are legally required to pretend that they aren't talking. What's next, a law barring turning your gaze at right angles to the street, so as to avoid noticing what people are doing in front of their picture windows?
Anyway, we're in agreement as to the absurdity of the law. Just don't go blaming the cops for the laws.
Keep in mind that if you live in a large metropolitan area most public service broadcasts (fire, police) use trunked systems. A scanner like this won't help you much when trying to follow any activity on a trunked system. Many even use digital trunking, which you can't monitor at all unless you get a scanner such as the Bearcat BC250D and the optional BCi 25D digital card.
Blocked analog cellular is nothing new here in the US. It really isn't a big deal as fewer people use analog cellular anymore. Most scanners can be opened up to receive the cellular bands, but it usually takes some skill with a soldering iron (I'm not sure if this receiver can be easily modified in this way).
While it may help a little bit to put on an antenna tuned more closely to 2.4 GHz, the effect would be marginal. The problem isn't necessarily that the antenna isn't getting the signal good enough, it's that the receiver circuitry is less sensitive in the 2.4 GHz range.
;-) ). Then you can tune your receiver to either 1.450 GHz (2.45 GHz - 1.00 GHz) and find a slightly weaker copy of the 2.45 GHz signal there. If the increased sensitivity of your receiver in the 1.45 GHz area is larger than the decrease in the signal strength by mixing (which is probably some calculable amount, but I don't want to take the time to figure it out...), then you will end up with a clearer picture of the 2.45 GHz video signal.
It's very difficult to create a tuning circuit (which all receivers have) that is very sensitive across a wide range of frequencies. I would guess that this receiver is most sensitive in the VHF/UHF or even 800 MHz bands. From the specs, it looks like the upper end of the range for the R-3 is 2540 MHz (2.54 GHz), which isn't necessarily the clear-cut end of receiving capability for the product, it's just where the engineers (or marketers) decided to print the cutoff because the sensitivity drops off quickly somewhere around there.
The solution might be a 'transverter' device which essentially acts as another IF stage in the receiver, mixing all input signals with a fixed frequency. The result is several sidebands, at least one of which is offset from the input signal by the value of the fixed frequency.
Example: You want to see a video transmission on 2.450 GHz, but the receiver is not sensitive there. You build a little circuit that uses a diode to mix the incoming frequency with a 1000 MHz signal generated by a crystal (good luck finding a 1GHz crystal
This technique is sometimes used by folks who really want to break US law and listen to cell-phone conversations. Nevermind that nowadays analog calls are nearly extinct. By law all receivers sold in the US must block tuning in of the cell-phone frequencies, which are around 850-900 MHz. (That's different these days with digital, but we're talking about analog.). Since nearly all receivers of FM audo use an IF (Intermediate Frequency, like the 1000 MHz signal we used above) of 10.7 MHz, users found they could tune to some multiple of 10.7 MHz below or above the cell phone frequencies and hear the 'images' of the calls. Nowadays scanner manufacturers extend those blocked frequencies to the image frequencies as well, so most folks are out-of-luck unless they build their own receiver for 850 MHz.
Being a ham radio operator (although slightly dormant at the moment) I fall for gadgets like these. I've owned a bunch of Icom's in my career. One reason to buy this product would be to bring it with me when I travel. However, it can only do either PAL or NTSC, you have to choose when you order the radio. That's just silly. There's silicone available today that could have made this a TV DX'ers dream (while jetting from one continent to the next). However, with this limitation it just doesn't make any sense to me. I guess I'll have to wait for the -R4 version...?
73,
-Kris
Another complaint I've heard about the IC-R3 is that it doesn't demodulate FM video across its entire receive range (or maybe not at all). A lot of "interesting" video is FM modulated, not AM (like broadcast TV, amateur TV, etc.) That alone would keep me from buying it, but throw in the poor sensitivity and I just don't see the point. Besides, I'm lucky enough to have an AOR AR-5000+3, so I can just add one of these and a cheap video monitor or video capture card to it and get the same functionality, albeit with less portability.
I bought mine in 1987, w/the video adapter. Interesting for a few months... //de KQ6J
Those old Motorola phones (with the trapezoidal batteries on back) are still fairly popular in Alaska due to the fact that they have decent talk time in the cold. Most phones with smaller batteries cool off too fast, and thus can give you as little as 10 minutes of air time in cold weather.
I had this AWESOME little CDMA phone when I was in Japan...a list of features that would be found only in the $300+ range in the US today (and it was the CHEAPEST PHONE AVAILABLE AT THE TIME....THREE YEARS AGO), a battery I'd charge AT MOST once a week...but if I tried using it outside at anything below about 10F, it'd die in 15 minutes.
Sometimes you lose something when you upgrade.