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First the dimensions it is 35x26.5x28cm the 35cm depth includes cables so no extra space behind is required. The screen dimensions are 18.5x12cm giving the 10inch diagonal screen size. The weight is around 7.5kilos.

The front on the unit has seven buttons but you are unlikely to use many of them as there is a 46 key remote control that does everything from the comfort of your chair. Both digital and analogue Teletext is supported and worked fine off my house aerial. The right side has input for headphones and video and audio input from something like a games machine. The rear has both mains and 12volt inputs as well as Digital and Analogue inputs, digital output and DTV audio and video outputs, finally there is a SCART socket.

See also: Televisions

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It works on mains and both 12 and 24volts. I tried it on 12 volts and it worked okay, I do not have any 24volt output but I think a lot of larger vans and trucks use this. On the face of it ideal for anyone who travels a lot and needs to sleep in the cab. However I suspect they will need a lot better aerial than the telescopic ‘V’ offering supplied that I failed to get any signal on it at all despite the fact that I live only around 10 miles from the transmitter.

All my tests were conducted using my standard loft aerial and this produced a perfectly reasonable result even when I attached a couple of aerial extension leads to reach my garage to run it on 12volts.

This is quite unusual as it has both digital and analogue tuners built in. The instructions suggest you attach the aerial to the digital input and then connect a lead from the digital output to the analogue input, no such lead is supplied and therefore I used a ‘fly lead’ as an short extension cable and even this looks ridiculous to cover a few centimetres between the two sockets. Surely a 20cm fly lead could be provided in the box.

When you first switch on you find that there are three distinct modes external source such as video or DVD and this inputs through a SCART socket, digital TV and analogue TV. Tuning on the first occasion is all but automatic and channels are even placed in the correct digital order. There is a 48 page manual should you have any queries. Switch to analogue mode using the remote control and the search finds the five terrestrial channels but will not – by default – place these in the correct order. So in my case ITV is channel one simply because it is the first channel found.

Unless you live in a caravan I think 10inches may be a little small for a TV, sure if you travel a lot the powering from 12 or 24 volts is a plus but you would certainly need a far better aerial than the ‘V’ unit supplied. The manual says ‘Entertainment on the move’ and for that providing you can get a decent signal it would be fine.

Now the bit I am less easy about having both digital and analogue tuners, in my tests I always find that digital requires a better signal than analogue, a grainy analogue signal is probably watchable a less than perfect digital signal is not as it will just seize up and you end up with nothing. This is still very new and so far I can only find one outlet their price is £249.99 inc p&p.

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