One thing that caught my eye at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was a flat satellite antenna—one that mounts on a car or SUV roof, so your kids can watch DirecTV in the back seat. And then I saw several other antenna manufacturers with similar products. And then I heard about other products and services also aiming for the untethered TV market. This is a new market segment, and from the scope of offerings out there, a very real one.

The satellite antennas are flat, not concave like a dish. They use a technique called a phased array of multiple antennas. A single antenna on the top of a car would have a pattern that is omni-directional—the same gain in all directions. That's fine for narrowband mobile communications, because licensees are given exclusive assignment of a frequency within a geographical area. Even though an omni-directional antenna "looks" in all directions, it won't see interference from any other licensee. But broadcasting satellites are spaced every 9 degrees across the orbital arc, and they all use the same 12.2–12.7 GHz frequency band.

You need a directional antenna to pick out the signals from the desired satellite and reject signals from other satellites. By using an array of small antennas, and combining them in a particular fashion, high gain can be achieved in one direction, and negative gain in other directions. And the direction of the high gain antenna beam can be changed, or steered, as the car moves. The military has used this technology for years (see, for example, www.pavepaws.org/), but only recently has it reached consumer products.

Receiving a satellite TV signal from satellites that are spaced at 9 degrees is a piece of cake compared to working with satellites spaced at 2 degrees. But that's what it takes for two-way communications. It's not impossible for a phased array antenna to achieve such a narrow beamwidth, because that's what Connexion by Boeing does. A phased array antenna mounted on a commercial aircraft is hardly consumer technology. But at least one of these consumer antenna manufacturers was talking about two-way communications in the future.

But that's not all. Comcast announced its own plans to send video to cars, working with automotive electronics manufacturer Delphi. Details were sketchy, but it will probably involve video that is first stored in a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) in the home, then later downloaded to a DVR in the car. The download path will be wireless, based on Delphi rear-seat video systems that already have WiFi capability.

But there's more. Sony has come out with a product called LocationFreeTV (see http://12.155.226.67/). This product consists of two pieces, an untethered 12-inch or 7-inch LCD screen, and a "base station." The LCD screen displays video programming that it receives over a WiFi link from the base station. That's fine if you want to watch TV out on the patio.

But wait, there's more. Both the base station and the display have Internet capability, with the base station streaming out video that it can get from an attached cable box or DVR. So let's say there's a snowstorm in Denver, and you're sitting for hours in the airport Red Carpet Club. You can connect your display to the airport HotSpot, and watch stored movies...or local TV programming streamed over the Internet. Hold on! Wasn't this what the Broadcast Flag was all about?

The Sony product is a little pricey. Sony is selling it for $1,100, but you can find it available on the Internet for as low as $840. But wait, there are cheaper alternatives.

If you're more interested in using it at the Red Carpet Club than on your patio, you don't need the untethered display because you already have a laptop computer. In that case, get yourself a Slingbox Personal Broadcaster (www.slingmedia.com/). It provides the same sort of capability for streaming video from your home DVR or cable box, but the video is displayed on your laptop rather than a separate display. Just link up to any HotSpot or other high-speed Internet access. You've heard of timeshifting. Slingbox calls this "placeshifting."

So, how does this all relate to copy protection and the Broadcast Flag? For now, there's no problem. Right now, both the Sony product and the Slingbox accept only analog video inputs, and the controversies deal with digital video.

For digital broadcast programming that contains the Broadcast Flag, TiVo seems to have set a precedent by getting FCC approval to distribute TV broadcast programming over the Internet to up to nine remote locations. Your laptop or Sony LocationFree display could be one of those locations.

For copy-protected digital cable programming, the cable box would encrypt the programming for transfer to the Delphi rear seat system or LocationFree base station or Slingbox, so your car unit or laptop or LocationFree display would have to use a CableCARD to decrypt it.

It may be a few years before we actually see those products, but it is clear that the industry has recognized the public's demands to watch TV anytime, anywhere.

e-mail at: jkrauss@krauss.ws