Oft-asked question #238:  "After the DTV changeover, will I still get TV channels on my portable radio?"

Short answer:  "No."

Oft-asked question #239:  "But the store where I bought it said it was a digital TV / AM / FM radio."

Snarky observation:  "That's a statement, not a question."

Oft-asked question #240:  "Are you trying to be a jerk?"

Okay, here's the scoop:  so far, I have yet to see portable radios that receive digital TV stations... and I don't expect to any time soon, certainly not in the $20-30 price range most people expect. 

The issue is this:  if you (as a manufacturer) have already designed an FM radio, it's very easy to add analog TV sound because you're only expanding the band a bit -- analog TV used FM for the audio, so there's very little additional circuitry needed to add the feature.  Coming up with DTV audio is a much bigger task, and requires a separate receiver, logic to decode the station's PSIP tables and some kind of display to select which sub-channel you want, logic to filter out the data packets for the correct audio, a Dolby AC3 decoder, and a digital-to-analog converter.  That's an awful lot of additional stuff to pack into a small radio, and it will take an awful lot of power to run.  Offhand, I wouldn't expect to get more than about five or ten minutes from a 9-volt battery.

So what's the scoop with these "digital" portable radios?  I found one such model on line, sold through a large retail electronic chain:

Though this is billed as a digital radio, it isn't, really -- it's just an analog AM / FM / TV radio with a digital display instead of the traditional mechanical moving-bar scale.  It won't pick up digital TV stations, and it won't pick up digital HD radio stations, either.

Misrepresentation?  No, I don't think so... it's just imprecise wording, probably dating back a few years to the days when DTV was just a pipe dream.

Then, you ask, what about my portable TV sound radio?  If I were really trying to be a jerk, I'd give you a plan for modifying the radio to hook it to a converter box... but then you would also need a portable generator to run the converter, plus a good antenna, maybe on a mast you could hold like an umbrella.  By the time you're done, the rig would look something like a NASA lunar backpack.  Just the thing for a summer day on the beach, right?  Or maybe not.

-- Jeff