Israeli based Siano Mobile Silicon announced a wireless accessory that lets you view high-quality, live broadcast TV on Apple or Android smartphones or tablets, via Wi-Fi. The gadget is called Meron, which delivers a true live TV experience, free-of-charge, with no payment required for cellular data (air-time) or TV provider subscriptions. There are no mobile data charges and no Internet connection is needed to view broadcast TV. Currently, Meron will only work outside of the U.S in countries that use the DVB-T/H broadcast standard, which includes Europe and Australia. But the company does have plans to launch a version supporting ATSC for North America early next year.
Compared to similar solutions on the market, Meron exhibits a minimalistic, CPU-less architecture, designed to provide the accessory at a comparably low price. The Meron is the most efficiently-designed product of its kind in the world, including only Siano’s battery-friendly, yet powerful mobile DTV receiver chip, and a WiFi transceiver. The Meron is powered by SianoTV, a high-quality DTV Apple/Android application, customized for Siano by Elgato, a world leader in multimedia applications.
The SianoTV application is available on the App Store and Google Play, free of charge. Battery-powered for ultimate flexibility, Meron supports more than 3 hours of TV viewing time, and offers exceptional WiFi range both indoors and outdoors. Meron provides global support for DVB-T, ISDB-T 1-Seg and Full-Seg (up to SD resolution), thanks to Siano’s family of exceptional multi-standard IC’s.
Siano also makes a similar accessory (below) just for iPad 2, iPad 3, iPhone 4S (not iPhone 4 or iPhone 5) called Carmel, which brings live TV to those specific Apple devices. The Carmel accessory has a 30-pin connector and attaches directly to each device.
“With so many smartphones and tablets delivered worldwide every day, all with high-resolution displays and enormous processing power, the Meron, in conjunction with the SianoTV application, is the ideal tool to equip all of these devices with an exceptional TV on-the-go experience,” said Alon Ironi, CEO of Siano. “You can put it on the table in a café, place it on a window ledge at home, or conveniently leave it in your pocket when you’re taking a walk in the park… Meron will deliver crystal clear TV to your personal smartphone or tablet. Given its affordable price, we believe that the Meron is transforming the conventional habits of TV viewing, making them more suitable to our era of smartphones and tablets,” added Ironi.
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Price and Availability
Meron will be available Q1 2013 for Europe, Australia, Latin America and Japan. Pricing was not announced.
Carmel is now available for €69.
