I recently bought a new Verizon Voyager phone.  One of the features that makes this a pretty cool phone is the TV and video on demand feature.   Given how well the TV features work, I'm quite surprised that this isn't marketed as a marquee feature of the phone - especially since this is something the iPhone doesn't do.

Yesterday (Black Friday) we went shopping in downtown Seattle and I had a chance to experiment with the TV feature.  In short, both the broadcast TV and the video on demand works really well.  Of course, its digital so there are none of the staticy artifacts of analog TV broadcasts.

By "worked really well" I mean that the reception was very good, even inside buildings and that the picture quality was good - especially considering this is a phone.  The only time I couldn't get a signal was right in the middle of the first floor.  I watch the phone as we moved about the building and it did an admirable job of getting a signal and displaying video when it could.  It also had good messages and told me when the signal was poor.

I've done a bit of work with Video playback quality and when the signal is good, the frame rate is quite smooth.

Note though - this is a phone its not a TV and the picture quality is still not quite as good as a real TV.    There are a few obvious artifacts sometimes and occasionally there is some color smudging.   In short, the TV does not look like Hiro does in the promotional picture to the right.

The TV image also doesn't go edge to edge on the display - at least in the on demand videos and TV I've watched.

But, the TV image is good especially considering the display only has a resolution of 400x240 pixels. Both my kids and my wife enjoyed the TV and being prime media consumers, thought the picture quality was just fine.  They all really enjoyed watching a little TV when we were waiting around for things.  My wife - who is a huge football fan - watched the 4'th quarter of the LSU vs. Arkansas game and the  picture was plenty good enough to see the action.   This was a great game that went into double over time.

The only problem we had with watching TV is that the speakers are not very loud - if you are in a quite place, then they are just fine, but in a noisy environment like a mall, its too hard to hear with out getting really close to the phone.  This is awkward, even if there is only one person watching the phone.   If there are two, then it becomes impossible to watch and listen at the same time.

Of course, headphones would solve this problem, but amazingly enough, the phone did not come with headphones - despite being heavily marketed as a music and entertainment phone. 

I think the LG folks made a poor design choice here - the little speakers are just tool small to be effective for real TV or music enjoyment.    They just cannot be loud enough.    The Voyager should really come with head phones.

But, I think this is a good thing - imagine a bunch of people wandering around in public listening to TV that is loud enough to hear!