
Sony’s dream of freeing TV from the confines of the living room is looking more like reality with a gadget that allows you to watch local broadcasts on a PC even if you are thousands of miles from home. Sony is notching up strong sales of a small black box that can do just that. The book-size device plugs into your home TV antenna, converts the signal to the MPEG-4 digital standard, encrypts it for security and streams it over the Internet to your PC. It also works with Sony’s PlayStation Portable handheld video game device and compatible mobile phones will be out soon.