Watch the World Cup from the comfort of your own car
Rinaldi Herdianto, Contributor, Jakarta
In the past couple of weeks, Jakartans have witnessed unusual early evening traffic jams after work. It appears that many more people than normal are heading home at the same time with no one willing to stay on at the office.
Consequently, thoroughfares and tollroads have seen heavy bumper-to-bumper traffic jam as if the traffic police were no longer able to handle the situation.
What's up? Yep, you guessed it ... the World Cup. Many Jakartans admit that, since the start of the World Cup, they have been leaving their offices in a rush so they can reach home before 6:30 p.m. to watch the matches live.
Unfortunately, the heavy congestion has often thwarted their plan to get home in time.
Little do people realize that there is a relatively cheap alternative to the stressful ride home.
A number of leading manufacturers for mobile audio systems, such as Kenwood, Sony, Clarion, Microvision and Philips, have introduced a number of state-of-art TV sets that can be installed in your car. Amazingly, some of the monitors can also be used for CD, VCD, DVD players and video games as well.
The monitors come in different sizes, normally ranging from 3.5 inches to 6.8 inches. While many manufacturers produce their gadgets with the limited interior space of a car in mind, Santeca have launched the 1501TV which features a 15.1 inch wide LCD screen!
In the meantime, the price of an in-car TV in the domestic market starts just above the Rp 2 million mark to more than Rp 8 million, depending on the brand, functions and accessories.
That budget will of course go higher if you want a real theater in your car because you will need other supporting gadgets for the sound.
Businessman K. Julianto Mihardja, for instance, has five TV monitors which can be used for CDs and VCDs in his Toyota MasterAce van. He managed this with the help of a few mechanics at an interior car shop in Radio Dalam, South Jakarta.
But according to traders at several electronic centers in Jakarta, in-car TVs are so far not that popular in this country.
"Even the World Cup has not been able to boost their sales," said Bambang who works at a shop on Jl. Fatmawati in South Jakarta. "People tend to install in-car TVs only as an accessory, not for in-car entertainment. This is due to the high price and time-consuming installation process," he added.
In some countries, like Japan and South Korea, such TV sets have become more of a necessity than a car accessory. If you are fortunate enough, you may find a taxi in those countries with an in-car TV. A clever way for the driver to get a bigger tip.
Unlike regular portable TV sets (with built-in antenna which use the cigarette lighter to obtain power) that usually give a flickering picture, the in-car TV is specially designed to have a more stable picture and is not easily disrupted by little bumps on the road partly thanks to its external antenna.
For the true in-car TV system, the power is supplied directly from the car battery and it uses the car's audio system for the sound. And it can be connected to the car's CD/VCD/DVD player or your kid's PlayStation to help ease your family's long trip.
The Kenwood KVT-910DVD, for example, combines a DVD-Video player, CD player, LCD screen, touchscreen control, TV tuner, AM/FM tuner, four-channel power amplification, MPEG-2 video decoder, Dolby Digital and DTS multichannel audio decoders, comprehensive remote control, and lots of digital signal processing.
So, there is no need to miss any World Cup matches or the fun of crawling along a typical Jakarta traffic jam.
But if you are the one driving the car, always be on the alert, particularly when your favorite team scores.
No one will forgive you for the accident, and the police, the court and your family will not see your excuse as being "funny".