Garmin today announced the upcoming availability of the nüvi 1490TV personal navigation device that features DVB-T digital terrestrial TV and radio with a 5-inch color touchscreen display. The device will be for sale in April at €299/GBP299.

Using the DVB-T digital television standard, the nüvi can pick up freeview digital TV and radio content from over 14 countries across Europe. This Garmin device will come out right in time for the FIFA World Cup 2010, an event well known for driving up sales of the new generation of TV sets every four years.

The nüvi 1490TV has built-in stereo speakers and a 3.5mm headphone output, a long life lithium-ion battery, composite video input for external reversing camera (not supplied), a built-in aerial for high DVB-T signal strength areas and two magnetic dipole aerials for low signal areas.

This is the second attempt for Garmin in the mobile TV arena in Europe; the first one was in Italy two years ago when the GPS maker launched the nüvi 900T, a PND integrating a DVB-H receiver, only compatible with the mobile TV network launched by wireless operator 3 (read story here). It does not seem to have been a success for Garmin that has not launch any new DVB-H compatible PND since then. Generally the uptake of the DVB-H standard has been slow in Europe where DVB-T coverage is good and can be used by mobile devices too.

Multiple standards, one TV chipset
Outside Europe, Garmin is already shipping a mobile TV-enabled navigation device in China (nüvi 1480C), where the local standard is China Multimedia Mobile Broadcasting (CMMB). To support these multiple standards Garmin is using the technology developed but Israeli semiconductor company Siano Mobile Silicon, which support a broad array of digital TV standards into a single chipset.