TV viewing, however, can occur even while the vehicles are moving, using the same acquisition capability. MotoSAT's TMotion 1000 is encased in a foot-high dome hugging the vehicle roof. But the company has developed the TMotion 1500, a dish only four inches high, small enough to be sandwiched between the rails of luggage racks on SUVs and minivans, "and you can still park in the garage," Brown said. It gets satellite TV signals and will be available in June.

"This will give you in-motion television in your car, the same service you get at home," Brown said, giving it a leg up on current video options for vehicles that consist of the ability only to play DVDs or videotapes.

"When you add this to it, you now have live TV. It's possible to have over 300 channels in your vehicle, as well as all your (satellite) music," he said.

Built in Israel with technology acquired from a Bulgarian company that built antennae for the Soviet military, the TMotion line will get a new addition in July when the TMotion 100 becomes available. The 14-inches-wide, 3-inches-high, streamlined antenna will pull in over-the-air TV signals from its mount on vehicle roofs or trunk lids.

"Most passenger cars don't leave their metropolitan area. You don't take them on vacation more than maybe 10 percent of the time, so you'll be able to get all of your local channels plus a few selected premium channels," Brown said.

The potential customer base is huge. While only 300,000 motor homes are built each year, Brown cites statistics indicating that 12 million cars roll out of factories annually and more than 200 million cars are registered in the United States.

"Right away, our market is substantially bigger," he said.

Subsequent models may be only a half-inch thick and molded into the "skin" of the vehicle, providing full in-motion Internet access.

"This is a lot like cell phones when they first came out," Anderson said. "There weren't too many at first, but now people sometimes have two or three. You're going to have Internet on the go. It's going to be incredible."

MotoSAT has come a long way since Bob Stacey built a motorized, 5-foot-wide, fold-down satellite TV dish for his RV in 1984. Other RV owners wanted one, so Stacey and another engineer, Ed Travis, went into business. Mobile Technology Inc. acquired MotoSAT in 1999, and Jim Pendleton, Mobile Technology's founder, oversaw the company's development of the DataStorm products before retiring last year.

MotoSAT, with direct sales and a network of about 500 dealers nationwide, expects to sell about 10,000 of the TMotion 1500s and 30,000 of the TMotion 100s this year. The company has an installed base of about 3,000 DataStorm products worldwide and expects to sell about that many this year, although one manufacturer may boost that figure by the thousands.