Toshiba Unveils Laptop With Instant-On TV & DVR

Patik writes "Toshiba has unveiled a new laptop, Qosmio, that allows users to watch TV or a DVD without booting the OS. The laptop turns on instantly for these functions and has a 15" near-TV quality screen. To use DVR functions like time shifting and recording, the user must boot the Windows Media Center OS."

Comments

"15" near-TV quality screen"

[mirko]

near-TV...
Is this HDTV, or older PAL/SECAM or NTSC quality ?

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[nametaken]

I like the idea of the bundled remote too. I don't know about this "near-TV" thing though. How can that be? The whole deal sounds pretty nice for $2500.

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[I_am_Rambi]

regular tv is 800x600
hdtv is 1024x768

I sure hope its alittle better than that

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[WegianWarrior]

A 15" screen has, at least the ones I've seen, usually a resolution of 1024x768 pixels. As far as TV goes... well:
PAL: 625 scanlines, at 4:3 this will give 833 pixels in the horisontal plane
NTSC: 480 scanlines, and the same 4:3 ratio giving 640 pixels horisontaly
HDTV has different meanings depending on who makes them, but is often used for sets having a refreshrate twice the normal and a resolution of either 1920x1080 or 1280x720. mind you, the actuall signall recived over the antenna will be the same as in an old PAL/NTSC set...

I guess 'near-TV' in this case don't refer to the actuall resolution - since it could be argued that it's better than the telly - but perhaps to lightlevel or contrast. Kinda hard to tell, and rather subjective to.

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[Technician]

regular tv is 800x600
hdtv is 1024x768

NTSC video bandwidth is 4.2 MHZ. 525 lines including retrace. How do you get 800 X 600 out of that?

Check the spec. Only the 3 X 4 aspect ratio matches. Everything else is stretched to fit. Lines that are not there are generated, not sent from the source.

A very brief spec for NTSC is found here;
http://www.datapro.net/techinfo/NTSC.html

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[macshit]

Eh? HDTV uses a 16x9 aspect ratio (1280 x 720 or 1920 x 1080)... [Or did the manufs manage to fuck things up?]

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? You got both of those wrong. Do you have any idea what you're talking about, or just typing in the first resolutions that come to mind?

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[Phreakiture]

regular tv is 800x600 hdtv is 1024x768

Wrong!

Regular TV is nX480, where n is determined by available analogue bandwidth, or by the defined digital value, whichever is less. If composite video is involved, n is less than 300, with colour resolution less than 150. If the narrowest analog link is S-Video, then image resolution may be as high as you can muster, but colour resolution is less constrained to about 400 pixels. Component can go as high as you want.

Digital modes include 352x240 (0.1 megapixels; VCD), 352x480 (0.2 megapixels; TiVo), 480x480 (0.2 megapixels; SVCD), 640x480 (0.3 megapixels; DTV/VGA), 704x480 (0.3 megapixels; DTV) and 720x480 (0.3 megapixels; DV/DVD). Note that in no case does X approach 800 nor Y approach 600. 800x600 would be 0.5 megapixels.

Now, if you've been paying attention, you've noticed that VCD is not nX480, byt nX240. To present this on an NTSC monitor, either each line is repeated, or the picture is scaled and smoothed, depending on your playback hardware.

HDTV, on the other hand, is firmly defined as 1280x720 (0.9 megapixels) or 1920x1080 (2.1 megapixels), both higher than 1024x768 (0.8 megapixels).

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[Atrax]

> A 15" screen has, at least the ones I've seen, usually a resolution of 1024x768 pixels

well, my laptop has a 15.4" nominal, and can do 1920x1200 (UXGA). admittedly this is an upgrade, and a widescreen, but it's not like you HAVE to run 1024 on every 15" laptop. I scared a Mac user today with it, a 17" powerbook person no less. Of course it's probably contributing to my eventual blindness....

Inspiron, 15.4" 1900x1200 (not quite my config, but close)

Yeah, I know, this ain't likely to be standard, but it's an option.

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[dosius]

I thought NTSC was 720x486. Hence DVD resolution of 720x480 (close to 720x486).

Moll.

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[Anonymous Coward]

My 1.5 year old dell laptop has a 15 inch screen that runs @1600x1200, not 1024x768

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[His name cannot be s]

What the hell?

How is this marked "Informative"?

The 4:3 when the refer to TVs is not some magic scanline modifier.

IT'S THE FUCKING ASPECT RATIO!

Example:

A 15" monitor is approximately 12 inches wide, and 9 inches tall.

hence 12/9 ... 4/3! Holy Mother of God Math!

NTSC Defines 480 scan lines. PERIOD*. It has 29.997 frames per second, each frame consisting of 2 fields (240 viewable alternating lines), which are interlaced images.

oh, and by the way.. it's Horizontal , not horisontal

*well, actually NTSC-VHS only does 525 interlaced lines... VHS images are considerably poorer than standard broadcast TV!

Today's rant brought to you by The committee for the abolishment of pathetic overated posts.

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[tgd]

TiVo is not 352x480, it supports three resolutions, and that happens to be the lowest one. If I recall correctly only if your Tivo is set to record over the air in basic quality does it use that low.

Its usually 544x480.

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[Anonymous Coward]

NTSC transmission is 720x486
set your TV to overscan and you'll see all sorts of interesting things broadcasters use in those two 'hidden' 3-pix areas

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[Short Circuit]

NTSC is (analog)x480. That is, you have 480 set rows, or scanlines, but no defined-in-spec limit to the number of discrete values you attempt to display on each line.

As another poster mentioned, though, electrical characteristics of any given TV will limit the amount of detail you can fit into each row.

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[zaqattack911]

What about regular coax? what would the resolution be for that?

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[Phreakiture]

TiVo is not 352x480, it supports three resolutions, and that happens to be the lowest one. If I recall correctly only if your Tivo is set to record over the air in basic quality does it use that low. Its usually 544x480.

Thank you for the correction.

NTSC transmission is 720x486 set your TV to overscan and you'll see all sorts of interesting things broadcasters use in those two 'hidden' 3-pix areas

I did not count that area because it is part of the oversacan, not part of the picture. If I were counting overscan, I would have said 525 rather than 480, but your point is valid.

What about regular coax? what would the resolution be for that?

Analog RF carries composite, so composite rules apply. Either one will top out at about 300X480. If the coax is carrying digital RF, then digital and/or HDTV rules apply.

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[rgarcia]

I thought NTSC was 720x486. Hence DVD resolution of 720x480 (close to 720x486).

I'm pretty sure those remaining 6 lines are used for the closed-captioning track.

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[Phreakiture]

So, NTSC is really "n * 525", not "n * 480" and *certainly* not "n * 486"

I re-assert that it is 480, because only 480 lines appear on the screen, and, in the event of a fixed-pixel screen (LCD, plasma, DLT), 480 is the appropriate Y resolution.

Additionally, in digitizing NTSC, it is digitized to 480 (VCD exception noted), because to do so is entirely aprporiate.

In a similar vein, I assert that PAL/SECAM is 576 (288 for VCD), despite that there are 625 scan lines. The lines beyond 576 are not shown, and are not part of the picture, they therefore contribute nothing to the resolution of the PICTURE.

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[Anonymous Coward]

Toshiba Tecra laptops come in two resolutions, 1024x768 and 1400x1050. The article says that wide-screen laptops will come later, so it's a 4:3 screen, and probably one of the above two resolutions. Odds are, this will use the 1024x768 and basically function about the same as today's EDTVs.

(I have a 1400x1050 15" screen, it's around 127dpi and is very crisp compared to the 96dpi 1024x768 screens.)

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[John Allsup]

What he means by '833 pixels in the horizontal plane' is that there are 833 pixels going ACROSS the display. OK. You do have a little point with the aspect ratio: one must assume that pixels are square before his calculation of horizontal resolution makes sense. But that's all.

Either the entire screen is not used, or some akward scaling will be going on to get the image to fill the entire screen, and this will make for a more blurry image.

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[iantri]

Closed captioning is on line 21 (of 525).

The real reason digital video is 480 lines and not 486 (the supposed full active area) is because most digital compression codecs are based on blocks that are 16x16. Many can only operate on video that has dimensions that are multiples of 16.

480/16=30. Good.

486/16=30.385. Bad.

Re:"15" near-TV quality screen"

[canavan]

Analog RF carries composite, so composite rules apply. Either one will top out at about 300X480. If the coax is carrying digital RF, then digital and/or HDTV rules apply.

I don't know where you got this from, but that's probably 300 TV-lines of resolution, i.e. alternating black/white lines. The NTSC spec says it's 330 lines. Wait, there is more: the horizontal resolution is given in lines per picture height, so for a standard NTSC 4:3 picture, that's the number of lines you can cram into 3/4 of the picture width, resulting in 440 lines. How may pixels that would require is left as an exercise to the reader, because that's where things get even more confusing.

Wow!

[shepd]

I wonder what Apple will do to play catchup? It'll be nice to see direct video capture on a laptop without any added hardware!

Re:Wow!

[mirko]

Well, you'll at least need a tuner...

Re:Wow!

[torpor]

Why do they need to catchup? I very rarely turn my systems off, they're sleeping in low-power mode pretty much most of the time, and everything is available to me whenever I need it.

This "Not-An-OS" hack/trick of Toshiba is a way to get away Windows' (The OS) horrific boot-loading/suspend/power-management stability issue.

In OSX, no such problem exists: the system is stable, and manages its power in such a way that it need not interfere with instant-on operation.

Re:Wow!

[afidel]

Wow, I guess the last time you used a laptop was under 9x. I have seen almost zero problems with power management features under win2k, and zero under XP. All of the 2k problems were with hardware that predated the OS and had it installed by an organization rather than the OEM.

Re:Wow!

[scrm]

There's some speculation that the all-new Apple iMac G5 (announced for September) will include TV functionality

I think this would rock, as it's rather a waste to have those nice wide LCD screens off at any time (that and the fact that my apartment is of the aforementioned shoebox type).

Re:Wow!

[foidulus]

I went to Best Buy the other day just for kicks, and damn if some of the Toshiba laptops I saw(dunno if it was this one or not) looked like powerbooks, with the wide screen even! Though the screens were rather nice.

Re:Wow!

[garethwi]

From the spymac link

What do you guys think of the new imac also being a tv?? I mean think of that awsome 20in screen you could have a computer and tv all in one. For those small rooms or even say dorms. You could also hook your console and vcr up to it. I do not have any true info about this it just came out of my head.


Speculation or shooting the breeze?

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I heard its gonna ship with a free iPhone too and its gonna have an Intel processor running OS X ported to x86!

Re:Wow!

[Ansonmont]

I don't know about that.

I have a Compaq laptop new in Dec 2003 running XP Pro, a Dell Desktop running WinME (poorly, as it is a sorry excuse for an OS) and a 667 G4 Powerbook running 10.1 . Only the PowerBook NEVER hangs when waking up. I reboot the PowerBook every 4 months or so, whether it needs it or not.

All 3 machines have their uses and upsides, but in terms of power management and ability to wake up, the PBook rules in my small sample.
-Anson

Re:Wow!

[SilentChris]

"Windows' (The OS) horrific boot-loading/suspend/power-management stability issue.

In OSX, no such problem exists: the system is stable, and manages its power in such a way that it need not interfere with instant-on operation."

Really? I have both Windows XP and OS X laptops and they boot from power-save near identically. In fact, the OS X one is a little trickier, in that there's some kind of a timeout value (I don't know where to set it) that controls how long the password screen stays up. Often I'll start the machine, step away for a second and find it went back to sleep.

Well, that and everything up to 10.2 didn't require a password screen to boot up, which was just silly. Oh, and ever trying closing the case while iTunes's full screen visualization is running? Good luck entering your password when you come back (it doesn't always show the dialog box!)

Re:Wow!

[SilentChris]

"I think this would rock"

Eh. I've found there's something about watching TV and movies on a computer that just doesn't "feel right". I recently purchased a 20" LCD for the box I built, and it pales in comparison to my 40" HDTV.

On the other hand, movies on a laptop rock. I love taking my iBook to bed and watch episodes of MST3K. In that instance, I think it's better than a bedroom TV.

Re:Wow!

[shepd]

You're probably right on those accounts (I don't use OS X, so I can't be sure, but you seem knowledgeable).

However, what I'm saying is that this laptop from Toshiba appears to be unique in that it has video capture built in, rather than requiring external hardware to accomplish that task.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Been done before back in 1993, the "Macintosh TV" model:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classi c/ stats/mac_tv.html

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac rumors are notoriously bad.

How many times have you seen that Steve Jobs is going to unveil the new Newton at his next speech?

Re:Wow!

[shellbeach]

I mean think of that awsome 20in screen you could have a computer and tv all in one.

Well, in theory, with a STB with D-sub or DVI-D output you should be able to do this with any monitor - no need for a PC at all.

It's actually something I've been thinking of myself - LCD monitors are much cheaper than LCD TVs (at least they are here in Australia) and Avermedia makes a cheap SDTV STB with D-sub out. Whether this works well in practise, though, is something I'm wondering about - I'd love to hear from anyone else who's tried this ...

15" near-TV quality screen

[myster0n]

uhm .... that's bad, isn't it. I thought VGA screens have always been BETTER than TV screens.

Re:15" near-TV quality screen

[ComaVN]

Think viewing angle and refreshrate/fade

Re:15" near-TV quality screen

[myster0n]

That makes sense.
Although a screen that copies the less favourable aspects of a TV screen would be great for MAME. Portable arcade gaming like you've never seen it before :-)

Re:15" near-TV quality screen

[Xrikcus]

Not VGA, but later, certainly, it depends on how you define quality of course. 525 line signals (NTSC - though strictly that's just for colour) (59.94Hz interlaced) are 644x483 visible, 625 line signals (PAL - although ditto) are 768x576 at 50Hz (interlaced).

Re:15" near-TV quality screen

[Anonymous Coward]

I want a laptop with instant on MAME!

Re:15" near-TV quality screen

[myster0n]

Yes, you are correct, but I was thinking along the lines (no pun intended) of the relative blur of a TV screen compared with any PC screen along with contrast issues and interlacing.

I've been working the last 6 months on MHP applications. One of the things I did was convert a 800x600 website to an MHP application. You'd think you'd only lose a little screen estate (PAL is pretty close to 800x600), but when you factor in the minimum size of the fonts you have to use (and the "safe-area") because of those issues, the whole layout had to be reworked.

Re:15" near-TV quality screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming they're using a fairly new panel (made withing the last couple of years), refresh rate shouldn't be a problem for TV and DVD video. A LCD panel with a 40ms response rate can do about 25 FPS without blurring the video noticably. More modern 25ms and 16ms panels can do 40FPS and 60FPS respectively. Of course, if you display a motion at more than whatever the display can handle (like in a game), the pixels can't change fast enough and you get blurring. That shouldn't be a problem for TV and DVDs, which run between 24 and 30FPS.

Viewing angle and the color shifting would definitely be a concern, though. Even brand new LCDs are far from perfect in that department.

Re:15" near-TV quality screen

[jesup]

Those are standards for digitizing NTSC/PAL video. Note however that NTSC (broadcast/cable) has a maximum (best-case) luma bandwidth of 4.2 MHz, and max chroma bandwidth of circa 1 MHz (I forget the exact value). So while 600+ pixels are needed to represent 4.2 Mhz, chroma information is FAR more limited - best case around 150. (All numbers from memory.) Also, realize that 4.2 MHz is an upper limit that is rarely reached by an actual TV/signal combination.

Re:15" near-TV quality screen

[magarity]

Sure, VGA CRT's are better than a TV quality CRT but laptop LCD screens are fixed resolution and look mediocre at TV resolutions.

As a side note, this is just the next logical step. My older Toshiba already plays audio CDs at the flip of a switch without being booted up as a computer.

Re:15" near-TV quality screen

[Xrikcus]

Hmm, but the relative blur is what makes it work for TV, makes movement seem that much smoother. The crispness of a computer monitor, particularly LCDs really doesn't help that.

Re:15" near-TV quality screen

[Xrikcus]

You have a point there. Although that doesn't really affect the display, only what you display on it, if you see what I mean. MPEG video is 4:2:0 chroma subsampled, so digitised video on a computer suffers similarly from that. So the difference there isn't in the screen, but in the signal fed to it.

quality reviews by quality reviewers

[Anonymous Coward]

"arguably the best laptop display currently on the market," said Rob Enderle

so that's going to be totally accurate then

Re:quality reviews by quality reviewers

[Stevyn]

That gets to me..."Arguably"...one can argue anything! "Windows is arguably the best software written." "Bill Gates is arguably the best business man."

Re:quality reviews by quality reviewers

[JohnFluxx]

I've always taken "arguably" to mean that you can put up a reasonable argument for it.

Re:quality reviews by quality reviewers

[Stevyn]

dictionary.com says it just means it can be shown by argument. And "reasonable" is subjective.

Re:quality reviews by quality reviewers

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, this is the guy who loved an Acer laptop because of the Ferrari motif and the sound of Vroom.. Vroom, right. And he said "Overall, this is one of the highest quality laptops I have ever had, and it should serve its purpose of improving Acer's image admirably." This guy has no taste whatsoever.

Yeah, his opinion is so valuable especially when he predicts things about Apple. He is a Microsoft lapdog. I don't know why journalists keep quoting him.

Re:quality reviews by quality reviewers

[magarity]

"Bill Gates is arguably the best business man."

This is a pretty open and shut case. Since success in business is measured by profitability, Gates and his company have very few competitors for the title. Now if you want to argue whether he's the most philanthropic, etc, then you might be able to argue both ways.

uh oh.

[torpor]

This is an interesting dis-info exercise. People think "OS = Microsoft".

It is "not booting -the- OS", no. Its not booting "Windows OS".

There -is- an OS being loaded, just that its only going to support Toshiba's Apps... and nobody elses.

Re:uh oh.

[tarunthegreat2]

Well I'm not sure you're entirely right there. In order to load up just the TV, you'd probably just need to initialize some embedded system on a chip. Yes, that may be an "OS" but it could very well just be a dedicated chip. I find it hard to think my current TV (which has some of those on-screen display features like most new TVs) is running an 'operating system'.
Well I for one welcome our TV/Laptop bundling overlords.

Re:uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

personally i think that this solution is similar to some mini-itx pc's that loads a small OS into de HD. it's more easy this way to kill bugs etc than using the way you're talking :P

Re:uh oh.

[jerith]

Umm, not necessarily. The TV watching mode could be done entirely in hardware. The DVD player would have to have the usual firmware, of course, but not necessarily a full OS. Most of the more advanced options would be done using the PC, as noted in the article.

Re:uh oh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Did you fail English in third grade or something? Or just haven't had your coffee yet? I can barely understand what you're saying.

Not quite so nice

[LiquidCoooled]

Its only got half the functionality.

Consider yourself turning this thing on and watching, you get carried away and want to record something.

You have to reboot, LOAD WINDOWS, start the tv thingy and get recording.

from the article:

If users want to pause live TV or record TV shows onto the 80-gigabyte hard disk, however, they'll need to do so with the Windows software.

Re:Not quite so nice

[wisdom_brewing]

maybe if they could somehow incorporate simultanious bootup?

Re:Not quite so nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you're right. It seems to be worthless. If I'm travelling why would I want this anyway? Every hotel room has a TV.

Instead of an instant on TV, why didn't they try to make the whole thing instant on? Seems like that would be a hot item in anyone's hands then. Maybe a flash memory array that could feed data in parallel back to main RAM on power up, so you get a 1 second resume from hibernation. That would kick ass! I'd pay extra for a feature like that...

Re:Not quite so nice

[LiquidCoooled]

How about simply allow the Core OS to write to the disk under its control?

It really shouldn't be that complicated to add PVR functionality without booting windows.

It could have been such a useful, practical alternative use for the laptop, but now people will have to decide before switching on whether they want instant gratification or delayed full experience.

As far as I can see, this might be a marketing bullet point, but for actual practicality it ranks pretty low (OK, maybe the dvd part is useful).

I agree with your bootup scenario - like old style games which allowed a mini game to be played whilst loading.

Time to load isn't actually that big a problem though - my Cable set top box takes longer to power up and start showing channels than the xp box I'm on now.

Re:Not quite so nice

[John Allsup]

The problem is that whatever is writing to the disk needs to understand the current version of NTFS, or else a partition of the HD needs to be reserved for PVR purposes and the Windows software modified to make use of it. It may well have been possible with FAT32, but that's obsolete and limited to smaller partitions.

Re:Not quite so nice

[LiquidCoooled]

Your right of course, but that could be solved by assessing the formatting of the drive, if it is compatible, then make use of it, otherwise dont. Just make sure the OEM install does as you say and creates a fat32 partition.

Mind you, its just flogging a dead horse really, they haven't, it doesn't - we just gotta suck it and see.

The one part I do like is definately dvd, that turns your laptop into an instant movie station, and would get more use out of me than tv.

without booting the OS

[manavendra]

without booting the OS

So its a laptop built into a TV then, not the other way around, eh?

Re:without booting the OS

[ciryon]

Interesting to see many consumer devices that can be used without a computer/OS. This laptop that can play DVD's without booting. Digital cameras that you use and give the memory card to a shop or isert in a printer that can print without being connected to a computer.

I believe manufacturers have found out that everage users don't like to use computers. Why? Because they are crap. "They", most generally means Windows, which is so unfriendly to use that most people avoid it if they can.

Re:without booting the OS

[Metamediarich]

Naive and/or ignoarnat as I may be - Why do we still tolerate "booting" as a necessary part of the process? Aren't there enough solid state options available that the OS could reside in a separate (from the hard drive) space, always running, always available? So you might still have to re-start after modifications to the OS - like security updates? - but otherwise, why do we still have this in our lives?

Re:without booting the OS

[manavendra]

Very interesting indeed!

I've always wondered why in such embedded/utility systems we have a formal "booting up". I've always felt that the default OS should start up without any fuss and trademark logos or such on power-up, giving a no-fuss start, with a manual button/key/option to over-ride and do something else

So, even if its not always-running or always-on, its on when you need it...

Re:without booting the OS

[janbjurstrom]

The ancient IBM T21 laptop this is written on hasn't been rebooted in over 2 months (I messed up an installation). Over the last year there's been like 3-4 reboots - all unnecessary and due to my not knowing what the hell I was doing tweaking the system :).

Normal operation though, I put it in suspend mode and get it back online in a second or three.

(The current OS is Redhat 9, it might've been different if I'd've had Windows installed(?), but there really is no need to power this computer off ...save for hardware changes, or major software changes - e.g. installing a new OS.)

Re:without booting the OS

[iomanip]

so would the other way around be a tv with a laptop built in? If so, it probably wouldn't be much of a laptop, given that it was built into a tv.

I can see it now, walking down the street and seeing some poor schmoe with a 27" tv sitting on his lap with a little keyboard protruding out from the bottom talkin about how his laptop has a big ass display.

Re:without booting the OS

[Politicus]

One of these days when the technology becomes available, computers will be able to turn on instantly like a Commodore 64.

Seriously though, it is pretty apparent why this hasn't happened on Wintel machines, but it's totally baffling why Apple has not taken advantage of designing their mobile systems to do this. Actually, I take that back. My Newton is instant-on, but that's not exactly an Apple success story now is it? Perhaps that's your answer right there. People aren't willing to pay for such systems but that's just conjecture on my part.

gimmick

[Onceat]

It does not take that long thesed ays to boot up a machine , I would find this irritating especially if most of the features are disabled without a OS boot, I have a machine like that i call it my tv not my laptop, it all sounds rather like a gimmick

Re:gimmick

[hcdejong]

Not long? YMMV, obviously. My one-year-old laptop takes something like 5 minutes to get its act together.

Re:gimmick

[Technician]

It does not take that long thesed ays to boot up a machine

I don't think the issue is the boot time. For a laptop, the issue may be battery life. If you can run a 15 watt display and tuner and leave the 60 watt CPU, HD, Memory, and interfaces un-powered, it may greatly extend the battery life. Too bad the extra time gets eaten by long adverts on over the air TV.

On second thought, this may have trouble selling. NTSC is scheduled to go away. There is very little worth watching on over the air TV. Why bother?

Re:gimmick

[Onceat]

Okay but I have a year old ibook and it does not take 5 minutes, one minute tops , maybe 2 if it is unplugged from the power and has to run on it's own juice , but that not long , I have had some dam slow machines in the past, but I hear what you say and I agree laptops do take longer than desktops

Re:gimmick

[Onceat]

Good point , i never thought of battery life being a factor in watching TV, It would be nice if they had it connect with blue tooth or something to a satelite dish or dvd player, that way this technology would be indespensable , when you need the bathroom and dont want to miss what your watching , but I guess thats a entire diffrent problem, if you need to watch TV so much

Re:gimmick

[Technician]

when you need the bathroom and dont want to miss what your watching ,

Since I just have over the air TV, finding time to visit the restroom is not a problem as most breaks are at least 4 minutes each. I have time to use the restroom, wash my hands and face, and make a 2 minute bag of microwave popcorn before the commercials are over.

Improvement on the 2 in 1 problem

[peterdaly]

Many "2 in 1 devices" offer either a poor version of both components, or at least one of them.

This is a great step in improving the tv on computer experience.

That being said, I don't understand why they say "near tv quality" when the laptop screen is so much better than a normal TV. Does it have to do with the scaling?

-Pete

Re:Improvement on the 2 in 1 problem

[hcdejong]

How is splitting the functionality of the unit in half (OS loaded/not loaded) an improvement?

Windows Media Center Edition?

[argent]

Wonder if it'll run anything less funky, for the folks who want something with fewer frills.

Re:Windows Media Center Edition?

[Moofie]

Wonder if there are other products in Toshiba's line with fewer frills, that anybody who wants fewer frills might buy instead...

You think?

Re:Windows Media Center Edition?

[argent]

Wonder if there are other products in Toshiba's line with fewer frills, that anybody who wants fewer frills might buy instead...

It's the frills in Microsoft's products I'm of a mind to get rid of, youngster, not Toshiba's.

Re:Windows Media Center Edition?

[Moofie]

UH, it's called Windows XP. Maybe you've heard of it.

Re:Windows Media Center Edition?

[argent]

I've tried XP a couple of times, and I'm back at Windows 2000/FreeBSD dual boot again. XP, as far as I can see, is basically Windows 2000 with a bunch of extra chrome and some smoke-and-mirrors security that doesn't help anyone but Bill Gates and the RIAA/MPAA mob sleep well at night.

Oh, and some stuff to make it boot faster by increasing the base memory usage, to encourage me to buy a new computer 'cos my laptop's already maxed out.

Re:Windows Media Center Edition?

[Moofie]

Mmmmkay. And this has what exactly to do with Toshiba's new laptop?

One of us is very confused.

Re:Windows Media Center Edition?

[argent]

Um...

It ships with Windows Media Center Edition.

Therefore the question arises, does the firmware DVD functionality depend in any way on the OS (probably not, but I've seen weirder dependencies than that), and is the hardware otherwise generic enough to allow a standard software load (I've run into laptops where the only way to get the right drivers is through their own restore disk)...

Re:Windows Media Center Edition?

[Moofie]

I just figured it out.

It was me that was confused.

Have a nice day.

Google

[mirko]

This search leads to many domain names, the ones belonging to Toshiba do not even lead to websites giving more info on this product.

Re:Google

[sh0rt r0und]

Try the following link from Toshiba Japan: http://dynabook.com/pc/catalog/dynabook/040506ex/i ndex_j.htm

hmm

[manavendra]

Its kinda surprising in a way, to think that the concept of an information/computing device that also has the, by now standard, means of entertainment built in.

However, with these new devices being built into laptops, wouldnt they be slightly more heavier?

Though I suppose a lotta people wouldnt mind carrying the laptop around and watching whatever available channels in the air, wherever they are in the world. Airports won't be so dreary anymore then, eh?

Re:hmm

[Schrambo]

However, with these new devices being built into laptops, wouldnt they be slightly more heavier?

Not very likely. If there is any addtional weight it would be insignificant to notice the difference from a similar model without the feature. Nothing that will break the camels back.

Why widescreen laptops?

[oshy]

Why are laptops going widescreen? Shouldnt PCs be streaching the other way.

Lets take an example of some poor sod using MSOffice

They have the task bar down the bottom.
They may have a scrolling news bar across the top.
The will have menu bars at the top of word.
All sorts of tool bars docked with the menu.
What way up to we normally edit a page? Portrait, not landscape.

I saw a secerterys PC once that had so many extra toolbars, that using Word was like working through a letterbox.

Re:Why widescreen laptops?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps toolbars should default to the left hand edge on widescreen displays.

Re:Why widescreen laptops?

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone can buy page monitors. they have been for sale for years and most Operating systems support them.

why complain about something that has existed and has been ableto be purchased for decades???

oh wait, you did not bother to even look.

Re:Why widescreen laptops?

[CommanderData]

I agree completely. I have a "convertable" Tablet PC, a Toshiba M200. When at my desk I use it on a stand in portrait mode ALL the time (with an external keyboard plugged in). The beautiful resolution in portrait (1400 vertical x 1050 horizontal) is great for editing in Word or reading PDF files. You can see a full page as it was meant to be seen, even with taskbars and toolbars.

Of course it's also an awesome way to read and post to /. too :)

Re:Why widescreen laptops?

[Snaapy]

Why are laptops going widescreen? Shouldnt PCs be streaching the other way.

Laptops aren't used only as text editors anymore. Gaming and multimedia takes advantage of widescreen. Sooner or later all DVD/TV broadcasts will be 16:9. Natural image, unlike text, is better to be bigger in horizontal direction than vertical direction. This is simply because our eyes are located next to each other sideways :)

Re:Why widescreen laptops?

[TheRaven64]

I don't know about you, but I am a member of the species homo sapiens. We have two eyes on the front of our heads giving two horizontally overlapping fields of vision. These are interpreted by the brain and stitched together to give a field of view that is considerably wider than it is high. A laptop screen (or a desktop screen, for that matter) that is wider than it is tall fits in our field of vision better than on that is taller.

Now, consider the UI I usually interact with:

OS X dock on the right hand side of the screen.
Menu bar at the top (no clutter by having visible menu bars for inactive windows. Easier target to hit according to Fitt's law.)
Document window the height of the screen.
Tool pallets floating around it.
Preview window floating next to it.

When using something like LaTeX (or even editing HTML) widescreen is very useful, since you can have a preview window and an editing window on screen next to each other at the same time. The same is true of writing code, since it is possible to put a code window and a document window on screen next to each other easily.

Re:Why widescreen laptops?

[kannibal_klown]

Why are laptops going widescreen? Shouldnt PCs be streaching the other way.

I bought a widescreen Wintel laptop last year for one reason only: coding

In coding, I want as much horizontal room as possible. Vertical, I don't care as much about.

Depending on your IDE and / or options, you usually have atleast 1 pane (left of right) with an explorer / visualizer / etc. Some even have left AND right.

Don't get me wrong, when I code, I try not to go too far to the side. But every little bit helps.

The widescreen is also handy when you have a lot of stuff open. Maybe a person wants to see their AOL buddy list while they're typing (or browsing). Maybe they want to place these 2 windows side-by-side.

Granted, the "widescreen" only adds 1-2 inches of width on a 15" widescreen. But it's usually enought to make a difference.

Re:Why widescreen laptops?

[peter_gzowski]

I like widescreen because I use programs that have summaries on the left-hand side, and sometimes a different summary on the right-hand side. I'm always shifting the window width in Eclipse to either see my project summary (left), or my class summary (right). I also use a latex program that gives me a document outline on the left. I'm also using the document map in Word all the time, which is a left-hand side summary of your document. I don't actually think this is the reason laptops are going wide screen (that's probably because people use them to play movies, and that it looks cool), but that's the reason I like it.

Re:Why widescreen laptops?

[killbill!]

Why are laptops going widescreen? Shouldnt PCs be streaching the other way.

[...]

What way up to we normally edit a page? Portrait, not landscape.

How about you display two pages at once? It often makes more sense to be able to see odd and even pages together.

Btw this is exactly how Apple markets its widescreen displays.

Re:Why widescreen laptops?

[poot_rootbeer]

A laptop screen (or a desktop screen, for that matter) that is wider than it is tall fits in our field of vision better than on that is taller.

Yes, but if you lay out text so that it spans your entire field of vision, your eyes will tire quickly from scanning back and forth. It's not a coincidence that the vast majority of printed material from the past several thousand years is presented in "portrait mode", usually in columns with a width of roughly three to ten inches.

This doesn't preclude the usefulness of widescreen displays on notebooks and other computers, as you mention -- you can set up two document pages side-by-side and either page will be easy to read.

Re:Why widescreen laptops?

[AK Marc]

Why are laptops going widescreen?

Because my 15.4 inch widescreen screen has fewer pixels than a 15.1 regular screen. It gives bigger size numbers for lower cost.

I saw a secerterys PC once that had so many extra toolbars, that using Word was like working through a letterbox.

I moved my toolbars to the side. I now have more vertical real estate to work with. When the screens get big enough, widescreen is good because you can get two pages side-by-side.

So, widescreen is god for movies, may be good for games, reduces cost for manufacturers for a "bigger" screen.

Re:Why widescreen laptops?

[shellbeach]

Why are laptops going widescreen? Shouldnt PCs be streaching the other way.

Well, laptops have the keyboard formfactor to consider, I guess. But most stand-alone LCD monitors are going tall-screen ... at least going from 4:3 to 5:4. It seems a logical move to me, too.

Re:Why widescreen laptops?

[oshy]

Plug a monitor into my laptop? Hmmmmmmmm One more bit to carry round with me.

Re:Why widescreen laptops?

[oshy]

At work I have a dual head workstation so I can, for example, open word on one screen and excel on the other.
Would take up less desk space if both were landscape though. Bought by company so no point mentioning the ones that exist. Not going to get them to splash out on something usefull like decent monitors.

Near-TV quality means...

[argent]

Brightness, contrast, color accuracy and stability, viewing angle, there's a lot more than pixel size and area to a screen.

Re:Near-TV quality means...

[pmsr]

And don't forget switching speed for each pixel. The higher the speed the less blur you will see in fast paced scenes.

/Pedro

Re:Near-TV quality means...

[argent]

Maaaaan, the bluuuuur reminds me of the sixteeeees.

Re:Near-TV quality means...

[kavau]

..and, most importantly, dynamic range.

TV / laptop combinations

[davejenkins]

Combining a TV with a notebook is a big point here in Japan. Many young people live in single room apartments (literally 15 sq metre boxes) where space is at an extreme premium. As such, many just cannot afford the space of having both a computer monitor and a television.

Dell Japan offers TV tuners for their desktops only in Japan. All the Japanese manufacturers (Fujitsu, Toshiba, NEC, Hitachi, Sony, et al) pack TV tuners in their machines as defaults. Toshiba has made the jump by avoiding the 20-seconds of boot-up time when someone just wants to watch the latest episode of Gundam reruns...

While we're on the subject of japanese notebooks, the US notebooks suck in terms of case design and overall size/weight.

Re:TV / laptop combinations

[poot_rootbeer]

Dell Japan offers TV tuners for their desktops only in Japan.

Well, I wouldn't expect Dell Japan to sell TV tuners in the United States.

Dell USA does, though -- they have a line of Windows Media Center PCs.

While we're on the subject of japanese notebooks, the US notebooks suck in terms of case design and overall size/weight.

US notebooks are designed to meet a different set of requirements than those sold in Japan. For instance, more of us in America have our own cars -- traveling with a big heavy laptop is not as much of a concern for many of us, because the car often does the work of bearing the weight, instead of our shoulders. Because minimizing weight and form factor are thusly a lower priority, more attention can be given to other concerns such as durability and battery life.

Atari on the road!

[L-Wave]

Cool, hopefully I can hook up my Atari to it for a portable system! =)

How small is Windows Media Center?

[192939495969798999]

There are really only a few functions a TV + DVR would need to perform in the context of having a computer, so couldn't the OS be really, really tiny? If it records, plays back, pauses, saves, deletes and schedules, that ought to about do it, right? Why all the extra junk, or is there any extra junk? (I assumed that there was probably a LOT of extra junk on that OS)

Re:How small is Windows Media Center?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's got all the same extra junk as Windows XP Pro, because it IS Windows XP Pro with what amounts to little more than 30 to 50MB of software tacked on (The Media Center software)...

buttons on the side

[Anonymous Coward]

My last 2 laptops have been Toshiba Satellites, and they are excellent machines.

I can only assume Qosmio will be nice as well, however I really dislike the trend of putting buttons all over the front and sides of the laptop. About twice a month my Toshiba 5202-S703 gets turned on accidentally because I hit one of the DVD buttons on the front, or a button gets pressed due to the shifting inside my carrying case.

It's really pleasant to take it out of the case when I have work to do and find it hot as hell with half the battery drained... ...of course the ultimate insult is opening the lid to find Windows Media Player sitting there waiting for me to open a file or insert a DVD.

Re:buttons on the side

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't there some way to disable that? I used to have a Toshiba that had the same feature, but I never had that problem. Maybe I just got lucky.

Re:buttons on the side

[ejaw5]

I had the same problem on my Toshiba 2415-S205. It has "multimedia" buttons on the front side of the laptop, and if second button from the right is pressed long enough, the machine will power up. This happened to me recently and the thing was HOT and battery drained to 40%.

Solution: (follow at own risk!)

- take out harddrive from case (to prevent vibration/shock)
- Unlatch keyboard from bay. Disconnect keyboard ribbon cable and LCD cable from motherboard.
- If you have a miniPCI slot, open it up and untape the two wifi antenna wires, if present
- remove most/all screws from bottom of laptop.
- (this part you're on your own). Figure out how the laptop is put together, and carefully seperate the two major pieces (top/bottom). You will most likey have to disconnect more things within the keyboard bay to be able to open the laptop. In my case it the power button board and CPU heatsink cover had to be removed. I was able to open the "lid" enough so I didn't have to disconnect the speakers.
- Follow the "multimedia buttons" daugherboard's interface ribbon, and disconnect that where it leads.
- Reattach all other components and hope it works right (wiht multimedia keys disabled)

Revelation: I feel sorry for whoever in the Phillipines who have to put together these laptops for a living.

uh oh

[xplosiv]

Assuming the software loads from the Bios as some of the other new media center systems do, I hope this doesn't mean more newbies will be upgrading their bios in order to get the latest features or apply a patch, I have seen it happen too many times where they somehow manage to not follow the instructions and screw up the bios.

Re:uh oh

[afidel]

So, flash ram is cheap. Compaq has been providing a secondary BIOS image on their servers for some time now, there's no real reason not to other than saving a couple pennies. HP has a special key combo on the Kayak line that will force a ROM loaded image to read a new BIOS image from floppy, and other manufacturers have their own way to recover a hosed machine. This isn't the bad old days of computers, most of the issues with a failed BIOS update have been solved so the worst that will happen is that some service depot's will get some extra waranty repair revenue (and yes installing a vendor supplie BIOS update should be covered under warant)

Imperial measurements.

[Anonymous Coward]

15 SQ Metre is 161 SQ feet or 14'8" x 11'
Or about the size of average hotel room that you can put a queen size bed in with a small table.

Re:Imperial measurements.

[Anonymous Coward]

who cares what it is in imperial measu... oh thats right, you guys in the states still havent caught up with the rest of the world

Re:Imperial measurements.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you reading a blatantly US-centric geek web site... Oh that's right, you guys overseas still haven't caught up and created your own forum to hang out in...

Re:Imperial measurements.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty large if it's just the room, but quite small if it's the a whole apartment.

that's all well and good but..

[Anonymous Coward]

does it run linux?

article title

[dj245]

"Toshiba Unveils Laptop With Instant-On TV & DVR

The DVR isn't instant on, only the TV is. I suppose if you took the "&" symbol to mean a pause, like a comma, they would be separate and only the TV would be instant on. But to me, "&" means "and" and "inclusive" and this article title implies that the DVR is also instant on.

Re:article title

[CaptainBaz]

I think it's supposed to be parsed as:

(Instant-On TV) & (DVR)

Re:article title

[CavemanKiwi]

It is all about brackets
(Instant-On TV)& DVR or Instant-On (TV& DVR)
there ya go true!

Re:article title

[Moofie]

Convenient little bit o' sentence structure for the marketroids, isn't it?

Rob Enderle

[ilikejam]

Good to see they've dragged ol' Rob out for some truely informed discussion of the matter at hand.
"They've just moved the bar and are further defining this multimedia class of products."
Yeah. Thanks for that, Rob. I feel I now have a full grasp of the situation. You Muppet.

But when will we get VGA-in?

[Sancho]

All I want on a laptop is a VGA-input so I can use the LCD as the display for another computer. This is coming close to that, but it's still out of reach...

Re:But when will we get VGA-in?

[nuggetman]

perhaps check out http://www.maxivista.com/

Re:But when will we get VGA-in?

[lucifuge31337]

I doubt that's what he meant.

He's probably talking about what I've been wanting too....the ability to use a laptop as an LCD monitor. As in....server in a rack, no KVM available....plug the video keyboard and mouse into the laptop with extension cables, and use the laptop as your IO device.

It would rock, but I'm sure its such a niche market it would never happen in a useful (read: a laptop that isn't complete crap) manner.

Re:But when will we get VGA-in?

[Anonymous Coward]

The market should be huge, actually.

I've been looking for this for 5 years. These days it would be useful built-in, as a PCMCIA card or a USB dongle with long, KVM-like cables. Anyone who spends any time in data centres needs one of these.

Re:But when will we get VGA-in?

[lucifuge31337]

PCMCIA card or a USB dongle with long, KVM-like cables

Mmmmm...even better idea.

Wow. I'm a geek for even caring that much. But damn, that would be nice.

Re:But when will we get VGA-in?

[Sancho]

Interesting, but not quite. Maxivista doesn't appear to actually be VGA-in at all--in uses a network connection and a device driver to simulate a SECOND monitor, but couldn't be used as a primary. Certainly their solution won't work under Linux as it's all done in software and is proprietary.

As the other poster points out, I want a laptop that I can take to any standard x86 PC, run a couple of wires from the laptop to the desktop, and have the display for the x86 PC appear on the laptop's LCD. Basically I want to be able to walk my laptop over to a headless PC and have local access to it.

Of course, it would almost require changes to the BIOS of the laptop to make something like this happen, but it sounds very close to what's going on here, only it's only TV-in instead of VGA-in.

huh???

[Lumpy]

and has a 15" near-TV quality screen.

last time I checked my 5 year old laptop has a BETTER THAN-TV quality screen.

come on 1024X768 versus the NTSC 720X485 resolution mans the PC has higher resolution and is capable of displaying many HD modes.

If this laptop doesnt have a better picture than a regular TV then something is very wrong.

Re:huh???

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

How can you read 'quality' as 'resolution'? Or did you not realize there are other components to it (viewing angle, brightness and contrast to start with)?

Re:huh???

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever tried scaling an LCD to a non-native resolution? Trust me, a 1024x786 LCD running at 640x480 (or something close to that) is going to look noticably blurrier than a CRT TV of the same size. And then there's the viewing angle stuff, which LCDs still have some trouble with (not as much as even a year ago, but they're still not perfect).

Re:huh???

[jcostantino]

The problem with viewing TV on LCD panels is that it looks like, well, it looks like shit. The pixels are too precise for playing back video like that - TV needs a certain "softness" to it. I don't know if they have a special type of LCD or if the TV tuner will do some sort of line doubling/smoothing but from personal experience, TV signals running at high resolution doesn't look right.

Re:huh???

[Anonymous Coward]

yes I have, and it looks really good in mplayer.

same as most LCD televisions out there, they look good yet have higher resolution than the signal.

it's call interpolation and most good software systems can do it to make an analog signal loog very good on a fixed resolution LCD.

Re:huh???

[Anonymous Coward]

The pixels are too precise for playing back video like that - TV needs a certain "softness" to it.

Possibly try a higher resolution display. I have a 4:3 15" 1400x1050 display on the laptop and it makes DVDs look very nice. (Since there's almost 2 pixels for every source pixel on the DVD stream.)

Sizing up from 720x480 (4:3) to 1024x768 (4:3) is tricky, can't just double the lines so you have to do strange contortions.

Instant-on isn't anything new

[drewhearle]

"Instant-on" PCs aren't new. Take a look at the Soyo SY-P4VAL version M (I think this was on Slashdot before but I don't have a link). The built-in BIOS "media center" software lets you play MP3 CDs, audio CDs, VCDs, DVDs, and watch TV. It's only ~$130, as opposed to $2500 - $2600.
Granted, this article is about a laptop with instant-on capabilities, which is of course cooler and more expensive.

ob linux comment

[gregmac]

There -is- an OS being loaded, just that its only going to support Toshiba's Apps... and nobody elses.

It's possible this is just some firmware on a chip that displays tv signals.. but say it is an OS, it leads to the question .. why bother with windows at all? Linux would have the capability to boot instantly, if you used some kind of suspend/hibernate feature.. so 'instant-on' basically just revives it from memory and lets you have full DVR, etc. No switching modes, and having to wait for windows to boot to get the enhanced features.

Now, by "has the ability" I mean it would be possible for Toshiba to add it in. I'm not totally sure of the APCI stuff that's in Linux now, but due to the nature of being open, the vendor can add whatever they want, as long as they have the know-how. Contrast to Windows, where they're stuck with the way Microsoft made it work.

Re:ob linux comment

[computechnica]

One of the things they are trying to achieve is a longer battery life for watching TV/DVD. A $150 pocket DVD player does not need a 2Ghz CPU to operate. It sounds like they are incorporating circuitry from a portable DVD player and completely bypassing the PC system portion. I wish my Dell Inspiron 5150 had this feature it gets quite hot watching DVDs and only has battery life for 2 hours.

Re:ob linux comment

[makomk]

It's possible this is just some firmware on a chip that displays tv signals.. but say it is an OS, it leads to the question .. why bother with windows at all? Linux would have the capability to boot instantly, if you used some kind of suspend/hibernate feature.. so 'instant-on' basically just revives it from memory and lets you have full DVR, etc. No switching modes, and having to wait for windows to boot to get the enhanced features.

I once thought about the possiblity of setting up a runlevel (possibly runlevel 4) and associated boot menu option on my Linux system that started the bare minimum services required to watch TV, and then loaded up fbtv or someting similar. Hey presto, TV without long bootup times!

Re:ob linux comment

[gregmac]

A $150 pocket DVD player does not need a 2Ghz CPU to operate.

Maybe this is a good application for underclocking?

PiP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it be cool to have small TV-picture over the desktop coming from tv-tuner instead of software? I think that some lcd-monitors are like that...

I used that ElGato firewire-DVB-box (digital tv), but it was very resource hog with my G4 iMac 800 MHz. Barely usable.

Re:PiP?

[ilikejam]

I'm using a PCI Hauppage card, and it doesn't touch the processor.

Toshiba PR release?

[tehcyder]

Why is this important news?

If you're going to watch a DVD movie, does it really matter that you have to start the OS?

I mean, you're sitting down ready to spend two hours or whatever watching your film, does it really matter that you have to wait 30 seconds for the OS to boot?

Just go to the kitchen and get a bag of popcorn or something.

Re:Toshiba PR release?

[Anonymous Coward]

30 seconds sucks. I don't know about anyone else, but I want my PC to boot in 1 second. 0 seconds would be better.

"instant on" for the tv, like a normal tv. n/m

[peterdaly]

I need to have something in the message field to post...

Two words: region-free?

[Do I exist]

Is it possible to liberate this laptop from its DVD region chains?

Re:Two words: region-free?

[really?]

Of course. Look around for "DVDIdle Pro" ... one of the best solutions. IMHO, of course.

Somebody's gotta hack this!

[gosand]

I can hear the hackers salivating now. This would be sweet to hack and get MAME running on it. Instant-on MAME machine? Sweet.

Re:Somebody's gotta hack this!

[enrico_suave]

eh, I'm sure someone has embedded mame/front end into a CF somewhere and done something similiar *Shrug*

My friends MAME cabinet, we used DOS and it boots fairly quickly right into a front end.

*shrug* I guess if you used this in conjunction with one of those "10 arcade games in a joystick" you'd have the same thing...

e.

If the INDUCE Act passes...

[Anonymous Coward]

...this is yet another product that very well could be made illegal. So could MS Media Center OS, for that matter. I wonder if Toshiba and Microsoft are aware of this?

"Near TV Quality?"

[doppleganger871]

Does anyone realize how low the resolution is on a standard TV? Heck, I coudln't even get the 320x200 output of my Commodore computers to look clear on a TV. (Hence the quick move to S-Video monitors.) I'd hate to have to watch something that was of lower quality than that.

TVs don't have a resolution in X

[woodhouse]

TVs don't have a resolution in x. They're analogue horizontally. Although in effect, there is a minimum limit to the spatial acuity in x, this will vary greatly depending on the set.

Re:TVs don't have a resolution in X

[Short Circuit]

IANAE, but it sort of makes sense if you think about it in the context of video capture. If you want to play the video back at the proper aspect ratio without prescaling, it helps to assume square pixels. (Assuming you're using a display resolution with square pixels...)

I agree that he was probably uninformed, though.

Re:TVs don't have a resolution in X

[John Allsup]

And by the time the image gets to an LCD display, it certainly does have a number of discrete pixels going across the screen.

Re:TVs don't have a resolution in X

[Anonymous Coward]

And by the time the image gets to an LCD display, it certainly does have a number of discrete pixels going across the screen.

And by the time it gets sent to an LCD display it's not a TV image any more.

The Bells! The Bells!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Qosmio..oh sorry, misread that.

insightful? WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

mod this loser down! if you don't know what you doing dont post.

you've obviously never used an apple laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an ibook. It's the only laptop I've ever owned. When I want it to sleep, I close the lid, and it sleeps, instantly. When I want to use it, I open it up, and it's on, instantly. Like, before I get my fingers around the lid to lift it after releasing the lock instantly.

Went on vacation for a couple of weeks. Needed to work on vacation. Company won't allow VPN client to be installed on employee property so I borrowed the office laptop, a pretty decent dell running win2k with 512 megs of memory. It's about a year old, and has a much faster processor and more memory than my 500mhz g3.

I close the lid. The damned thing doesn't shut off. I can see it glowing in there. I open the lid up. I fumble it into sleep mode. a few seconds later, it's asleep. Not a huge deal. But opening it up... again, nothing happens. no wakey. I figure out how to wake it up... and it takes about a minute to come out of sleep mode.

While I'm often annoyed at OSX, I can't imagine buying any windows laptop til it operates at the same level. That's the most basic thing, to me, that a laptop should do.

Re:you've obviously never used an apple laptop

[afidel]

My guess is that it's not a factory installed OS image and that your IT department didn't bother to setup power management correctly for it. It's always the first thing I do with a new laptop because I personally don't want my laptop to sleep as soon as I close the cover. I generally setup power management to do nothing on close, sleep on power button, then setup auto sleep at 5 minutes and auto hibernate at 10 minutes when on battery and never when on AC. Btw, I'm not aware of any laptop that when functioning correctly does not hardware auto-kill the backlight when the screen is closed. If it's not doing that then it probably has a broken sensor in the lid catch.

Near TV Quality?

[Natchswing]

What is near TV quality? Not quite 320x200 at 29.96 fps? They are selling a laptop that has trouble displaying that resolution?

I saw this thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's running Linux to boot up the TV. Comes on in about 10 seconds. real k3wl.

The downside

[Anonymous Coward]

...and it will only weigh 4 kg (8 lbs for US readers ;)

BUMMER.

(Why aren't there any really nice and really light and yet affordable notebooks? A decent notebook should not weigh more than 1.2 kg.)

(And if you wonder: The Sony X505 doesn't qualify. With 3000 USD up it's not affordable for Joe Average)

Golly!

[feloneous cat]

And I've been suffering with my "TV quality" big screen TV when instead I could be using a "Near TV quality" laptop with a 15" screen.

Wow!

I'm totally underwhelmed at the advancement in technology.

Re:Golly!

[CrazyTalk]

And dont forget, you get to pay $2500 for the privilege of that "Near TV Quality".

sony model extant

[way2trivial]

GRT-360ZG has had this capability in a 2500 odd dollar laptop for a few months now..

it does however use sony's odd thumb out tech known as gigapocket, which severly limits the options for third party tv software.

Re:sony model extant

[Anonymous Coward]

Try using your shift key to capitalize the first word of a sentence. Fuckwit.

Toshiba

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm impressed with this company. They provide the mini-drives inside each Ipod/Ipod Mini. They have a mp3 player in Japan called the Gigabeat which is smaller than the Ipod mini and holds as many songs. Good Stuff.

Wow, thats Great!

[pablo_max]

Just what we all need, yet another way to watch TV. I really hate having to go work or for that matter outside because I am missing TV. Jeez! As mom says, Go outside and PLAY!!

I will be more impressed....

[cardpuncher]

... when I can turn a PC on and instantly browse the Internet or write a letter without having to wait for the bloody thing to boot.

Re:I will be more impressed....

[Justin205]

Use a PowerBook. And the Sleep function. Close the lid, it sleeps. And drains very, very little battery.

Open the lid, and it's ready to go in literally about 4 seconds. Instant? Not quite, but close enough for me!

a built in dongle's no hassle

[DABANSHEE]

I've got a little dongle that transparently coverts a TV input to a monitor output & vice-a-verse (it converts either way in both directions), & does it while giving the choice of 'stretching to fill' or 'maximum fill with correct aspect' so the image fills the screen as much as possible without buggerising the aspect ratio, no matter what resolution the monitor is, bit like watching a wide screen movie in letterbox mode (DVD) rather than pan 'n scan (Telly).

Now is there any reason to think that this laptop couldn't have such a dongle built in? BTW the TV out on my generic Radion card can be plugged into a Commadore PAL monitor & can convert the 1024x768 desktop to fit on the standard PAL screen, either through scrolling or by converting the 1024x768 desktop appear the same at the PAL resolution. Mind you I think those old Commadore PAL monitors were designed for up to 800x600, as it's pixals are definitly smaller than those on my old 34cm telly.

PC monitors should have tuners built in

[DABANSHEE]

With economies of scale it'd work out much cheaper than buying both a telly & a monitor.

It sucks, 'cause Enderle says it doesn't...

[PSaltyDS]

"...arguably the best laptop display currently on the market," said Rob Enderle, an independent industry analyst with The Enderle Group.

This thing has GOT to suck now, if Enderle likes it! Some Enderle-isms:

"I have a hard time seeing the Linux Zealots as any different from terrorists"

"The biggest myths about Microsoft are that its desktop products are overpriced, it doesn't respect its customers, and reliability and security are poor"

"So I called SCO and personally found that they did have evidence."

Biggest gripe? Widescreen laptops not standard...

[mr_zorg]

My biggest gripe with widescreen laptops is that most don't match the public's (or the DVD forums) definition of widescreen: 16:9. And they're inconsistent with each other as well. Can't we all just get along?

VIA's MBios

[C60]

A few years ago VIA developed the MBIOS for their Mini-ITX based systems that allowed for much the same functionality. Their bios was limited (if you can call it a limitation) to just playing DVDs, audio CDs and if I remember correctly mp3 and CDs filled with images.

At the time I was working with VIA and had the opportunity to talk to one of the techs about it. I remember him saying that it was actually fairly simple to only activate the pieces of the motherboard that were required for playback.

It still sounds like a fun engineering problem, and I hope that more companies add this functionality. I do a lot of movie watching on my machine (I have no standalone TV or DVD player) and would highly value the ability to watch movies without the burden of an OS.

Think of all the pirates!

[RowdyReptile]

I don't know about you, but I am a member of the species homo sapiens. We have two eyes on the front of our heads giving two horizontally overlapping fields of vision.

How inconsiderate. You've forgotten those of our population with only one usable eye. ;)

FACT: Ninjas hate Pirates

Let's get pedantic !

[Anonymous Coward]

(Instant-On TV)& DVR or Instant-On (TV& DVR)

parsed as

[(Instant-On TV)& DVR] xor [Instant-On (TV& DVR)]

where xor is exclusive-or,
meaning one or the other but not both.

Bull fucking shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

TV is 625 lines high, there is no specified horizontal resolution. It's analogue.