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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."
Think viewing angle and refreshrate/fade
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Brightness, contrast, color accuracy and stability, viewing angle, there's a lot more than pixel size and area to a screen.
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.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
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.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
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
The truth shall set you free!
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
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
"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.
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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).
---- scrm
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).
www.wavefront-av.com
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.
Been done before back in 1993, the "Macintosh TV" model:
i c/ stats/mac_tv.html
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_class
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.
www.wavefront-av.com
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.
www.wavefront-av.com