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

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.

[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.

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.

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: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.

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:15" near-TV quality screen

[Anonymous Coward]

I want a laptop with instant on MAME!

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: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: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.

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: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.

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?

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.