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Sony Blu-ray Media Center
An anonymous reader writes "Sony announced its Blu-ray equipped VGX-XL202 media center box a while back and a full review has finally appeared. This looks like it could be the ultimate media center PC with a Blu-ray re-writer, HDMI and HDCP enabled NVidia graphics, integrated wireless, gigabit ethernet, digital TV tuner and twin hard disks. Unfortunately it doesn't come cheap."
the inclusion of blu-ray in this PC (despite its limited production quantity) affects or has effected PS3 production, and if so, what are sony's priorities?
Learn to know, the dark side of the force, and you will achieve a power greater than any Jedi...the power to save your w
Okay, I still say the Wii is going to be THE runaway gaming machine, but as far as a Blu-Ray player goes, Sony wins if this is included in the PS3.
Reason? Porn.
No, I'm not joking. A lot of guys in the porn industry are switching to online distribution, which, while I'm sure a lot of guys won't mind jerking off at the desktop, will likely want to take it to the TV. A Blu-Ray re-writer/burner makes that possible.
Even if the PS3 doesn't include this particular kit, as long as it's easier to write to Blu-Ray than HD-DVD, Sony takes the advantage.
But only if they get the fuckin' console out by Christmas, dammit. We're impatient.
Blu-ray (Sony propietary, DRMd), HDMI (DRMd), Windows (DRM)?
<br>
No thanks. I'll stick with my Mythbox, thank you very much
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
Blue ray can die in a fire. It's expensive because it's proprietary crap. Wake me up when a technology comes out that is allowed by the U.S. government to have some competition with it instead of creating an "intellectual property" monopoly. Maybe after it's patent expires? Maybe in five years it will actually be an affordable alternative?
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
I can't imagine many people would run out to buy one of these when they could buy a fully loaded PS3 and a separate media center PC for less than half the price, then have plenty leftover for games they could never play on the Vaio. I realize that a Vaio commands a premium, but it appears like they are charging almost $2000 extra just for the blu-ray ...
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
couldn't they make better design, this machine remind me of p2 computers
"Steve Jobs invented the world" -- Bill W. GATES
VGX-XL202... what a memorable name! What a clearly distinctive product. I mean, it's got 2 Xes!
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
It seemed to me that this reviewer wanted to give this product a "good" review in face of a lot of evidence against.
- The extremely high price, yes, we can set that to one side for "new" technology.
- Then you have the "No output at all without HDCP" problem (although early adopters should know this already)
- Then you have the software problems related to Blu-Ray which stop you using the built-in software that plays EVERYTHING else (and only Vista will support Blu-Ray properly, it seems).
- Then the right-handed-only keyboard/mouse combo (instantly denying comfortable use by a fair percentage of the population)
- Then the spurious errors and crashes
- The Keyboard's high power usage (4AA's)
- No SCART/DVI-I ports *at all*
- Single TV Tuner preventing simultaneous viewing/recording
- Frame-rate issues (Possibly the most worrying problem)
- Possible minor quality issues on the playback
But yet the summary of the article is almost 100% positive about it.
You've got to be kidding me. Keep in mind while you read this that this device costs around $3,360 USD.
If this thing gets an overall 8 out of 10, I can't help but wonder how a device can possibly get dinged for less. I mean, really, from TFA:
So your fancy expensive toy won't let you watch your movies.
All that money, and it stores less than one of my desktop's hard drives
Ooh, around $150 worth of software, which they've undoubtedly OEMed for probably less than $20.
So you can only record one television station at a time. I hope you don't have two favorite shows that happen to come on back-to-back, or you're just SOL. Even my five-year-old TiVo has dual tuners, and it's not you can't get a dual-tuner component for less than $70.
This extra bit of complication brought to you courtesy of the letters D, R, and M.
Oh, so to play our movies, we'll have to actually upgrade to Vista when it comes out. Good, because it's not like you've already spent enough to buy the box itself, right? And I'm sorry, I'm not going to use a frickin' keyboard to play a frickin' movie from my frickin' DVD player on my frickin' tv.
Yet more hoops to jump through to play a movie, again brought to you by the letters D, R, and M.
Oh, now we see why it earned an 8 out of 10! Oh, wait, those are bad things, aren't they? Well, all of that is worth it if we get image quality that knocks our socks off, so let's get to the bottom line:
Blu-Ray, USB2.0, CompactFlash, firewire. But where's the betamax slot?
Hadn't you better get back to work??? Lunchtime is over in the Sony Marketing department now, isn't it?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I'm sorry, but HDMI and HDCP enabled and ultimate media center just don't go together in the same sentence.
Any media center PC that's designed to keep me from recording the TV shows I'm receiving does not qualify as ultimate
Agree with all you are saying, just thought I'd point out:
Even my five-year-old TiVo has dual tuners, and it's not you can't get a dual-tuner component for less than $70.
You linked to the 150 model which also only has one tuner. Here is the 500 model which has dual tuner support.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
do {print "Mini-Geek Rules!\n";}
until ($TheEndOfTheWorld);
While your right i just wanted to correct one thing
"The software supplied is InterVideo WinDVD BD for VAIO, a rather convoluted title. On first attempt we got a region code error message. I then went into the software and selected Region B.
Yet more hoops to jump through to play a movie, again brought to you by the letters D, R, and M."
This isn't a DRM issue this is a method of "price discrimination" which all companies do.. it is annoying as crap - but alteast the player lets you change the region.. but i am sure that will be fixed
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
From TFA:
So a paid-for movie on BlueRay, combined with a Sony "root-kit-o-matic" Vaio, and a non-HDCP display (which is most displays in homes... heck most displays on the market right now) is going to fail to play. Apparently without an error message. Just craps out.
I hope that this "wired DRM" will seriously backfire on all the cretins supporting it: Sony, Microsoft, the studios, etc. I don't understand how they expect to get people to switch over to their new DRM scheme when the massive downside is that for most consumers, right now, anything they buy that uses this scheme is going to fail to play. It's either going to fail because they don't know which movie format to buy, or fail to play because their media is now tied to their player, or fail to play because the player will refuse to send data to a non-DRM'd display.
Two or three failures of this sort will be all it takes for most people to give up on the technology. DVDs (and iTunes, and other similar schemes) succeeded because the DRM is mostly transparent. Yes, there's no way to skip through the FBI warning at the beginning of the movie, but most folks don't care because eventually the movie plays and the 10 second wait isn't that frustrating. But when the system won't play a BlueRay disk and they can't figure out why (and it's happened twice before) I think a lot of folks are going to shrug and say "Well, I guess I'll stick with DVDs"
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
For real? Did you even read the review? Here's the short summary (see my comment above for the long one):
This machine really sucks ass. It won't let you play your movies. After a bunch of jumping through hoops, it may oblige, but when it does, the quality isn't even that good. Oh, and it's about five times more expensive than everything currently out there.
Final rating: 8 out of 10!
Seriously, are you on drugs?
does it run MythTV? If it does, then it may be a nice box.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I'm haven't read the article yet. I'm going to list questions I have, which, if the answers are all "yes," would make this interesting to me.
1) Can I use this just like a standalone DVD recorder, i.e. can I record any program I'm watching on my TV, whether broadcast or cable, and then burn a DVD from it that will play in an ordinary DVD player?
2) Will it play (just play, not record) HD-DVDs, just in case the movies I want to buy aren't released in Blu-Ray format (or just in case the local video store happens to have the HD-DVD versions but not the Blu-Ray versions on the shelf on the day I happen to be in the store?)
3) Is there a list of certified Blu-Ray media that are guaranteed to work in the device, or is it going to be "a lot of them work most of the time, try them yourself and see" (as it is with DVD-RW, DL DVD+R, and that whole zoo).
Now, let's see if the article answers these questions and what the answers are.
1) Not answered. 2) Not answered. 3) Not answered, except in the sense that "so once dual-layer discs appear you also get the ability to burn up to 50GB of data to a single disc" (i.e. dual-layer media aren't even available yet).
It does not sound to me as if the reviewer even attempted to burn a video disk. It sounds as if the reviewer had his hands full just trying to get the thing to _play_ them.
!!!!! To play a Blu-ray disc you need to use dedicated software that can handle the HDCP part of the AACS encryption standard and Media Center can't do this at present.... For now though, to play the movie from the sofa... On first attempt we got a region code error message. I then went into the software and selected Region B. Restarting the software, the disc then played but with strange graphical corruption. Restarting the PC sorted this."
And the bottom line? Being a discerning person "I could still immediately discern the increased detail and resolution in the picture over DVD. It was as clear as day to me, but actually not everyone in the office could make this out or was impressed by it."
This has got to be a joke, right? An expensive PC that requires you to launch special software from the keyboard in order just to play a disk, with glitches, that worked after a few restarts, producing an image that was not enough better than a DVD to be obvious to everyone?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
By the time this hits the market, it will be obsolete... making it easy for Apple to take over the world!
No doubt, a lesson learned from Betamax
Less? You have a single harddrive over 500GB? .... *checks internet* shit they are selling 750GB drives now.. when did this happen.. I'm so behind the curve... :(
"This looks like it could be the ultimate media center PC with a Blu-ray re-writer, HDMI and HDCP enabled NVidia graphics, integrated wireless, gigabit ethernet, digital TV tuner and twin hard disks. Unfortunately it doesn't come cheap."
Were you expecting it to be otherwise?
It is price discrimination, but it's also a form of DRM, at least as I define it: Anything that keeps you from doing what is reasonably technically possible due to legal or administrative reasons.
There is no technical reason why I shouldn't be able to watch a movie I buy in Japan on a player I buy in the U.S. In fact, they had to add stuff to the discs and players to ensure that I can't. That's stupid, it's a form of "managing" my digital rights, and it's why I don't feel the least amount of guilt about bypassing it and ripping DVDs I legally own to my hard drive so that I can exercise my fair use rights to actually watch them.
But does it come with the new Sony rootkit? Boycot ALL Sony products!
Actually the porn industry favors HD-DVD. Just like VHS being inferior to BETA but cheaper, the porn industry has picked HD-DVD over Blue Ray, quality is a little bit less but it's a lot cheaper.
Xbox Media Center makes for a better 'fap-o-matic' and its FAR cheaper.
Yup. And while they're still pretty expensive, (around $360), they're well worth it. The really sucky thing is that 2 250GB hard drives will set you back around $220. For $3,360, they weren't even willing to spend the extra $140 (probably less as a vendor) to bump you up to 750GB.
How many ways are there to say it: Sony sucks, and this device is crap.
OK, Call it flamebait, but mod it "Interesting".
Any money you spend on Sony gear goes to pay for DRM, CDs infected with crap and other things we dont want.
Last time I bought Sony was in 2004. It was a nice theater system with a DVD changer for my parents in law. It did not play their french DVDs, and no workaround.
*no more*
They bought a cheap player and placed it on top, and use the Sony as a table.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
I don't know about the US, but here in the UK I've noticed a number of articles in the popular press about the launch of Blu-ray and HD-DVD over the past few days, and I heard someone talking about it on a radio news program yesterday. I suppose the manufacturers are having a marketing blitz.
Every single article said "don't buy it". Everyone is being told that it is Betamax-versus-VHS all over again. If that's the message from the popular media (who usually just regurgitate marketing hype without thinking about it), then it's going to be a while before Sony sells many of these things over here.
Still needs a Cablecard 2.0 card slot. A media PC without Cablecard is kind of useless unless you never watch TV or have no plans to use it as a PVR.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
If I can't rip the content and stick in on the hard drive in a library, then it isn't a media center... it's a fancy disc player.
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
With porn you REALLY don't want HD anyways, even a crisp Hi-8 source can be a little too revealing. Seeing the pimples and other blemishes on the actors really takes away from the experience.
So tell me again why exactly a Blu-Ray burner will let me get pr0n to my TV in a way that...oh, I don't know, a DVD burner won't? Or MythTV box. Or a modded XBox. Or Windows MCE / Xbox360 combination. Or any video card with TV Out.
Blank Hi-Def media is going to be insanely expensive for the forseeable future - hell, even DL-DVD is way over-priced, and the extra resolution on your pr0n isn't going to warrant you wasting 50x the download in order to get it (compare 25 gigs to a 700 meg divx).
If anything the pr0n industry (pr any other IP-based industry, for that matter) switching to online distro is going to make the PS3 with it's DRM-infested media drive and accompanying pricepoint less attractive, not more.
Just thouth I'd point out:
your link is not to a tivo, and is not to something available 5 years ago
"Date first available at Amazon.com: October 28, 2004 "
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
While this box is definitely expensive for what it is, it wouldn't cost anywhere near what you Americans are making out. Electronics are generally more expensive in the UK. Case in point: the PS2 (and probably the PS3) launched at the same numerical price despite our currency's higher value.
Someone please tell me there are non-proprietary alternatives for larger storage on a "CD". Yeah, it's still a compact disc, no matter how much info it holds =P If HD and Blu-ray are both locked down, where's the user-friendly media that I can actually, you know, USE, that has a higher capacity than a DVD? Don't say hard drive, I'm talking about for backing stuff up or transporting stuff. Sure, thumbdrives can hold quite a bit, but not as much as a "CD" could hold. Maybe hard drives will just become even more portable though before such a technology comes out.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
But only if they get the fuckin' console out by Christmas, dammit. We're impatient.
This is another one of those mind-warping contexts -- after the porn post, I read this as "We're impotent".
SIG SEGV
...the PS3 was supposed make "media center" PCs obsolete? WTF Sony?
+0 Meh
Unfortunately it doesn't come cheap.
Nothing is cheap.
Ever see that Far Side with an early plumber looking at some guy's backyard hole? "Ooh, this not be cheap."
Have you read my journal today?
... Or you can get the 20GB PS3 w/ HDMI for $500, and install Yellow Dog Linux 5.0 on it with Myth TV, and you basically have almost the same thing. A Blu-ray media center , Nvidia graphics, USB ports, HDMI 1.3 with HDCP, etc. on the cheap.
/ 1342243
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/16
Call me picky if you like but for me this immediately fails "the living room test"
Why? Because of all those crappy little Intel/Microsoft/Godknowswho stickers on the front.
I know it's small thing but if I want something in my AV system or under my telly at home I want it to look, you know, like a piece of AV kit and not some grey slab of plastic with funny little colourful stickers on the front.
I don't know, maybe it's just me.
*shrugs*
Never heard of the site before and will never use it now. Never heard of the product before and will never buy it now.
:wq
I absolutely agree with you.
Sony has done nothing but amaze me for this past year. Just when I think you^Wthey couldn't possibly fuck up any worse, BLAM! They completely blow away my expectations. Broken low-end PC disguised as a £1600 BR player? Genius.
If its MCE/Xbox360 you better hope to god its in WMA format. . . Last time I tried that combo none of my divx/xvid/ogm/mkv files played. Hell, even the DRM'd demo of an h264 wma that came with my laptop wouldn't even play. On top of that I spent about 3 hours looking for a way to add more playable codecs to MCE or Xbox360 brought me to the conclusion that it is not possible.
DRM and Proprietary formats for the win!
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
The only difference at the moment is that HD-DVD has a slight edge in media cost. An edge which could disappear as production ramps up.
Actually, you're forgetting that the players are much less expensive for HD-DVD (Toshiba HD-DVD: under $500, Samsung Blu-Ray: $720, Sony Blu-Ray: $999)... that doesn't take into account the PS3 yet, but at best it will be the same price as the Toshiba HD-DVD player, and will have limited availability for a while. Also, production costs for pressing the discs are much cheaper for HD-DVD, because Blu-Ray involves replacing a lot more equipment than HD-DVD.
Oh, and the name helps HD-DVD, too... people think of it as THE HD version of the DVD, but they don't really know what Blu-Ray is.
Especially when all the smart kids are going HD-DVD. But thanks Sony for using 50's marketing (bundle and jam) to get more Blu-Ray sells!
PS: That is what part of the alphabet would look like if the letters "Q" and "R" were removed.
Except you have no tuner, so you cant record anything. Also, your drive isnt a burner. Why even bother with mythtv or linux? It plays movies and games, and is probably better at that, but its not really the same thing.
It's supposed to downgrade to a standard-definition resolution when some part of the chain fails the HDCP handshaking operation.
Actually, it's supposed to be capable of supporting that, but supposedly none of the studios are implementing that on current discs... yet.
I'd say this is just a case of the media PC being a pile of crap. "Watch our awesome Blue-Rayz movies on this awesome computer... " *hiccup* *crash* *smoke*
Andrew Blake make HD stuff for some time already. And it is definitely worth its every bit.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Didn't Sony claim that PS3 is the ultimate media player and the ONLY media player you will ever need?
There are two kinds of people - those who are radioactive and those who have already decayed..
With a SONY product in it? Wait, lemme guess - it comes pre-rooted from the factory, right? No need to purchase any audio CD's from Sony? Yeah, this is the ultimate media center PC - if, by ultimate you mean "Ultimately pwned by the *AA"!
Not that HD-DVD is much better at this point, except that I don't recall anybody having their machine rooted (administered? pwned?) by a HD-DVD manufacturer. The DRM being built into HD media is onerous at best, intolerable at worst.
No, I think I'll just limp along on good old DVD's and NTSC television on my PC for now - at least on my Linux box, I know everybody who has root authority (hint: "root" is the only one on that list). How many people who buy a computer MADE BY SONY will ever be able to claim that they know everyone who has administrator authority on their machine? Hellfire, there are a lot of people who only bought CD's made by Sony that can't even make that claim! Now, they think consumers will be dumb enough to buy a machine made by them?
Damn! They're probably right.
Heh - yeah...I kinda mentioned MCE/X360 as the lowest of the low (well....apart from the Sony combo, of course ;-) ). You might find a certain amount of assistance on xbox-scene.com> if you still want to do some more flexible media streaming to the 360. FWICR there's some on-the-fly format conversion trickery you can do with the streaming. Don't use it myself as I (a) don't have MCE, and (b) have a perfectly adequate XBMC set-up for getting my pr0n on the big-screen ;-) .
I would go in search of a more detailed link, but sadly the site is blocked by our company firewall. Oh, and please spare us all the "This is your boss - why are you slashdotting on company time" comedy posts.
20GB is not ideal for a DVR but Sony will let you put a bigger HD in there and using USB for TV can work also Sony did say something about be able to running Mac osx on the ps3.
Over US$3,000 for this thing? I could buy SIX Playstation 3's for that price!
I wonder if that's why this thing exists in the first place: to make the PS3 look like an absolute bargain in comparison.
it's OK, they're only going to sell a total of twelve of these media centers worldwide. That shouldn't affect PS3 production too significantly; but now the European PS3 launch is pushed back to 2008...
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
This is your boss, please come to my office to receive your bonus for helping me with my pr0n/X360/MCE troubles.
This sillyness is brought to you by: Company policy and that creepy stocky fellow in HR, he's coming for your children!
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
How does only one tuner prevent simultaneous viewing/recording? My first TiVo had only one tuner and yet I could simultaneously view and record on it.
And 4AAs in the keyboard doesn't mean high power usage. My Apple Bluetooth keyboard uses 4AAs and yet the batteries lasted two years.
You can adapt HDMI to DVI-I with a simple cable that you can get for $5 at monoprice.com. No SCART is an interesting point. Although I know SCART is popular in Europe, if you want to watch a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc you're gonna want HDMI or DVI in case the content you want to watch has the Image Constraint Token.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Spend $10,000 on a wall-mount 50 inch flat screen high end HDTV and a Sony Vaio VGX-XL202 and all the speakers and other things that go with it, and support DRM
- or -
Invest that money in getting a PhD so I can earn three times my salary and buy the exact same hardware for only $2000 in three years time.
Hmmm.
I think I'll go with option B.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
OOOH, it comes with a Blu-Ray RW drive... except of course, you aren't actually allowed to burn ANYTHING to it EVER.
... We wouldn't put it that way, but kinda ... yeah... now go buy a PS3 before Jack Thompson gets all the good games banned.
Okay, maybe that's a bit far from reality, but with Sony's strong support of DRM, (and you KNOW they will support any broadcast flag and macrovision stuff that comes out), wouldn't that make the blu-ray burner kind of useless?
I can see it now:
* Cool! A great big DVR... Sure, but you can only fast-forward when it's not at a commercial
* I can make a Blu-Ray copies of TV shows the same way I used to use VHS tapes... Nope, people would have vast libraries of ~perfect~ ~digital~ ~copies~ of shows and the TV industry would go bankrupt
* Well, at least, I can use it to back up all my data... Well, sure, except nothing that could POSSIBLY have a copyright on it - you are free to back up anythying you created in..uh, Microsoft Paint!
* How about my mp3 files.... uh, you might have gotten those illegally, so we won't burn them
* How about video I shot myself... Nope, might have used that video camera to sneak into a theater and record the latest George Lucas: JarJar-on-ice extravaganza
* So, I bought this really expensive, neat-oh computer, that is technically ~capable~ of doing all this really cool stuff, but you've gone and crippled it all in the name of DRM so that it's utterly useless?
The Digital Sorceress
Ummm what is it ... 8 usb and a gig network port. I don't think it'll be a problem to hook up to my Opty 165 running slak. It does almost every kind of media there is. Two burners, satellite card and a damn TV tuner. I'll get the better PS3 with the 60G drive, it'll be just fine for my new display a Sony 34XS955 CRT killer TV.
... Standards and Practices !
PenGun
Do What Now ???
It's not just the media, either. In among all of the CD and DVD burners, Fry's has a Blu-Ray burner on the shelf. At $750 each, I suspect most of them will stay on the shelf. I can make HD movies fit on DVDs (single-layer in many cases, dual-layer for the rest) with either MPEG-4 or H.264 that'll be nearly indistinguishable from the original sources.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Does it come with a free rootkit?
HDMI and HDCP enabled NVidia graphics
I think you mean HDMI and HDCP DISabled Nvidia graphics. These technologies prevent usage, not enable it.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
People having $3160 to pay for a media centre has already bought a high end LCD/Plasma and considering even SD plasmas/lcds come with HDMI, there is no reason to whine about HDMI compatibility.
;)
Studios doesn't want you to watch unencrypted content which would be in a secure safe as "master" just 5 years ago. That is the deal. Think the Blu-Ray, HD-DVD like "source" of a commercial computer program. They got amazing specs including sound.
$3160 is considered "cheap" in high end stuff. I know people paying $2000 just for the UPS of the HD Projector they use, imaging the projector price
... Or you can get the 20GB PS3 w/ HDMI for $500, and install Yellow Dog Linux 5.0 on it with Myth TV, and you basically have almost the same thing. A Blu-ray media center , Nvidia graphics, USB ports, HDMI 1.3 with HDCP, etc. on the cheap.
Yeah, and you could also get it and then find it doesn't allow you to do even one tenth of that.
It's made by Sony. Which do you think is more fucking likely, Einstein?