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Television Media Portables Hardware

Toshiba Unveils Laptop With Instant-On TV & DVR 189

Posted by timothy from the sure-hope-it's-better-than-near-tv-quality dept.
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."
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Toshiba Unveils Laptop With Instant-On TV & DVR More

Toshiba Unveils Laptop With Instant-On TV & DVR

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

    • 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 i

      • 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-
        • 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.
      • 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.

  • Wow! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by shepd ( 155729 ) <slashdot.org@gmail.3.14com minus pi> on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:53AM (#9695334) Homepage Journal
    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! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisumNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:57AM (#9695354) Homepage Journal
      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.
      • 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.
      • "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 s

    • Re:Wow! (Score:5, Informative)

      by scrm ( 185355 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @07:32AM (#9695520) Homepage
      There's some speculation that the all-new Apple iMac [apple.com] G5 (announced for September) will include TV functionality [spymac.com]

      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! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by garethwi ( 118563 )
        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?
        • 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 anyon
      • "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.
    • 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.
    • 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.

  • 15" near-TV quality screen (Score:3, Interesting)

    by myster0n ( 216276 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:54AM (#9695337)
    uhm .... that's bad, isn't it. I thought VGA screens have always been BETTER than TV screens.

    • Re:15" near-TV quality screen (Score:4, Informative)

      by ComaVN ( 325750 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:57AM (#9695351)
      Think viewing angle and refreshrate/fade
    • 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).
      • 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.
        • 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.
    • 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.

  • uh oh. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by torpor ( 458 ) <ibisumNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:55AM (#9695341) Homepage Journal

    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.
    • 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. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jerith ( 324986 )
      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.

    • ob linux comment (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gregmac ( 629064 )
      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
      • 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.

  • Not quite so nice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:56AM (#9695344) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • maybe if they could somehow incorporate simultanious bootup?

  • without booting the OS (Score:4, Insightful)

    by manavendra ( 688020 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:56AM (#9695346) Homepage Journal
    without booting the OS

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

  • Improvement on the 2 in 1 problem (Score:4, Interesting)

    by peterdaly ( 123554 ) <petedaly@@@ix...netcom...com> on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @06:57AM (#9695353)
    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
  • Wonder if it'll run anything less funky, for the folks who want something with fewer frills.
  • 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 (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Schrambo ( 737251 )
      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? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by oshy ( 674602 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @07:00AM (#9695366)
    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? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CommanderData ( 782739 ) * <kevinhi@y[ ]o.com ['aho' in gap]> on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @07:22AM (#9695467)
      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 :)
    • 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? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @07:30AM (#9695512) Journal
      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.

      • 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 usefuln
    • 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.

      Th
    • 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.
    • 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?

  • TV / laptop combinations (Score:5, Insightful)

    by davejenkins ( 99111 ) <slashdot@davejenki[ ]com ['ns.' in gap]> on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @07:01AM (#9695373) Homepage
    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.
    • 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 lap
    • With economies of scale it'd work out much cheaper than buying both a telly & a monitor.
  • Cool, hopefully I can hook up my Atari to it for a portable system! =)
  • 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)

  • buttons on the side (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @07:08AM (#9695401)
    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.
    • 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 untap
  • 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.
    • 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 s

  • article title (Score:4, Informative)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @07:15AM (#9695429) Homepage
    "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.

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

  • huh??? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 )
    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??? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jcostantino ( 585892 )
      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.

  • Instant-on isn't anything new (Score:5, Informative)

    by drewhearle ( 753120 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @07:27AM (#9695494) Homepage Journal
    "Instant-on" PCs aren't new. Take a look at the Soyo SY-P4VAL version M [soyousa.com] (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.

  • Toshiba PR release? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tehcyder ( 746570 )
    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.

  • Is it possible to liberate this laptop from its DVD region chains?
  • I can hear the hackers salivating now. This would be sweet to hack and get MAME running on it. Instant-on MAME machine? Sweet.
  • What is near TV quality? Not quite 320x200 at 29.96 fps? They are selling a laptop that has trouble displaying that resolution?

  • Golly! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by feloneous cat ( 564318 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @10:31AM (#9697199)
    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.
  • "...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" [technewsworld.com]

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

    "So I called SCO and personally found that they did have evide [enderlegroup.com]
  • 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

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