[opendtv] Re: Sony Vaio home theater PC

That's pretty sweet.  I'm surprised more companies don't package HTPC systems 
like this with low noise, remote control, tuners, disc player, and home theater 
A/V connectors ready to go. Maybe they will now there are so many digital 
entertainment sources to manage.

I've been enjoying a similar system I put together about a year ago (except 
only ATSC tuners, not CableCard).  I'd recommend upgrading to a couple 1TB 
drives in a RAID 0 array instead of 500GB, mostly because it's cheap; not 
because I have a problem storing tens of thousands of digital photos and music 
albums, a few dozen HD TV shows, and millions of tiny e-mails like this one.

My biggest problem was getting a reliable ATSC signal because I'm near city 
center on a flat lake with line of sight to the transmitters (:-) go figure.  I 
went through several tuners and antennas until I found a combination that could 
handle the multipath for most of the stations with a single antenna position 
and gain ("5th gen" tuner cards beat out the built in DTV tuners I tried).  I 
still record dropouts and blocking every couple minutes when the rain gets bad 
... about 160 days a year in Seattle.  I never watch live broadcast, so I'm not 
around to beat and swear at the antenna when it's happening and just have to 
delete shows when they are too messed up.  

However, "reception" is quite reliable on Hulu, Fancast, etc. over my modest 
1.5 Mbps DSL phone line; and there's always You Tube links in emails and video 
downloads to watch.  Call me a Luddite, but I refuse to tweet.

The graphics card is important, and it looks like Sony's is good enough.  I use 
a 55" 120Hz flat panel for primary display, and usually connect with 
1920x1080P60 HDMI for general purpose video and desktop use.  I also use a 
separate dedicated HD disc player in another input that connects at 
1920x1080P24 so the display can "refresh" at 120Hz without 3:2 pulldown judder 
or luma requantization.  Sometimes I'll downshift the PC to 24P or 30i so the 
display will use or extract 24 frames buried in a broadcast signal or DVD image 
file for 42ms/frame display duration (sometimes I turn on frame interpolation 
for 120Hz, mostly not), but I usually don't bother because I use the 24P disc 
player for serious DVD and HD disc viewing. 

Most ATSC broadcast content is so ugly with MPEG-2 compression artifacts and 
other defects at this level of "magnification" that it is worse than adaptive 
internet streams and DVD with lower MTF.  DVD usually looks better than ATSC, 
and HD DVD/BD dramatically better when each is fully optimized.  Staged HD 
shows like local news and Leno, and 60P sports look very good on ATSC, better 
than DVD; but the majority of airtime is bothersome bad on this kind of system. 
 It's hard to watch a great show like "Planet Earth" falling apart because it's 
bit starved or badly encoded; as opposed to the transparent and immersive disc 
experience.  Web pages, Flash animations, text, PowerPoints, magazines, digital 
photos, etc. look perfect from across the room, and broadcast suffers by 
comparison.  I don't have cable or satellite to compare to now, but they used 
to look worse than ATSC, except for my 8VSB reception problems.

I use a single Harmony remote control for entertainment, and keyboard or mouse 
for surfing or working. (The remote sets all the inputs, turns on/off the 
appropriate boxes, etc.  I just say "make it so" with buttons for "Watch 
recorded TV", "listen to radio", "play music", "surf the net", "watch DVD", 
etc.; and the buttons on the remote setup the system (not trivial) and take on 
the appropriate functions/codes.)

These systems CAN be very consumer friendly by consolidating TV, streaming 
video like Hulu and NetFlix, Web, radio, "CD audio" (ripped), music services 
like iTunes, DVD and BD disc, video games, photos, VOIP phone, IM, email, news, 
RSS feeds, video editing, disc burning, EPG/PVR, etc. into a single user 
interface and remote control(s).  But, they can be impossible for the average 
consumer if not well integrated by someone like Sony, and spared amateur 
modifications like P2P programs, Trojans, random antivirus and indexing 
programs, etc. that will bring the system to its knees, crashing along the way. 
 

Kilroy Hughes

-----Original Message-----
From: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
Behalf Of Manfredi, Albert E
Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2009 16:26
To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [opendtv] Sony Vaio home theater PC

Just had a chance to play with this little, round, home theater PC STB
device. It is just the sort of PC I had in mind, to bring the Internet
to the (H)DTV and audio system.

RF remote keyboard with standard mouse pad. Built in BluRay
player/recorder. Built in PVR functionality, using its hard drive.
Regular old Internet access. Windows Vista installed. Also a normal
looking remote control, for the non-Internet related functions.

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalo
gId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665296592

This was in a store, and Saturday afternoon, which had a way of giving
me a realistic demo. Which is to say, there may not have been any RF
reception issues per se, since this setup wasn't even using WiFi (it has
802.11b/g built in), but that didn't mean "good reception" anyway. With
all the kids in the store playing with laptops and stuff, the poor guy
couldn't even manage to stream 400 Kb/s. Not even close. Never managed
more than a couple of seconds of streaming video.

Obviously, the congestion problem here was between the store's internal
network and its Internet link. However, seems to me the problem would
also occur in most ISP nets in the near term, if the majority of users
start watching TV over the Internet. 

Still, I did manage to see what the low rate IP media streams look like
on a ~50" LCD HDTV. Not bad. And of course, there are sites that allow
download of much higher quality stuff. They want about $1700. It's also
very quiet. This is the sort of STB that will probably become the norm,
in short order.

Bert
 
 
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