Why on earth would anyone ever buy a $2300 PC PLUS a multi disc player in 2005?
Wouldn’t it make more sense if the second part of this system were a 5000 Gig hard drive for ripped CDs/DVDs?
Take this set up: How long will it be that the Apple hard drive based version of this sort of system is out, eating Sony’s DRM-infested lunch?
Sony should be asking themselves: "Why Apple is kicking our pathetic asses up
and down the aisles of Best Buy and for that matter, the Apple Stores?"
Is it possible that Son’y own idiotic DRM policies has now poisoned their design process?
NYT: Keeping track of and organizing the hundreds of CD’s, DVD’s and downloaded music files found in the average household can be daunting. The Sony Vaio XL1 Digital Living System, a multimedia hub for the living room, may offer a solution.
The system, which sells for $2,300, comes in two parts. One is a high-end PC with an Intel Pentium D processor, a 200-gigabyte hard drive and advanced graphics ability. The PC, which uses the Microsoft Media Center XP operating system, allows you to record TV shows directly to the hard drive for on-demand viewing.
The second part is a CD-DVD changer that stores 200 discs. With an Internet connection, the changer can find and retrieve CD track information, and, for DVD’s, cast lists and other movie information.
The XL1 connects to a high-definition TV using the new HDMI interface, which handles both video and audio with a single cable. With a remote or a wireless keyboard, all digital components – cable or satellite boxes, DVD players and digital video recorders like TiVo – can be controlled from the couch.
I would have been the ideal demo for this hadware; Now everything Sony does has a taint to me.
Source:
One $2,300 Hub That Promises to Tame Multimedia in the Home
STEPHEN C. MILLER
NYT, November 10, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/10/technology/circuits/10vaio.html
don’t cha know that ripping DVDs is ILLEGAL!!! ;)
Now Barry, THAT is a RANT.
good slip of tongue:” hadware”, the hardware we had, we used to have.
Whatever they do, I can’t stay mad at them. Love their TVs, DVD players, mini-stereos. Hardware is their thing, and they never should have gotten involved with content. The two business lines don’t fit together in the digital age, it seems.
If you had a vision of convergence in yr 2000 and had to pick a bet, Sony was it. But thus far they are acting like a company full of renegade divisions with utterly uncoordinated moves. They have great technology. But they keep making the same mistakes again and again as if they did not learn anything from the Betamax format wars. Sony should buy Apple and Steve Jobs for a premium and have him run this company.
Royce:
A little while ago you were defending what they did with content. I take it you work for the company? You were forgiving them anything they did before, but now that position is discredited, you find it in your heart to “forgive” them for activity that a while back you thought was fine.
I suppose the jukebox portion could be considered on-line backup.
I certainly wouldn’t want to backup 5000 GB of media.
Alice
No, I don’t work for the company. I just can’t get worked up into a froth about it. Any use of malware is wrong, but malware isn’t the only issue that came up in the prior discussion. People were saying, basically, that “If I buy something, then I own it.” Well, not really. You buy what you and the seller agree to exchange. If Sony doesn’t want to sell all the rights in their content, that’s their right as owners of the IP. It may be a bad business decision. It may lead to increased piracy. But that’s the way property rights work.
Now if you don’t favor U.S. or state law conception of private property, fine. Call a congressman. Elect a different president. Whatever. But whether you can or can’t rip your CDs and put them on different media isn’t going to change my opinion of Sony TVs or radios or make me stop buying their products.