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Media Television Hardware

More on the Portable Media Center 88

Posted by michael from the convergence dept.
ptorrone writes "The Portable Media Center is officially shipping today, along with announcements of more TV Tuner and recording hardware. The NYTimes covers some of this and Engadget has an in-depth review with photos, screenshots, videos and how to convert DVDs to play on these devices."
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More on the Portable Media Center More

More on the Portable Media Center

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  • I can see how folks would take these in their cars, on trips, to the office, etc. Even at around $500 they will probably sell pretty well. They aren't that much more than a portable DVD player. I don't think I could look at that little screen for an entire movie though. Perhaps a younger set of eyes could handle it. The screen is quite sharp, though. But, a tad small for me for any kind of extended viewing.

    Cheers,

    Erick

    • Yeah, it's nice that there is a TV-Out on the thing so you could use it when traveling to watch things you've saved, say, on your hotel TV. Other than that, though, is there a real need for this? And even then, why not watch what's on the hotel TV?

      I can understand portable music players. Ever since the original Walkman, portable music has been big. However, portable TVs never really caught on. Yes, this is a bit more than a portable TV, but the use is similar. You sit down and watch a video--and you
      • No, its just not something I can really see a lot of use for. Now if you could add in GPS, and wireless Internet and actually have a wireless infrastructure in place, sure, this would be a really handy little device. But for now, no. I just can see a good reason for spending this much money. I'd rather spend a bit more and put a real DVD system in the mini-van for the kids or what have you.

      • Re:Kinda small but they will sell (Score:4, Interesting)

        by skiflyer ( 716312 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @02:46AM (#10156135)
        Long train commutes. I work in Chicago, and mercifully live blocks from the office, but many of my office mates travel an hour plus on train. If they could combine this with their Tivo's I can imagine it getting alot of play.

        Also, if they can host USB on these to offload your camera pics that'd be a nice feature (like the iRiver iHP300 series audio players).

        But I think the big one here is for the commuters that don't read newspapers or books.

        • Re:Kinda small but they will sell (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Judg3 ( 88435 ) <jeremyNO@SPAMpavleck.com> on Saturday September 04, 2004 @02:50AM (#10156142) Homepage Journal
          Definately!
          Although I'm in Minneapolis now, for over a year I lived in Kenosha, WI and took the metra into Chicago - an hour and 45 minute ride each way. This thing would have been nice to have. Then again my laptop did the job quite well to.

          (I went from a 20 minute commute from the NW side of Chicago to almost 2 hours - all because I was in love hehe)
          • Off-topic, but I did the exact same thing when I lived in Chicago. Different, girl, of course.

            IIRC, nearly everyone travelling along the north line trains was reading Barron's. Can't imagine those same cheap-haircut-Brooks Brothers-suited-wing-tip-wearing passengers using a portable media device, unless the media somehow involved bond prices or pork belly prices.
        • Long train commutes. I work in Chicago, and mercifully live blocks from the office, but many of my office mates travel an hour plus on train. If they could combine this with their Tivo's I can imagine it getting alot of play

          I doubt they are interested in such devices. If they were, they would already be using the ones from Archos, which have the Tivo-like capabilities, better features in general, and are in pretty much every way superior to this Microsoft/Creative stuff, and have been out for quite a whil

      • Re:Kinda small but they will sell (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Writer ( 746272 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @03:40AM (#10156266)

        Does anybody see the appeal of these things other than the geekiness factor?

        The two biggest things people download off the net are MP3s and porn. The iPod lets people bring around their MP3 colections. This thing will let them bring around their porn collections. Not out of the house, but into the bathroom or in bed :P

    • neat, but pricey. kinda annoying that you can't play a dvd disc on it, as you aren't going to always have access to a pc to rip it. it'll be interesting to see if and how these translate from the bleeding edge buyers to everyday folks...
    • Even at around $500 they will probably sell pretty well. They aren't that much more than a portable DVD player.

      A portable DVD player can be bought for $250.

      For $400 I bought a PIIIm 800MHz laptop with the earliest Mobility Radeon chip. Granted, it only got three to four hours of battery life, I prefer it to any dedicated portable media player. Still, I can use it for task, not just media. At 5
      • oops, I hit the wrong button, I'll continue...

        The laptop is 5lb and is bigger than the portable media players, that's still what I consider to be acceptable. The laptop is used but it is still going pretty strong.
      • A cheap, bottom of the line portable dvd player can be bought for $250. The decent ones sell for around $400.

        Your $400 laptop makes a poor media device. Aside from the battery life, you have weight and size concerns, which have a huge influence on the practicality.

        If you want a computer that you occasionally watch movies on, great -- get the laptop. If all you want to do is listen to mp3's and watch movies on a long plane trip, the PMC is a better solution.
    • It seems that most of the time Microsoft crams too many options into thier new gadgets. Now it seems as if this "iPod Killer" is dumbed down by it's lack of features. I would like to see a remote and video in added.
    • when cheap laptops are priced at $500 as well? no way they can sell.

  • iPod functionality in a convenient laptop size (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vijayiyer ( 728590 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @02:43AM (#10156131)
    Ok, maybe it is more functional than an iPod, but once it doesn't fit comfortably in my pocket, why not just use a laptop?

  • No thanks (Score:3, Interesting)

    by antikarma ( 804155 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @02:47AM (#10156137)
    Screen resolution: 320x240 pixels

    No thanks. Give me a cheap laptop or tablet with XGA.

    • Re:No thanks (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
      Screen resolution: 320x240 pixels

      No thanks. Give me a cheap laptop or tablet with XGA.

      I agree. I had bought a used PIIIm laptop with a 14" screen, weighing 5lb with an SXGA+ native resolution. It is a a handy little portable media device that can be used to surf the net, play videos, make drawings, write code, etc.

      Before I sold it to buy this one, I had paid about $400 or so for a used PIIIm 14" XGA laptop which did all this for nearly the cost of the smaller portable video player.

      All this out of a d

  • If Apple Did It It Might Be Worth It (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The Lost Supertone ( 754279 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @02:50AM (#10156141) Journal
    If Apple found a way to make a portable video iPod branded whatever... it'd probably sell but it would by far be the least profitable model. They'd have to have a huge mark up to cover the costs of just having the thing. But the only company I would ever buy one of these from is Apple.. why? Because they're not making one! Why aren't they making one? Because it's a bad idea! OK take it in the car with you, most people who want this sort of thing will have built in TVs in their cars now. The rest of us... buy a bloody laptop and a car adapter. For double the cost you can do a ton more. If this was a portable computer and priced this way with tons of features including music, light graphic manipulation etc it'd be worth it. But a solitary device for video and music, it's a dumb idea, it's not useful enough to regularly use. I'm sure the market for these is there, I just don't think it's big, or the people in it are all that bright.
    • Apple isn't like most companies out there, they aren't ones to jump into a brand new idea and try to make money off of it, they wait for the market to mature, and apparently this market is brand new. The reason which I believe Apple is successful on some of their products is how they will read what customers want on these new devices and such, and make their own unique version of it. Apple didn't jump into the mp3 scene right away, they waited for the market to mature before introducing the iPod. So there
      • Apple didn't jump into the mp3 scene right away, they waited for the market to mature before introducing the iPod

        So what other products of Apple did you see this in? i.e. the waiting for the market to mature thing.

        Other than the IPod?
    • > regularly use. I'm sure the market for these is there, I just don't think it's big, or the people in it are all that bright.

      I disagree. If there was a portable video plus PDA device that had a good 20/30 hour lifespan, then I'd buy it. I say plus PDA because if it's got enough CPU to play video, it's bound to have enough to do all the other stuff. I use public transportation and fly around a lot. You want something hand sized that you can pull out while you're at the station waiting, or on your flig

    • Damn (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      People like you are the reason I don't buy Apple. Let me break this to you: Steve Job isn't god. Apple isn't the only company with good idea's.

      Your message sounds awfully like the article where many slashdotters pronounced that the iPod wouldn't sell. Except your's is the same message from the other side.
      • yes your correct, steve jobs is not god, but he sure knows what he is doing. Apple has made some AMAZING products, products that sell and that people drool over because of the design, simplicity, eligance, and much more. What other companies do what Apple does? They make their own OS, Hardware, they Support it, they are in almost every major computing field. Hell gateway, dell, Hp, none of them have their own OS, and none of them are as creative as apple.

  • 10. Release buggy media centre
    20. Fuck the concept up totally
    30. promise "updates" and "Fixes"
    40. release shoddy bugfixes and overpriced adapters/tuners etc.
    50. profit
    60. goto 20

  • These have been out forever. How is this new? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 04, 2004 @02:54AM (#10156154)
    I don't understand how this is even making news.. Archos and iRiver have had their little multimedia players that work just like this, if not better for well over a year now. They've been sitting on the shelves at Best Buy and every other major store ..

    Come on already.. Whats next, Creative Labs will make a digital camera and it'll be big news because it'll be the first one ever?

    • The ones you mention, and I am fairly certain iRiver one is not out yet, are NON-MS-windows media players. This is the first Microsoft windows media player. Does that explain it to you?
    • This is new because of the digital rights managment built in to the Creative Labs product. The idea is that content developers will release specialized versions of their products for devices like this because the property owners can be "assured" that their wares will not be redistributed. This relieves the user of the need to understand how to reconstitute media into a form that will run on the device. It will be interesting to see whether this approach is successful, but I see a real chicken and egg proble

  • Man double-tee-eff (Score:4, Insightful)

    by maelstrom ( 638 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @02:54AM (#10156156) Homepage Journal
    Is Microsoft paying you to whore this device? How about some stories on MythTV or something. Go back to your roots /.

    This is getting tired.

  • My kind of thing. WAIT NO DivX? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by psyburn ( 790106 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @02:55AM (#10156159)
    I listen to music all the time and have my own collection of movies I like to play on the go. Sounds like a great device. The my wallet gives a reality check. At $500, I think a cheap $800 Dell or PCClub laptop would do more for me than the PMC. Except for the boot time and battery life, I would love to have one in a heartbeat....
    • The large media corps that help decide nextgen dvd standards do not like DIVX and Microsoft doesn't want to piss them off. Microsoft need to grow and having every dvd player maker on the planet pay them money will help them do that.

  • It's useless (Score:4, Informative)

    by News for nerds ( 448130 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @02:56AM (#10156162) Homepage
    if you don't have Windows XP Media Center Edition [microsoft.com] to sync.
    • From TFA...

      Sync: After you run the Portable Media Center Setup disk, you are ready to add music, videos and pictures to your Portable Media Center using Windows Media Player 10 and a USB 2.0 cable.
    • you don't need a media center pc, all you need a tv tuner / recorder on a xp machine (for now) and windows media player 10. that said, as i said in my review, it's not that interesting unless you record craploads of tv (and a media center does make it easier). technically, you could record with mythtv or whatever and get it to the device, it shows up a har drive and you could just send the files over (if they're wmv).

      • Re:It's useless (Score:3, Informative)

        by News for nerds ( 448130 )
        In "useless", I mean all metadata of recorded TV material, which is the juicy part of sync, is lost, if you don't have Media Center PC. MS can't to it without giving Windows XP Media Center Edition some superiority over other products out there. It's natural thing for corporations as Apple does with its FairPlay tech and toward Real's hack, but it's still grain of salt to users.
        • agreed, but here's something i found out---all the major tv tuner and recorder hardware and software vendors have annouced support for the portable media center, so in theory all the meta data is all there. i thought it was odd for microsoft to do that, but it's just adding meta data to windows media videos and encoding them at 320 x 240 / 500 or 800 kbps and whatever sound-- no it's not like they care, they may make more on pmc licenses than media center xp licenses. i haven't tried this myself yet so it c

  • Very limited list of supported formats : ( (Score:5, Informative)

    by AlexMidn1ght ( 705563 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @03:01AM (#10156172)
    From the article:
    " Supported digital media file types:
    Windows Media Video and Photo Story files (.wmv, .asf) at a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels and at a bit rate less than 800kbps
    Windows Media Audio files (.wma)
    MP3 audio files (.mp3)
    JPEG image files (.jpg, .jpg, .jpe, .jfif)

    Compatible with:
    Windows Media and Photo Story files (.wmv, .asf) at a resolution higher than 320 x 240 pixels and/or at a bit rate higher than 800kbps
    Microsoft Recorded TV Show file (.dvr-ms)
    MPEG movie file (.mpeg, .mpg, mpe, .m1v, .mp2v, .mpeg2)
    Windows Video file (.avi)
    Windows Audio file (.wav)    "

    But seriously, what is the difference between "supported" and "compatible" in their marketing lingo?

    • Re:Very limited list of supported formats : ( (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Supported means you can call and go round and round in circles with their under educated and under motivated tech support.

      Compatible means they hang up on you.

    • i'm pretty sure "compatible" means it can convert the file the file to play, while supported is native on the device. based on my use of the device that seems to be accurate.
      • Thanks! Seems more logical now. The compatible formats are the ones the sync tool will convert without any trouble and the supported ones are native to the player.

        I have to admit, I didn't know these new gadgets even needed to convert the files to play them! I understand with a PDA running PalmOS but shouldn't these puppies play virtually everything like most audio players do?

        Makes me wonder how the other portable video players work. The details on the AV400 from Archos are a bit sketchy. Does it need t
        • i agree, it would be easier if all these players just played whatever your threw at it. but i think it comes down to cost of the decoder chips and costs to license decoders. for example, you can make a desktop mp3 player that plays on your computer for free and sell it, but if your player runs on a portable device you need to pay a fee to the mp3 folks. i'm pretty sure most players convert some of the files and can't play everyting (yet).
    • May as well add DivX, OGG and others to the compatible list. The first thing I'm doing when I get one of these is hacking it.

  • Sucks (Score:2, Insightful)

    by LowBrow ( 794091 )
    My crystal ball is telling me we will be seeing the same comments from yesterday...and this lack of media center still sucks.

    • Re:Sucks (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What's the resolution on your Crystal Ball ?
      Can it Play DiVX ?
  • Personally, I'm less interested in M$'s new media player than I am in finding out how much money M$ has ponied up to have this much press on Slashdot.

  • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) *
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • ``Is it legal?`` (Score:3, Informative)

    by mqx ( 792882 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @05:02AM (#10156435)
    ``Seems like it falls under fair use, but depending on who you ask and what time of day it is, it may not be. So be smart. We don't think recording a DVD for personal use you own to a device you own should ever be considered illegal, but these are odd times folks and we're not giving you legal advice.``

    Just to be clear: this is not legal according to statutory copyright law, and it is unlikely that the DVD license gives you permission to do it. It would be really nice if it _was_ legal, but unfortunately it isn't. Whether you'd get caught is another issue (considering how many people transcode CD's to MP3 for personal use ...).
    • You have neglected to mention the DCMA which makes any form of copying dvd's illegal. A tech sight devoted to the latest gadgets should be well versed in this topic! As for statutory copyright law, it is not as black and white as you make it out to be. I am unaware of any successful prosecution in this matter (not that I claim to be all knowing) and any such case would surely have made big headlines. In fact, it is my understanding that high courts in the US have almost always routinely ruled in favor o
  • Moron, The portable media centre
  • I think many of y'all are missing the point. Yes, in a purely price vs power arguement, get a laptop. However, the same arguement could be made about high end PDA's as well. I have a notebook already. I have a high end PDA as well. They serve different purposes. The fact is, these portable video things have several advantages over notebooks:

    1) They are small.
    2) They are portable.
    3) They have longer battery life.

    Yes, it is a M$ product, and yes, Archos and RCA way beat them to market. But, these
  • Speaking of downloading movies and TV from the web, here's something we noticed. While we'll often hunt for a movie or TV show on BitTorrent, it's usually faster to just use the Media Center PC guide and search for a movie or show. With 200 channels on cable there's a good chance what you're looking for might be playing somewhere soon. Then we just set it to record and automatically transfer it over to the PMC.

    They can keep their PMC/MCP and other Windows Media enabled garbage. I'll stick to my BitTorren

  • advanced gameboy and psx (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i think this idea will do well. the screen size is a bit small and you could increase the size, but i currently play with my advanced gameboy more than my ps2 and gamecube. That tiny screen doesn't bother me at all. Certainly, you could connect these things to your larger tv or in my case dlp lcd projector.

    And as for the pvp being larger than your pocket, my gba fits in my pocket, but I never put it there, it's necessary to not detract from the jewels in my case ;D

    I take my gba and put it in my bag. I
    • I find it very strange that none of the techs here have mentioned multimedia PDAs in this discussion. Microsoft's own PDAs are half the size, weight and price of their PMCs with just about the same video and audio functionality since 2000. With any of the current models starting at $200 (Dell Axim X30) you can now match performance in every way including framerate. As far as the smallest size and weight, how about the shirt pocket-sized iPaq 1945 at $220?) Why would anyone pay over twice that for a brick th

  • You're not confined to the tiny screen. (Score:3, Informative)

    by huchida ( 764848 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @02:24PM (#10158303)
    One feature that most people seem to be missing: it has video out. You can load movies from your computer and connect it to your TV. Or take it with you and use it on a friend's. Much quicker than burning DVDs, much less complicated than connecting the computer to the entertainment system.

  • This just flat isn't going to work until it syncs with a TiVo.

    Apple seems the best company to be able to make one of these sell. If they sold a video iPod that would sync with a TiVo, it'd just sync the higest rated x gigs of unwatched video whenever the iPod went into the TiVo cradle. This would be when the sort of device works. It'd be wonderful for people in the northeast with a long train commute every day. Or places in Europe. Make it simple, have it work with a TiVo, then this will take off.
    • It can take content from a Replaytv. Tivo is not the only DVR out there. And, Replaytv's ability to transfer video files is, IMHO, the kicker that makes it much better than Tivo.
    • God, I just read that as the highest rated X[XX] gigs of unwatched [hardcore filthy animal porn] video. What is wrong with me? Arrghh
  • What a stirling effort!
  • On Thursday afternoon I bought one of these PMCs from Best Buy. On Friday morning I returned it.

    I returned it because, plain and simple, it sucks.

    Before I explain some of the ways that it sucks, let me first say that I bought the PMC on Thursday in exchange for a misbehaving 40GB 4th generation iPod. I loved the iPod, but was concerned that the iPod had stability problems. Having gone through two unstable iPods, I thought, "What the Hell, maybe a Microsoft/Creative device could work" and so decided to giv

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