View Full Version : Sony VGC-AR11S blue ray laptop
frog9
06-07-2006, 10:39 PM
John Lewis now have in stock the Sony AR11S laptop complete with BD-RE drive and 25GB discs. The laptop is £1999.95 and the discs are £20.00.
The machine is in stock at Oxford street and High Wycombe Branch only. Not available online. The computer seems great although the screen (1080p) seems to have kinda poor contrast. Unfortunatly no HD films to play on it yet!
chedmaster
06-07-2006, 11:18 PM
The website warns frames may well be skipped on the laptops as they might not be powerful enough - how does this one fare? Are they all likely to skip?
nehalem
07-07-2006, 8:55 AM
Indeed this machine whilst being a great spec'd notebook, has a first generation Blu-ray drive which may not be fast enough to play ALL Blu-ray movies. Given that different studios are releasing the movies at between 54Mbps and 72Mbps the machine is being pushed from a PC perspective as offering the user 25gb worth of storage on one Blu-Ray disc, rather than a 'portable' movie player.
. Given that different studios are releasing the movies at between 54Mbps and 72Mbps
What are those numbers referring to ?
As I understand it the max bandwidth of BD video is 54Mbps and I believe the current titles have a much lower bit rate due to Mpeg2/SL media. If existing titles cause perfromance issues what will happen when the rate increases or a codec that is more CPU intense is introduced ?
AVI
There is no mention of play back issues in the computers documentation. If it does suffer playback problems Sony will have to fix this. The spec of this machine is very high so any problems would be with the drive itself.
The software player for blue ray is "Inter Video BD player" and seems much like the Inter Video DVD player. The drive itself is reconised by windows as a DVD-Ram drive. Recording to BD-RE disc can be done with the built in recording software only and the system seems to be incapable of making a Blue Ray Data disc. Video only. The computer does have a HDMI out on the back so you can plug it into an external screen.
Sony are hopefully sending a Blue Ray demo disk for this computer so when i get it ill let you know how it plays.
chedmaster
07-07-2006, 6:41 PM
http://vaio.sony-europe.com/view/ShowArticle.action?section=Products_ITE&article=1147101868846&productcategory=%2FComputing%2FVAIO+Notebooks&site=ite_en_GB
Rasczak
07-07-2006, 6:57 PM
http://vaio.sony-europe.com/view/Sho...site=ite_en_GB
"VAIO computers do not support movie playback on packaged media recorded in MPEG-4 AVC or SMPTE VC-1 formats at bit rates higher than 20 Mbps."
Nice and futureproof then! :god: :thumbsdow
nehalem
08-07-2006, 7:36 AM
What are those numbers referring to ?
As I understand it the max bandwidth of BD video is 54Mbps and I believe the current titles have a much lower bit rate due to Mpeg2/SL media. If existing titles cause perfromance issues what will happen when the rate increases or a codec that is more CPU intense is introduced ?
AVI
Someone better tell Fox then in that case as they have been touting bandwidths potentially as high as 72Mbps
There is no mention of play back issues in the computers documentation. If it does suffer playback problems Sony will have to fix this. The spec of this machine is very high so any problems would be with the drive itself.
The software player for blue ray is "Inter Video BD player" and seems much like the Inter Video DVD player. The drive itself is reconised by windows as a DVD-Ram drive. Recording to BD-RE disc can be done with the built in recording software only and the system seems to be incapable of making a Blue Ray Data disc. Video only. The computer does have a HDMI out on the back so you can plug it into an external screen.
Sony are hopefully sending a Blue Ray demo disk for this computer so when i get it ill let you know how it plays.
frog9
You can easily make data/music/movie discs by using the supplied Roxio DigitalMedia Home software as supplied which reads the disc as any normal disc and then informs you you have 23.9 GB spare to burn data too :thumbsup:
Someone better tell Fox then in that case as they have been touting bandwidths potentially as high as 72Mbps
Where are Fox quoting this out of interest? Maybe they should go look at -
Blu-ray Disc Association - www.blu-raydisc.com
“What is the quality of Blu-ray Disc video?
Blu-ray Disc offers HDTV video quality that far surpasses any other medium or broadcast format available today. With High Definition video with a resolution of up to 1920x1080 and up to a 54 Mbit/sec bandwidth (roughly double that of a normal HDTV broadcast), no other format can match Blu-ray Disc's video quality:eek: .”
I guess they hadn't seen HD-DVD:devil:
There's a point in compression at which no matter how many more bits gets transferred their’s no more perceived PQ i.e. reaching transparency to the master. If I recall this number is a lot less than 54mbs for Mpeg2 and the current BD titles are about 20Mbps I think.
AVI
Nic Rhodes
08-07-2006, 8:17 AM
http://vaio.sony-europe.com/view/ShowArticle.action?section=Products_ITE&article=1147101868846&productcategory=%2FComputing%2FVAIO+Notebooks&site=ite_en_GB
Holly cow, best start reducing those bit rates on the discs even more :mad: . What the hell are Sony playing at?
nehalem
08-07-2006, 8:56 AM
Where are Fox quoting this out of interest? Maybe they should go look at -
Blu-ray Disc Association - www.blu-raydisc.comAVI
Have seen it mentioned on a couple of presentations - whether they actually get released is a whole differnt matter or possibly somone got their wires crossed :confused:
Holly cow, best start reducing those bit rates on the discs even more . What the hell are Sony playing at?
Nic Rhodes
Bear in mind its a first generation drive x1 speed I think - standalone av players and drives you can buy in stores will be second generation onwards which will be able to cope fine - as will AR200 series. Its important to get an offering into the market place which adds significant functionality. Later gens will of course add greater funcationality e.g. burning greater amounts of data, movie playback etc
Bear in mind its a first generation drive x1 speed I think - standalone av players and drives you can buy in stores will be second generation onwards which will be able to cope fine - as will AR200 series. Its important to get an offering into the market place which adds significant functionality. Later gens will of course add greater funcationality e.g. burning greater amounts of data, movie playback etc
nehalem
I hear what you're saying but I thought one of the major advantages of the BD format was future-proofing? It strikes me that Sony is struggling with the technology in the real world.
AVI
nehalem
08-07-2006, 9:16 AM
nehalem
I hear what you're saying but I thought one of the major advantages of the BD format was future-proofing? It strikes me that Sony is struggling with the technology in the real world.
AVI
Future-proofing? Surely that doesn't exist in any product - least of all first gen offerings. Second gen, loads of bugs are ironed out, speeds increase etc etc. No-one said that introducing new technology was easy - neither of the new formats have had a particularly smooth conception.
chedmaster
08-07-2006, 9:40 AM
Id like to see a laptop that can handle 54mbps, at the moment you need basically the best PC you can buy to play BBC HD's ~20mbps H.264 demo. Will take a good few years I think!
I think I read at 1x it will take an hour and a half to burn a 25GB BD+R or whatever they're calling it. "Welcome to the future!"
Future-proofing? Surely that doesn't exist in any product - least of all first gen offerings. Second gen, loads of bugs are ironed out, speeds increase etc etc. No-one said that introducing new technology was easy - neither of the new formats have had a particularly smooth conception.
nealem
Sorry we will disagree then. Ok things should get better as products evolve but that's not the point. I would not expect all the caveats about movie performance from a format that pushes it's technical specification as a major advantage.
I agree the launch of both formats could have been better but that said it appears HD-DVD delivers what it promised consumers it would from the gate.
AVI
nehalem
08-07-2006, 10:40 AM
The other upside of it being first gen is that its region free too. :thumbsup: :thumbsup: - so I guess whilst you might not be able to watch the movies you'll certainly be able to extract the raw data when DVD Jon cracks aacs :smashin:
Nic Rhodes
08-07-2006, 3:23 PM
Bear in mind its a first generation drive x1 speed I think - standalone av players and drives you can buy in stores will be second generation onwards which will be able to cope fine - as will AR200 series. Its important to get an offering into the market place which adds significant functionality. Later gens will of course add greater funcationality e.g. burning greater amounts of data, movie playback etc
My DVD 1x drives are quite capable of playing a DVD, so is a 1x BD drive. If Sony however can't have 'other' electronics in their laptops to keep up, well that is frankly stupid. If they launch a product like a BD laptop then it should at least do what BD is supposed to, like playing a film. Hell the film companies have even made it easy for Sony by limiting the bit rate. It is irrelvant whether it is first generation or tenth, it should be able to play films. BD just get worse and worse..:eek:
richard plumb
08-07-2006, 3:51 PM
I am consistently disappointed at all the comments about bd 'failure' based on individual company issues.
if a software player has issues with 20mbps avc tin won't that apply to the tosh laptop too? And its the same for those playing with the bbc hd demo too.
does anyone have info on actual bitrates being used in hd titles?
Nic Rhodes
08-07-2006, 4:00 PM
If they can't play the films (BD or HD DVD) then these machines should not be marketed like they can.
nehalem
08-07-2006, 4:37 PM
My DVD 1x drives are quite capable of playing a DVD, so is a 1x BD drive. If Sony however can't have 'other' electronics in their laptops to keep up, well that is frankly stupid. If they launch a product like a BD laptop then it should at least do what BD is supposed to, like playing a film. Hell the film companies have even made it easy for Sony by limiting the bit rate. It is irrelvant whether it is first generation or tenth, it should be able to play films. BD just get worse and worse..:eek:
Er, they aren't marketed as being able to play movies as per the link on the first page.....
BD as you know is much more advanced technology than DVD requiring massive throughput of data. Sure BD can play movies, but they can also be used to backup data and given its a laptop, this is just as big a requirement if not more so than watching movies. How many other Blu-ray machines are there on the market.......its a competitive edge for Sony to have the first one adding to the advantage over the HD-DVD Toshiba machine which you can't actually write data to the HD-DVD discs. Its a ROM only drive as far as I'm aware.
I am consistently disappointed at all the comments about bd 'failure' based on individual company issues.
if a software player has issues with 20mbps avc tin won't that apply to the tosh laptop too? And its the same for those playing with the bbc hd demo too.
does anyone have info on actual bitrates being used in hd titles?
I'm not sure about AVC but I think current VC1 encoded HD-DVD's go up to 18mbps. Isn't the Tosh player essentially a PC with a P4 and 1gb ram?
AVI
richard plumb
08-07-2006, 5:06 PM
I'm not sure about AVC but I think current VC1 encoded HD-DVD's go up to 18mbps. Isn't the Tosh player essentially a PC with a P4 and 1gb ram?
AVI
thats what I thought. they both have software players too. So both will be as capable/incapable of high bitrate AVC/VC1
As for taking ages for a backup - well DVD burners took ages originally. These days we're spoilt by nero and 16x burners, but they'll come for BD as well. If I wanted 25GB backups on one disc *now*, It'd be a bit petty to moan about it taking an hour or so.
Nic Rhodes
08-07-2006, 5:13 PM
Er, they aren't marketed as being able to play movies as per the link on the first page......
They are, and to me this week in a Sony shop. This sir, has the new BD drive to allow you to play films....QUOTE as he gave me printed sheet.
BD as you know is much more advanced technology than DVD requiring massive throughput of data. Sure BD can play movies, but they can also be used to backup data and given its a laptop, this is just as big a requirement if not more so than watching movies. How many other Blu-ray machines are there on the market.......its a competitive edge for Sony to have the first one adding to the advantage over the HD-DVD Toshiba machine which you can't actually write data to the HD-DVD discs. Its a ROM only drive as far as I'm aware.
Backing up data?. £31 for 50Gb disc when I can buy a 320Gb HARD DRIVE for barely double that (£66) and don't have the £600 bill for the drive!!Let alone access speeds etc....Re a bigger requirement? Hmmmm.....everyone I know is using hard drives as they are substantially cheaper and bigger.
richard plumb
08-07-2006, 5:18 PM
Backing up data?. £31 for 50Gb disc when I can buy a 320Gb HARD DRIVE for barely double that (£66) and don't have the £600 bill for the drive!!Let alone access speeds etc....Re a bigger requirement? Hmmmm.....everyone I know is using hard drives as they are substantially cheaper and bigger.
are we doing this *again*? how much were blank DVDs when they came out? How much were the drives? How long did it take to do a backup?
We have the luxury of cheap media and fast burners now, but its only a few years since DVD was in the same boat. Not a fair comparison. Some people will buy it now, others will wait until BD is £20 for a spindle at maplins.
Nic Rhodes
08-07-2006, 5:26 PM
When DVD came out I made the decision to back up on hard drives, as cheaper and better. Now that DVD is cheap, I still find it better to use hard drives. BOTH have changed in the time period, hard drives much more however. Now BD is here I re assesed the situation I have made the same call. I have no doubt BD can only get cheaper(it can't get any more expensive), I also have no doubt that hard drives will do the same as well. As hard drives are currently way cheaper, bigger and faster already, then BD has lots of ground to catch up on the current situation or the any past similar evidence, let alone the rapid developements that are happening in the hard drive market.
Er, they aren't marketed as being able to play movies as per the link on the first page.....
BD as you know is much more advanced technology than DVD requiring massive throughput of data. Sure BD can play movies, but they can also be used to backup data and given its a laptop, this is just as big a requirement if not more so than watching movies. How many other Blu-ray machines are there on the market.......its a competitive edge for Sony to have the first one adding to the advantage over the HD-DVD Toshiba machine which you can't actually write data to the HD-DVD discs. Its a ROM only drive as far as I'm aware.
Tosh release burner/player on 11/7 I believe (not PC). BD has 1.47x the transfer rate of HD-DVD 54mbps v 36.55mbps. BD is more complicated than HD-DVD hence many of the outstanding features at launch.
If you're happy with your purchase and BD movies are not a priority then that's all that counts.;)
AVI
John Lewis now have in stock the Sony AR11S laptop complete with BD-RE drive and 25GB discs. The laptop is £1999.95 and the discs are £20.00.
The machine is in stock at Oxford street and High Wycombe Branch only. Not available online. The computer seems great although the screen (1080p) seems to have kinda poor contrast. Unfortunatly no HD films to play on it yet!
First review I've seen (borrowed from AVS) -
http://theadvertiser.gns.gannettonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060706/TECH03/605300392/1001/tech
Quote:
• Shoot video on a high-def camcorder, then burn that footage onto blank Blu-ray discs.
• Play Blu-ray movies in the highest high-def format, what techies refer to as full "1080p" (progressive) resolution. Sony supplies one 1080p disc from its own studio, "House of Flying Daggers," with purchase of the laptop.
• Use it to watch video on a big screen by connecting it to an HDTV with the supplied HDMI cable.
To test Vaio's high-def-burning capabilities, I shot stunning backyard family videos with Sony's fine HDR-HC3 camcorder. The camcorder's resolution is 1080i (interlaced), slightly lower on the digital food chain. (Interlaced and progressive refer to how lines of tiny pixels or picture elements are displayed on the screen.)
I transferred footage to the laptop via what Sony calls an i.Link cable (and others call FireWire or 1394). Finally, I burned it all onto a blank Blu-ray disc.
Apart from shooting 15 minutes of video, none of it was a pleasure. Issues:
• Equipment. I had to buy a compatible i.Link cable. Considering that the combined price of the laptop and $1,500 "consumer" camcorder is around $5,000, you'd think Sony could have thrown in a $30 cable with the camcorder.
Sony supplied me with a blank Blu-ray disc, but you'd have to buy your own. A 25-gigabyte BD-RE Sony Blu-ray disc costs $25. It's a "rewritable" disc that can be recorded over and over. "Write-once" 25-GB BD-R discs that can't be re-recorded cost $20. "Double-layer" discs that double the capacity to 50 GB go for $48 and $60.
• Burning. I experienced several snags attempting to burn HD video using the clumsy software preloaded on the computer from Ulead Systems. I kept having to "format" the disc. Messages such as "please insert a disc and make sure the disc is erasable" didn't help. The software froze when I tried to drag a bunch of video clips from the Vaio desktop at once. Dragging the clips one by one eventually worked.
• Playback. The Blu-ray video looked stellar on the Vaio. But the video frequently hiccupped with the laptop connected to my 34-inch Sony 1080i TV. Sony said it is aware of playback problems with the 1080i TVs - the one most HDTV owners have. A software "patch" to fix it is in the works.
The newly created disc wouldn't even load on a stand-alone Samsung Blu-ray DVD player I had around for testing. Sony says it's not sure whether the problem is with the Vaio or Samsung player but is readying a fix just the same.
Connecting to the television by the HDMI cable apparently altered display settings on the computer. So playing back the Blu-ray disc of my family on the laptop later, I heard the soundtrack but saw nothing but a dark screen.
Meanwhile, "House of Flying Daggers" and other prerecorded movies failed to load. Instead, this cryptic error: "WinDVD BD cannot start playback of protected content with current display setting." Huh? Would have been nice to tell you what you needed to do.
I tweaked the settings with Sony's help, and the video looked terrific from there. (It merely involved bringing up a display menu by pressing the Fn and F7 keys.)
The other upside of it being first gen is that its region free too. :thumbsup: :thumbsup: - so I guess whilst you might not be able to watch the movies you'll certainly be able to extract the raw data when DVD Jon cracks aacs :smashin:
Hi nehalem
Do you mean it's DVD region free or BD region free or both ?
AVI
nehalem
08-07-2006, 10:43 PM
Probably dvd region locked - but pretty sure you can unlock the red lens, but 99% sure that the BD drive is region unlocked.
Review sounds about right - usual first gen bugs which have work arounds - none of which are pleseant, but the kind of stuff that gets ironed out by second gen
Rasczak
08-07-2006, 10:56 PM
but 99% sure that the BD drive is region unlocked.
How come so certain? Everything I've read from BD members suggests that all their drives are single region: either A, B or C.
Probably dvd region locked - but pretty sure you can unlock the red lens, but 99% sure that the BD drive is region unlocked.
Thanks. Very interesting about the BD being unlocked. Is this a definate as the Sony site says different (point 4) -
http://shop.sonystyle-europe.com/catalog/44/44918684747B0085000000002BC29B86.pdf
AVI
satisian
04-08-2006, 12:00 PM
Has anybody got a recent review of the BD movie playing capabilities of these laptops? The original ones in June talked of glitches that were being fixed with software updates. Besides being a good laptop, is this a viable BD DVD player until standalone BD DVD players become available? Limitations versus the current Samsung or proposed Sony players?
nehalem
04-08-2006, 12:23 PM
Wouldn't recommend it for BD Hollywood title playback as it is only a 1x first gen drive, so not really quick enough to cope with data throughput, but the one I played with happily loaded a US version of Hitch on BD with no problem so I am pretty sure it is region unlocked.
Paul Mela
05-08-2006, 3:18 PM
Some interesting points here, I'm in the market for a new laptop and this one caught my eye, but after reading the previous posts I not too sure if this is the one for me. The other laptop is the Toshiba Qosmio G30-163 with the HD-dvd, now off to find some reviews and opinions
nehalem
05-08-2006, 4:18 PM
From a HD movie playing perspective - from the reviews I've read, neither particularly excel (although standard DVD's are fine) But from a laptop perspective the Sony is rounghly £300 cheaper, allows you to burn to Blu Ray ( the Tosh is read only), lighter, better looking and has a stunning X black screen!
satisian
05-08-2006, 4:47 PM
Nehalem, can you point me to the any of the reviews that talk to the HD playing ability of the Sony?
nehalem
05-08-2006, 11:00 PM
Few here - uses the software WinDVD BD so if you google that you should get some hits.
http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/review.php?reviewId=1564
http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=1220043DM7QY&page=2
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=14851
AndyCob
21-09-2006, 10:34 PM
They are, and to me this week in a Sony shop. This sir, has the new BD drive to allow you to play films....QUOTE as he gave me printed sheet.
Sorry but never believe the salesman, is a good cautionary tale to anyone buying anything. Sure they are not supposed to lie and it is possible the person believes what they are saying but that doesn't make them right.
Only ever believe the manufacturers printed spec sheet and even then it's worth checking your facts before buying.
I still can't find any written statement to confirm support for HDCP on any of the Sony BD drive equiped PCs, or the HDMI equiped media centers. I find it hard to believe they don't but certainly won't be buying without confirmation they do.