My new Sony VAIO is loaded with all manner of bells & whistles. One thing it doesn’t seem to be able to do is show me a television broadcast, even though the computer is constantly being bathed in electromagnetic broadcast waves. It can play radio stations via RealPlayer™ so why not TV too?
And I don’t even see why extra software would be needed in the first place. Just incorporate tuner circuitry into the motherboard & add the necessary drivers so that said tuner can talk to the display and voilà! A $5 investment in tuner circuitry adds $50 or more in value to the product, since it’s now essentially a portable TV. This seems like it should be right up Sony’s alley, what with them being one of the dominant consumer electronics companies on the planet.
The machine has an IEEE1394 port which, according to the manual, is for connecting video equipment like camcorders, so the machine is obviously equipped to handle real time video. Why can’t I have my MTV?
The computer industry has been bringing up the idea of tv-in-the-computer every few years, and until recently, the idea has always died. Until recently, your average monitor wasn’t tv quality (bear in mind that, until 10 years ago, most people didn’t have color monitors), so even if you were able to pick up TV (there were adaptor cards for the Apple II and IBM PC), the picture quality would be horrible. For the price of the card, you could pick up a used TV and set it next to your computer and have better quality TV while still being able to use the computer for something else.
Now that monitor quality has improved, and people are spending more time at the PC, and buying DVD drives for them, this is changing rapidly.
Also bear in mind that the VAIO’s are specifically designed with audio/video/tv/presentation graphic bells and whistles.
Years ago, Compaq introduced a Presario to be used as both a computer and TV. The ideal thing for a dorm room, since it took up less space and was marginally cheaper than buying both. The marketing was not especially successful. It seems the average Ma and Pa felt that it was far better to just buy a computer sans TV, rather than encourage distraction in their young’uns.
Ethilrist, I’m afraid I must disagree. Color monitors capable of VGA resolution were very common by 1991, and I hazard were the norm by 1988 or so (with many legacy EGA monitors still around). Also, the TV signal is not that demanding resolution or color-wise - it’s less than 640x480, after all. I would also hazard that most all monitors made after 1992 are fully capable of showing a sharp TV picture on them, based on my personal experience with PC hardware over that time.
I agree with the OP - TV adaptor cards are very inexpensive, and I do wonder why we do not see them more often. In my server room at home, it would be nice to be able to have any PC tune into a channel to distract me or provide background noise while working. It also seems that the trend nowadays is to bundle the TV feature onto a graphic card, rather than have a separate card. However, the top-of-the line 3D cards seem to not come with that functionality, which means if you want your GeForce3 with TV you have to buy another card and take up another slot on the motherboard.
There are GeForce3 cards with video in and out. They aren’t much more expensive than regular GeForce3 cards (which isn’t saying much, I suppose).
I don’t have much experience with TV tuner cards, but the early ones worked by superimposing a TV image onto the computer image. That is, take the output of a video card, run it through the tuner card and output to the monitor. All this is done in analogue circuits so there is some degredation of the image.
Modern video tuner cards digitize the TV signal, and display the video through software. That way the output can be done with a standard video card connected directly to a monitor. But such high speed digitizing and data transfer isn’t easy or cheap.
As for the IEEE1394 port, it is a digital interface and can only accept video data from a digital video camera. Your computer is not equipped to handle analogue TV signals, and adding that capability will add some size and weight - most notebook computer users won’t appreciate that.
Does SONY sell their desktop computers in the US? Most SONY desktops sold in Japan have the latest multimedia capabilities, including video in and out. Their latest model even has a mini-disc recorder/player built in.
I love geek toys as much as the next person but I am also a business person who use PCs and notebooks (several) and I think we need to have a average user reality check here.
1: Local broadcast TV is not a major selling point for most high end notebook users. Almost every venue you can think of where you might like to have a TV available already has one and those few areas that don’t will not make that much difference in selling the unit.
2: It difficult enough to deal with the EMF/RF issues in a notebook as it is without adding an internal RF tuner of all things.
In the end the current cost benefit equation doesn’t make the cut for most users. Unless the incremental engineering and production cost of adding a TV tuner is close to zero I don’t think were going to see them as bundled units any time soon.
The main reason given is that people do not usually use a PC and watch TV in the same location/room/position, etc.
~
The main reason behind that is that BIG computer monitors (like 36"?) still cost thousands of bucks, and will for some time. If 36" computer monitors were as cheap as 36" televisions, I would probably set up my PC in a much different place than the den corner desk it is sitting on now. - MC
I bought my Apple IIe around 1984-85. The color monitor that came with it was not good enough for 80-column screen, so I had to do all my non-graphics stuff in 40-column mode.
The Apple is long since gone, but I still use that monitor connected to the output jacks on my vcr, and the picture is excellent. It’s not HDTV, but as good or better than on any regular tv screen of the same size.
And as far as the comments about RF interference, what about cable tv? Wouldn’t a cable screwed onto the adaptor card have less interfence than an antenna? Or in my case, where my Internet connection is on the very same cable as the tv sets in my house, wouldn’t the interference be zero?
It seems to be an installable option that computer users can add if they want it & it keeps the price of a computer down if the manf doesn’t have to put it in.
There are a lot of installable options for computers you can buy.
I presently have a WinTV Go card from Hauppauge in my computer. I like it, for ~$70 I can watch tv and have an RCA video in jack. The only disadvantage is that with the included software I cant get much more than an 8 - 9" diagonal tv size. I think it has to do with the massive difference in resolution. Its fine for the evening news and sitcoms, but itll be a cold day in hell before my nintendo and my vcr get used with it.
I dont know about this hardware for laptops though, the actaul TUNER on the card is the size of a buisness card and 1/2" thick, the same size ive seen in TV’s and VCR’s. If you find one for your laptop its going to be another chunck of plastic and 2 wires (coax and the dongle) to carry with your lappy.
I have an ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon in my secondary PC, and I am very happy with the TV performance it provides me. I also get pretty decent 3D performance, so it’s the best of both worlds. When I got the card, it was a little pricey, but it has come down quite a bit since then, and I am sure most of you would be willing to pay the price if you want both. There is just one beef I have had with it. I am not sure if it was my motherboard, or something else, but this card froze up after about 1.5 or 2 hours of Quake3. Now, with the DirectX 8 and the new drivers from ATI, I can run it for much longer periods. I actually ahven’t had anything freeze yet, including Black and White.
To get back to the OP, I have seen several comps at local shops around town that have had TV-Wonder cards built in, allowing for TV tuner, and video encoding capabilities. I think I would prefer a TV wonder to what I have just because I can upgrade the graphics card without dealing with a loss of the TV capabilities.
I use an ATI TV-wonder. Great for capturing video clips and whatnot. I doubt it would ever catch on as a tv-replacement, though. Monitors are just too clear to adequately display a broadcast signal. After 352x240, the extra resolution is wasted.
As a tv-replacement, I could only see it if it was set up somewhere where space is at a premium, like a dorm room, office or something like that.
On a technical level, building a decent tv-tuner is somewhat more problematic than converting (say) a radio station. A radio feed is in raw audio, similar to .wav files (IIRC) or the line-in from a microphone. TV signals are in a rather more complicated format. Even worse, it varies across the globe, so to market effectively, you have to make a different product. Annoying.
When I bought my computer from Gateway about 2 years ago I opted for a TV/FM radio card. IIRC, it was an addtional $80. All I had to do was plug in an antena and it works fine. It simply plays in its own resiable window on the desktop. If another window totally covers the TV window then it will show through the window on top of it. That way you can work in an applicqation that is Maximized and still watch TV in a corner of the screen. When the TV window is maximized it drops the resolution on the display to 640 x 480 (which is still greater than a standard TV signal) but switches back automatically when restored or minimized.
I just want to point out something. Computer monitors have been a lot better than TVs for quite some time. As Zot points out 640 by 480 is better resolution that a normal TV. When was the last time you saw a monitor that only went up to 640 by 480? A problem for monitors vs TVs is that monitors are probably too sharp to watch TV. When you are working at you computer the letters look much better if you have good sharp pixels where Pictures look blocky and pixilated with nice sharp pixels.
I see this as a reason FOR, not against. There should be a tv tuner in laptops because I’m not in a place where I normally watch tv. It would be great to be able to put those spreadsheets aside for a moment & tune in the local news in the middle of the park, or coffee shop, etc.
I found this device, which is a video a/d convertor. But sheesh for $310 I can buy a portable TV (or a full size 27" for that matter).
Come to think of it, maybe that’s why there is no tv tuner in my notebook… if there was, I wouldn’t have to go and spend more money on another Sony product.
