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Friday March 9, 2007
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Joel Santo Domingo, PC Magazine's desktop analyst, received a pre-production Vista system from Dell: the XPS 410. But as he writes, "...this was no typical setup. In fact, it's the first Vista desktop system with ATI's TV Wonder Digital Cable tuner, also known as OCUR (OpenCable Unidirectional Receiver)." And we're the first to take a crack at testing it. How did Joel like it? Take a look at his preview of the XPS 410 here. (3/13: The link's been updated to take you to Joel's full, hands-on preview.)
If you're not familiar, the ATI CableCard will let you record TV onto your PC's hard drive and serve it to other TVs in your house; it's only available to OEMS, though, so you'll have to buy a system with the tuner already installed to get this. Regardless, HDTV fans are anticipating it with glee. Get more details from Loyd Case's CES preview story.
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March 9, 2007 2:05 PM
wow! this takes some serious coordination between a lot of different folks. only Dell could do this! glad to see them getting aggressive around XPS solutions.
March 13, 2007 1:36 PM
Thanks for the review but it leaves a lot on the table.
First of course, this sort of experience (multiple trips to setup, never got second cable card working, unstable playback) would normally result in a very negative review. Since its not a final product, this seems okay for now, but I expect a more skeptical approach once the product ships.
Second, you didn't answer many of the obvious questions about DRM and restrictions. Presumably the display presumably has to be HDCP compliant. If you already have a display can you even buy this Dell without an HDCP compliant display? Then what about the files that are recorded? Obviously they can be played back in MCE, but presumably they are DRM'ed heavily and can't be converted, burned or otherwise manipulated in any way. Its possible they can't even be played back outside MCE. Details on what the restrictions are and how they achieve this should have been included in the review. I consider this a serious failing not to have covered this.
The Gearlog podcast coverage of this was pretty fawning, but forgivable given that the review hadn't gone up yet. But of course they made the assumption that you could transfer the shows to an iPod (probably not), convert them to other formats (probably not), burn them to DVD (probably not), etc. Why didn't the reviewer cover this?
March 14, 2007 12:07 PM
Hi Glenn,
The whole install experience is likely to be ironed out by the time it's offered to the public (remember that this is a first run before all the pieces are in place. Dell tells me that they are using these experiences to make end users' experience smoother) Because of our circumstances, we had to do a lot more legwork ourselves than end users are expected to. Stay tuned on that front.
The 27 inch display we tested with is HDCP complaint, and you will need an HDCP compliant setup to use CableCARD. This shouldn't be an issue at the start, since you have to buy the system as a package to get CableCARD. It's not like the usual Dell PC where you can pick and choose your components. At the start you'll be limited to few choices.
You mileage may vary transferring your programming to an iPod, but you should certainly expect to be able to transfer your recorded files to Windows-compatible devices that work with MCE, like Windows Mobile PDAs and phones.
Stay tuned, I'm going to try a few things when I get to work on the final review. The articles linked above are previews of a not-yet-shipping system.