Quick Start Ep 5: Qosmio - The Portable TiVo of 2006
![Cathode Ray Dude [CRD]](http://yt3.ggpht.com/3Lm-GuDsob2s_naatda0fzux0WY3AEEzGO_EdVi6wp6TqJjYY3Z_i51y1cLVEuSxiAACN2cAiQ=s48-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj)
Vložit
- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- Congratulations! You made it to the first Quick Start with a machine I actually like.
Support me on Patreon: / cathoderaydude
Tip me: ko-fi.com/cathoderaydude
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
02:33 Premise
08:17 Hardware overview
11:20 Intended market
20:59 Windows experience
25:50 Instant-on experience
37:18 Behind the scenes
42:45 Battery
44:45 Conclusions / Media Center comparison
49:53 Competing machines
52:29 Outro - Věda a technologie
I'm glad you kept with the "I don't think they should make laptops smaller than this" gag 😂
The gag was always "they shouldn't make laptops larger than this" but I guess for giant laptops he reversed it lol.
running jokes are so good. "two of them" also makes an appearance here.
Me watching this on my 12 inch MacBook 😂
Joke?
What do you mean?
They SHOULD never make smaller screens than 17”, or larger ones than 10”, or larger ones than 12”, or or or
I hope we see more of the two wieners joke.
*It just works, it will keep working forever, as long as NTSC broadcast exists... BUT THEY WILL NEVER SHUTDO-*
Man idk why cutting the sentence right there made me lose my shit so easily, I love your snappy edit and visual gags in balance with the findings you made with these devices, can't help but praise the amount of tinkering you do around to explain the features and the hidden tricks behind it, from disamssembling to analysing the files and hidden partitions, great job of course!.
That's pretty much how I felt when it was announced that it would be shut down, I said no way! That won't happen, It's been around for so long!
And then, poof
Best gag of the whole video
Analog television has existed for longer than most countries has been independent, most of Africa was still a colony when NTSC was introduced
So to see it just disappear in a split of a second was just astounding.
@@tristan6509and with no comparable replacement in terms of reliability. We still have AM radio because it just kinda works, you can pick up AM radio with an LED if you’re doing it right. I can listen to my city’s famous AM station in most of the country at night. There’s no TV equivalent now that NTSC is gone, ATSC can’t just work in that same way.
@@JuneNafziger and lets not forget about shortwave radio which can bounce off the ionosphere
you can be anywhere on earth and still be able to pick up a signal just with a single transmitter.
Sadly it is very hard to pick up a shortwave signal nowadays due to interference, but in the forest you can still pick up signals
A long time ago this was the only form of entertainment for sailors in the middle of the sea.
Every laptop should have an HDMI input to make them stay useful for a lot longer.
AIO computers even moreso I think. A lot of those seem like ewaste out the factory
The consumer sided band-aid is one of those Aliexpress monitor boards that can communicate with any LVDS LCD or dunno if the eDP ones also work well.
my GPD Pocket 3 has an adapter for HDMI video capture, and it can do KVM over USB if you want, too.
@@Ametisti I know Sony has them on their AIOs and so does Lenovo on some of their thinkcentres. Im like 80% sure that the sony aio my dad has is using some sort of Bravia TV panel. It also has RCA in.
This makes me want to see how hard it would be to make software that just turns a capture dongle and a laptop into a display.
The reason they probably buried the tivo like features was during this time TiVo was going nuts suing everyone and their dogs trying to stay profitable so a lot of smaller operations had to hide/jump through hoops to use the time shift features to avoid their litigation.
@fungo6631 yes. And a lot of them straight ripped off Tivo ui and functionality triggering the suits. If you're gonna copy someone's homework at least change some things around lol
@@fungo6631 bout tree fiddy
JVC should sue TiVo for usage of the classic Play/Stop/Rew/FF icons which probably predate JVC as well
I had the 2011 model of Qosmio, which had a 3D screen built in and a bunch of other wacky nonsense gadgetry inside its very tacky gamer-core chassis. The Qosmio line seemed to relish throwing in as many enthusiast features as possible and hope it all fit together. I loved it, lol
They seem to have been competing with Viao with this line. The Japanese Sony PC's had more multimedia functions like minidisc playback.
DUUUUDE!!!! Now I totally want one. Laptop with a build in 3d screen? That is freaking awesome.
I believe the Toshiba line of 3D laptops used a lenticular lens 3D display, *NOT* the Nvidia 3D Vision type with shutter glasses. So you didn't even need to charge some glasses up to use, or make sure the IR emitter wasn't blocked. @@brentgoeller8257
You’re looking healthier & happier since you quit your job. Video’s great, as always. Keep up the good work!
I worked in a retail store when this was released. A lot of truckers and people traveling bought this laptop.
Makes perfect sense! I wish my laptop could have hdmi in .. not just usb capture
It does have its place, perfect vehicle mounted TV and PC combo. It's not a laptop. rofl
Were there people going around with this laptop and a pair of rabbit ears? I imagine most of them would be watching DVDs on the road. A lot of people used DVD-equipped regular laptops for that purpose around the time this came out. The only practical way to use the live TV function on this would have been to leave it more-or-less-permanently-installed somewhere like a bedroom or dorm room.
@@ddelony1 In a Semi, it wouldn't have been too difficult to permanently mount Rabbit ears and you just plug/unplug the cable as needed, having a TV with live shows would help save the limited space that a Semi has vs the amount of space tons of DVDs can take up (even in a CD case), on top of less worry of not being having to worry about said DVDs getting scratched when changing them out.
There's a maybe a reason for the LCD to be this thicc - As you note, the brightness was way higher than any other laptop at the time. This employs backlighting tech from a desktop monitor if i'm not mistaken.
I'm nearly certain that at the time, LCD monitors and TVs used CFLs for the backlighting. I don't know what would contemporary laptops use, LEDs feel too far off (I remember the LED TV craze among retailers around 2011-2013) but at the same time, what else would fit into a laptop screen?
@@segarallychampionship702 contemporary laptops use CFLs, I've had a few where they failed, they were normally only edge lit though, with some only using 1 along the longest side(and a reflector on the other side) but top and bottom was common as well, completely unsure why this laptop is so thick but the only assumption I can make is they might be using direct backlighting so an array of cfl's possibly along with all the necessary diffusers to keep it from showing severe banding, there's a possibility of leds as well but I'm unsure when that became common, I do know my laptop from 2009 had an LED screen though
@@segarallychampionship702 also this is based on Wikipedia but the first laptop with an LED backlight was made in 2005 with major players only starting to use them around 2008, based on the age of this laptop it's almost certainly a CFL backlight
@@segarallychampionship702 Laptops used CCFLs as well (very thin ones). Laptops with LED backlights started appearing around 2010 IIRC.
@@segarallychampionship702it must be CFL white LED's were pretty terrible in CRI back then.
I think rather than 2 CFL's setup as edge lighting the display, there may be more setup as a backlight. You'd need the extra space for diffusion plus a bit of space for impact protection.
I used to repair Toshiba Qosmios when I worked at Geek Squad City. They were a nightmare to work on, but absolutely amazing units when they were working. Absolute power houses with SLI'ed video cards inside.
I've seen some bizarre laptop shell designs in my time but this is the first one I can remember that looks like someone mated 2 Hershey's bars together top to top.
I will only mention that the Media Center UI is beautiful. Same with the Zune OS. The big faint lowercase text showing you where in the UI you are is pretty and intuitive. Windows Vista welcome centre (the first window that automatically opens after booting) did it too iirc.
Fundamentally agree on both counts.
Maybe it's because I was a kid when all of this was new, but to this day it all blows my mind. So beautiful, and hopeful for a better future... now we're in the future and it's a little boring.
@@Solaceonit's mega boring actually lol
That ui is what led to Metro /UWP
I miss the original zune
2:50 "Have you ever found yourself needing a monitor in a pinch."
There was this one time while at FPC Geiger (Spokane) in about 1992-ish where another resident was getting interviewed for a documentary and the video crew's monitor died. The guards knew I had some electronic chops so I brought down my Commodore SX-64 and unplugged it's 5" JVC monitor and directly fed in their composite video so they could keep taping. FPC Geiger wasn't your normal Federal Prison Camp back then.
It’s not even a Federal Prison Camp anymore, thats how not normal it is
I'll give Windows XP Media Center credit for one thing: that Royale theme it shipped with looked really nice. (The unfinished Royale Noir theme too love me some dark purple)
I loved that you could just install the Royale theme on vanilla XP. I did that on every XP machine I owned. Nice fresh coat of paint for an old machine!
Royal Noire was released as the Zune theme.
uuuuh excuse me but on media center edition it was called energy blue
A neat little-known thing with the "Pause Live TV" feature is that Roku TVs (at least the TCL ones) have this feature built-in today if you attach a flash drive. I don't often watch live TV, but when I do, I also like to pause it for 10-20 minutes to give time to skip commercials
Almost every brand of Smart TV these days has a record and pause live TV function when storage is connected as far as I'm aware.
Some higher end ones (mostly Samsung and LG) sometimes even have a dual TV tuner so that while you are recording one thing you can watch another channel.
@@nadiayorcmost new Samsung tvs don't, they claim that the unadvertised, never mentioned feature wasn't popular.
LG TV's have the same thing provided you give it a big enough usb stick.
meanwhile here the TV service provider prevents you from skipping the commercials LOL
Do they have that in North America? I have two Samsung smart tv's that in Europe and Asia have DVR functions but in North America there's no DVR in the Samsung TVs
What with how slick and well-produced the CRD style is, bloopers like line flubs and desk-bottlecaps are that much more charming when left in. Love it.
Your buildup of the laptop size gag over multiple episodes only to hit us with the dreadnought had me laughing so hard I had to pause to collect myself. Well done.
It's not just Toshiba who clings to prehistoric user interfaces. Nvidia has been using the EXACT same GUI for its control panel app at least since Windows Vista. The only difference being a couple added options like Optimus.
Pretty sure a bunch of UI in modern Windows is decades old, some of which gets updated depending if people notice and/or complain about it
Kind of wish the GeForce panel got updated, but at the same time didn't since they will try to roll it into GeForce Experience
@@No-mq5lwWindows fax and scan must almost be as old as me, dont think its changed in 20+ years.
@@meetoo594 Yes, that's a really good example of what I was talking about, but the principle example I had in mind of this was that there's Windows 3.1 UI elements that are still there if you dig deep enough.
That's probably the only example I could feasibly bring up that wouldn't require research to let you prove it yourself.
@@No-mq5lw True, Windows 10 is also very similar to Windows Vista and 7. The Nvidia Control panel is literally the same app it was 16 years ago though. I don't really mind, but it really caught me by surprise when I took out my old Vista laptop and realized that the Nvidia control panel was the same as on my current PC with the latest drivers.
Even Windows itself has various programs and even screensavers that are obviously for Windows Vista and/or 7
I want a director's cut version where you take a thorough tour of the Qosmio. Gotta love the idea of TV replacement laptop market.
Man, that intro was MAGIC. I was amazed at how it was running trials, and then I saw it instantly switch and I was like "does that laptop have a f**king capture card built-in?"
Edit: Man, I don't understand the trend of developing an awesome feature like that and only going halfway. If you're going to do something awesome, go the full length. It seems like this is a trend with quick start machines.
This was precisely my chain of reactions.
"How the fsck?" followed up immediately with "What the fsck?!"
I like how he never explains how well Trials was running. He even noted later that the nVidia card was barely better than Intel Integrated.
But then again, who does?
@@Dong_Harvey i think it's a prerecorded video he was acquiring from somewhere.
5:13 you can still do this! I built my grandparents a media center PC about 3 years ago and I threw in a brand new TV Tuner card so my grandma could watch NCIS. In fact, it's basically the same kind as the one on screen at 5:06 but with 1080i support
20:21 I am so glad you kept the "oh my f*cking gawd, honey" in, shit had me dying! XD
I cannot express how much I miss Windows Media Center, both XP and Vista/7 version.
Fulluy agree. Full nerd here. But I loved my mce. I had dual analog tuners and then also dual atsc tuners. But the automatic TVGuide from Microsoft was awesome
Hey, D-Terminal, that's a name I haven't heard since I was looking into GameCube cables!
So you know that super rare component cable that Nintendo released? There was a D-Terminal version too, it costs less (but still like $100), obviously TVs in Japan had that plug and people used it for 480p signals.
Epson also put the D-Connector in their projectors, sold in Europe they included an adapter to SCART (the huge RGB/composite combination plug the French invented out to kill grey market imports)
Luckily for the GameCube fans, gcvideo has made the official cables drop in price from what it was 5+ years ago.
@@fungo6631 It was later adopted in whole Europe, but intially the french saw it as way to support the french TV makers by requiring it for all devices.
As usual a great video from you!
I know it wouldn't inscribe in the Quick Start series but I'd love to see you cover the Qosmios from 2008 with the SpursEngine module, the one that has some of the SPEs from the CELL B/E of the PS3. It feels like Toshiba just put those out, no one cared apart from some video geeks that benched it to compare to software encode and decode and then absolutely everyone forgot about it - which makes me feel like it'd be right up your alley.
Also funny seeing the GeForce Go 7300 in such a high-end machine when it's the same GPU Apple put in the $300 1st gen Apple TV. I do guess they share a lineage of both being media center products, so that's poetic.
44:50 honestly it seems what they were going for here was a simple UPS feature for the media center. Like sure it doesn't last more than 10 to 20 minutes, but UPSes don't need to. You aren't supposed to keep using your PC in a AC power failure, a UPS is meant to kick in immediately and warn the user that the power has died. So that the user can properly and safely save all their work, and safely shut down their PC for when the power returns.
A weirder one that I've used before was this one called 1seg. It is only used in countries that use 13 segment ISDB/ISDB-T broadcasting like Brazil, the Phillipines and Japan. Basically, they found that they never needed any more than 8 of the 13 segments in its early days so they experimented with some of its functionality, leaving 1 segment free for low resolution long range video (hence the name 1seg). The service is still available today and has gone largely unchanged technologically speaking, so older tuners still work just fine, but it mostly goes unused due to the rise in popularity of streaming services and the widespread adoption of 5G allowing for better connections to those services on the go.
Now of course it pales in comparison to having full 1080i broadcasts on 7 inch portable TV's that cost about as much as my emergency tax rebate, but its a fun gimmick for what its worth.
Seriously CRD quickly became one of my fav channels this past year. Not only is the quality of the production top tier but I find it hard to name another creator that has taught me about new things I have never seen or heard of before.
Every now and again CZcams will suggest a smaller channel on the homepage that you know right away that channel is going to blow up and that's exactly what happened to me with CRD's channel and I couldn't be any more happier!
I never used XP Media Center, but I did use Vista Media Center, and I really liked it. It was pretty slick, and it handled recordings better than anything else I've ever used. It would look at everything you had scheduled to record, and if there were a conflict, it would actually search for alternative times for either program to record instead. I had two tuners in my PC at the time, and it worked seamlessly with both.
I still use Windows 7 Media Center. Other than the Internet Channel Guide that was shutdown everything still works great with satellite TV.
I tried using it for a while, since the xbox 360 could connect to it, and play the recorded media. But mediacenter was so crappy I switched to linux and running MythTV fairly quickly.
I still use one of those MCE remotes on my pc today. You can set them up to control almost anything and they are pretty sturdy.
Me too. It controls tiktok perfectly lol
I owned one of those old Alienware laptops with an HDMI in! Didn't come up that often, but ended up being surprisingly useful at times at uni and for a couple of weeks when I was without a TV for my consoles. Unfortunately the laptop itself was a big, awkward and bulky thing that weighed over 5kg, and I'm not a big person, so I didn't feel compelled to take it with me places often. 😨 The Qosmio also has that problem, but HDMI in really is a feature I'm surprised never became more prominent on laptops!
Especially today with the proliferation of mux switches
At first I was thinking the LCD was as thick as it was because they found some way to integrate a TV antenna inside of it.
Still a really cool laptop, 2006 Ben would’ve been all over this.
51:11 Maybe old flash is more flaky than I know of, but I'd certainly think that you could advertise flash memory as more than just "twice as shock resistant" as hard drives lol. You could even argue flash as basically shock-proof in most scenarios. Weird wording by that article.
"The malaise era of the personal computer" wow that's so apt!
AFAIK, broadcast NTSC did have room to send guide information, and a lot of VCRs supported it, as well as some (but far fewer) TVs. I think it used a mixture of the VCR+ info and teletext that was often transmitted with TV broadcasts.
The last analogue CRT we had would also get the name of the current and next show on the TV, all without internet.
Some devices could even generate a full on "guide" with a list of present and upcoming shows up to a week (or possibly two? my memory is fuzzy) into the future.
32:00 -ish, that "pause and wait 20 minutes so you could skip through ads" just unlocked so many repressed memories
14:36 I think that the toslink addition makes perfect sense. what if you wanted to have your laptop be an HTPC that you can take with you? you can just pull the cords out and shove it into a bag (or more likely a suitcase)
Before HDMI, I used toslink for digital audio on my laptop. Probably a placebo compared to a regular 3.5mm cable, but I enjoyed having the option built-in.
@@GoTeamScotch it's much better, especially if you have a stereo system, or noticable buzz. Toslink is literally perfect audio as far as most people can discern.
And don't forget losslessly recording your computer output to minidiscs which were still very popular in Japan. At least that's what I would have used it for if I had that computer back then!
also TOSlink was a toshiba invention (Toshiba Link) lol
One final comment to say that I appreciate the effort you put into your presentation and delivery. I know first hand that it's a particular skill to be able to read from a teleprompter and not sound like you're reading from a teleprompter (let alone actually sound interested in the topic), and there are very few CZcamsrs who do it as well as you. Not to mention any names ... _[cough] Linux Tech Tips! [cough]_ Heck, you do it better than some of my work colleagues, and they get their faces broadcast to millions of homes every day!
So thanks for being one of the few who can actually hold my ADHD attention and interest, to the point where I don't feel like I need to be working on something else while I'm watching the video.
im just here to let you know that you made the right choice in just doing this for a living. its perfect. thank you!!!
Yes! So glad to see this episode happen! 👏👏👏
😮 a shoutout in a CRD video 🥹 🫶
I never comment on these videos, but as soon as this series started I wanted to send you my Qosmio. This thing really was for the sailing the seven seas crowd and weighs as much as an infant child. Absolutely wild to see this get mentioned on the channel.
I’m very excited for the next installment of your series and glad to hear that there will be more. Hands down the best CZcams Series I watched in a long time!
This kind of reminds me of a feature I heard some iMacs had, where they could act as a monitor for another mac. I've never had two macs in the same room together, so I don't know how it worked, but I remember hearing that the late '09 iMac model supported it.
Apple dropped the use of display mode on their iMacs back in the day saying something about HDMI and Display Ports not supporting retina screens. Nowadays they keep doing this with the same excuse.
@@xeienar Classic Apple.
About the battery cover -
I have seen this on 1990s Dell laptops, where the battery resembles a tray, sort of like a hard drive in a NAS
The door for said battery can slide off and be put right back without the battery itself
There, the battery is side-loaded, not bottom-loaded
I have barely a passing interest in this topic, but I got a YT recommendation and here I am. Wow! CRD, you're super talented! I'm so serious man, you make this stuff interesting because it's clear YOU care and that made me, a random viewer, care. Very cool
Hey Cathode Ray Dude! I've been watching for quite some time now, but am curious if you know anything about 90s LCD and laser projectors, or some of the first PC projectors to show up in the business world and the history etc etc. Thought it would be a good video idea since it feels like a huge content hole on YT. Thanks for the amazing videos.
The battery being removable from itself was a thing on (at least some) older Toshiba laptops, I never thought about why until now
It's just "the way it used to be"... probably because they used to be more wary of manufacturing model-specific batteries. In addition to a Toshiba which I need to get a power brick for, I've got 486 and Pentium laptops by NEC with that design and IBM had their own "the keyboard hinges up to reveal the bays" design for the 486-based Thinkpad 755C.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's a corporate culture thing and Toshiba kept it late for the same reason they kept their custom BIOS late.
Yep. My old (2004) Portege A100 had that shell over the battery too.
23:25 i LOVE the sound the UI makes on button-press
i admire how much thought and consideration went into designing this system and its features.
just the battery / cover angle shows that extensive real world usage testing was done along the way
I absolutely LOVED Windows Media Center. I used it as my HTPC for years in combination with a Ceton TV Tuner, which allowed me to watch and record my Cable TV service. WMC was, hands down, the BEST DVR software on the market, and had features that blew away Cable provider DVR's. The only DVR I experienced that was better, was Replay TV, but, unfortunately, Replay TV was sued out of business. Even today, the DVR provided by my cable company still is not as feature rich and intuitive as WMC of old.
Dude! I bought one of these for college in 2005. It was a beast and I spent many nights playing the orange box in my dorm on that monstrosity. The Nvidia graphics failed after 3 years sadly.
Great episode! Excellently written and researched 👍
Only thing i remember about these machines was seeing them in Best Buy, they were sold there and obviously the hit item for college.
I love this series so damn much! Please keep it coming :)
This kind of functionality (using another computer as a display) is one of my favorite features of early 2010s iMacs, Target Display Mode. (and by extension target disk mode for any mac). Naturally apple locked it down but still was a cool feature.
i just heard about this from a friend earlier, I had no idea it existed. apple sure does love to quietly include features that are almost gamechangers
@@CathodeRayDudeyeah it was super niche but absolutely amazing. And while I don't know the actual stats, but I'm sure it definitely helped many iMacs from becoming complete e-waste.
@@jusjoe99 My cousin (huge Apple fan for decades) used Target Display Mode as soon as it became available and he could use it to prevent his old mac from going to the heap. Always beloved. Apple loves to introduce little features that completely change how you perceive a process and then never talks about them again (Time Machine is the most reliable and easy-to-use backup software of all time, FileVault works so well I often forget my drive is even encrypted).
@@CathodeRayDude Target Disc Mode with Firewire was quite useful. Could directly copy files or even copy the whole OS over or mount the other Mac's CD-ROM and install to a Mac without an optical drive.
IIRC some older Powerbooks could do it with SCSI and there was a trick with some of the Mac II series desktops where the ROM could be disabled to use them as a very chunky external hard drive.
About time a big name youtuber reviewed a Qosmio. So underrated. Also a side note: Did you upload the recovery discs (if you have them) to the Web Archive?
I still love this series, Gravis! It's cool to see these weird things and your presentation style keeps it interesting. You're doing great work :)
I have a dell Inspiron 17r-se, I got it my freshman year of college, late 2012, and I still use it for work cause I leave it at my parents house for use when I visit. It was cool to see when you talked about laptops with dual hard drives. I remember when I swapped out the original HDD for an SSD and how amazed I was at the boot time. Great vid Gravis
I've not been with you that long, CRD, but you're definitely one of the special ones; I think I speak for all of us when I say you can drop a 90 minute script on us anytime!
Back in the day I used Windows Media Center and at least in my case I never had any issues. I think it depends on the TV tuner you had. I had ATI Theater 550 Pro which was known for being very light on RAM and the CPU. It even had a whopping 16MB DDR cache, not a lot but no other card had it (at least at that point). I remember that it started a lot quicker than the one in Qosmio (and with no freezes). I imagine that the cache was used to buffer data before the HDD was ready to write it.
Worth every minute! There's some great info, retro nostalgia, and sharp writing here.
I miss MythTV 😆 I built two dedicated MythTV machines (first in 2004, then a new one in 2011 when the first one was dying and was getting to be too obsolete). It was ... tricky to get working, but once it was set up, it was so great. I had to stop using it in 2013 when I got married, moved to a new house, and switched my TV provider away from analog cable; I was never able to get MythTV to control the new provider's set top box.
I really enjoyed this video. When I graduated from university and moved into my first apartment, I had no money, no furniture, and no TV. I did have a brand new Athlon computer, though, so I got an ATI TV Wonder capture card and happily watched TV on my monitor for almost two years, until my friend gave me his old tube TV when he was moving to Europe. Something like this Qosmio would have been unbelievable.
Master and Commander, yay!
This seems like a nice machine for the exact niche you describe, do-it-all dorm room device for the mid-2000s. As these things usually go, there were probably like five kids who did exactly that and it was the hottest shit, and no one else ever knew about this thing.
Woah now. I put it my phone in landscape mode.
Man how are your videos just always so dang interesting?
20:20 I love all of these unexpected things in your videos. Everything from kitty pictures to water bottle cap drama xD
moved to computer from phone so I can see your beautiful 4k face on my 4k monitor
Somehow you didn't mention HP QuickPlay, which admittedly must have entered the market a few years later. I remember the early dv7 -models offering a tuner option also.
I didn't mention it because HP never integrated a tuner in any model that I'm aware of. They had express card tuners you could add, but at that point you could just do it on any machine.
@@CathodeRayDude Page 13 of this service manual indicates otherwise:
www.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01689926.pdf
Man, I love the music you use during the boot clip. It reminds me of watching Collin's Lab and trying to learn about electronics when I was like 12
Flashbacks of the media center PC I helped set up for my parents in 2010. I wanted to use MythTV but it didn't support the IR receiver on the Hauppauge card, so we used Windows 7 media center. That worked pretty well, certainly better than the XP experience shown here, though we did run into HDD issues during simultaneous playback/recording.
Qosmio.
How did you write this 20 hours before the video was published? Are you a time traveler? Haha 🌈 I hope not
@@robertschnobert9090patrons get early access to vids
Thank you for showing Frasier. One of my favorite shows to this day still watch it as background feel good TV show.
I love the dry humor in your videos. It really suits 🙂
But the content and detail in these are really top notch stuff 👌
I had a similar model to this back in middle/high school! I remember that startup sound well. I think I actually had the G20 model based on some googling. I'm visually impaired so I used it to plug in a camcorder over composite to see the board/projector. I carted this monster around school in a rolling case with a few backup batteries to swap out throughout the day. I was actually still using it sparingly all the way until 2012. It's interesting to see all the TV/media features that I never had a need to play with. Interestingly on my model, pushing the (awful capacitive) top buttons actually switched out of Windows IIRC, I don't think it just launched media center. Also, that silver lid got scratched to hell from constantly flipping it over on the desk to swap batteries. I'm glad you covered this, I immediately thought about the Qosmio line when you started this series.
YES! I knew you were gonna make a video on those all-in-one multimédia laptops from the 2000's. Those are freakin' awesome. I have an Acer Aspire 9800 that's the same style of machine and i absolutely love it.
I'm glad this was almost an hour! Thanks for documenting all of these weird bits of computing history
Such great videos, and this one doesn't disappoint.
Brings back memories of tv capture cards.
This one brought back memories. I never had Windows Media Center but I did have a TV tuner card and an Xbox with XBMC. I used to record shows, cut out the commercials and convert them to Divx myself. Nothing screams 2003 to me more than that Divx logo in the corner of your legitimately acquired video
Can we all agree the second best thing Gravis has ever done in his life was quit his job? He's really looking good and seems to be in a better mental state acting way happier and thats being reflected onto his channel making his content even better then it was.
Oh the first best thing he ever did was to create this channel and upload a video onto it lol
In fact, the first laptop I know with a proper built in TV tuner was Asus W1 released in late 2004, ar least in Russia. I know it precisely because it is still in use at my work as a CCTV monitoring/viewing/recording device. And I know the date because it's inventory number is still inscribed on the cover of said laptop with a thick coat of white paint, and it ends with 04, meaning that it was bought and put on balance throughout 2004 according to our system.
It can proudly surprise you with 1.4ghz Pentium M, 512mb of unknown type RAM and windows XP on board. What a machine!
4:40 you can also expand that obs view to a separate window using right click on the screen that is being projected on the main obs window and make it go to the full scale of your laptop screen
NTSC did have a program guide of sorts available to TV's and VCR's that had the Guide Plus+ feature. It would download the guide info from one or sometimes two local broadcast stations (to add redundancy), usually PBS or CBS affiliated stations. The TV would download the data from the vertical blanking interval (VBI), usually when the TV was "off", so it would be updated periodically, especially during the overnight hours when a TV wouldn't be used. Initial setup and download would take 24hrs to get all the guide data for all the local programing. Various manufactures had this guide built-in who had paid royalties to Gemstar TV.
I remember my brother had a GE tv with this feature. VCR+ enabled VCR's also used this data stream to set their clocks by accurately. The VCR would on the initial channel scan when setting all the channels would look for the Gemstar VBI signal to synchronize it's internal clock. It would do this when it was "off". I believe the Gemstar VBI signal was originally an offshoot of the VCR+ system when it launched. i.e. they needed a way to reliably set VCR+ enabled VCR's clock, so broadcasting a clock signal on PBS stations came to be, I think it then expanded into the IPG program guide broadcast realm. Gemstar TV owned Prevue channel (later TV Guide channel) on cable and published TV Guide etc.
Oh man, that Myth-TV comment brought back some dark memories. I used to have a Pinnacle DVB-S capture card in my main PC with a dual monitor setup, to watch some TV while working. I tried to get Linux working with Myth-TV backend and had to give up after a week or so. 🤨
Great video as always! 👍🙂
I remember seeing a couple of interesting TV guide data related technologies with analog TV when I was younger. One was called Gemstar Guide Plus+ Gold that came with my parents RCA TV. It apparently was able to download guide information over some host analog cable or over the air TV channel without using the Internet. I also remember on an old GE TV we had with a built in VCR that would display a title of the show (though sometimes this would display the channel name instead) and it even worked on VHS tapes recorded from other VCRs.
Yep I'm sure he just didn't know about it, it was fully discontinued in 2013 when the last low power stations died(pretty sure it was just local church stations at that point, and digital broadcasts had tv guides built in to the standard) but as far as I know this was the same system more or less used in the European market as well, I think it was just less common in NA probably because it was a licensed system that had to be paid up front by the manufacturer I only really saw it on high-end projector TVs for the most part and later some early plasmas, anyways it was available since the mid 90s(I had in on a 97 toshida projector tv as a kid)
That intro is a top tier zinger, that was amazing
Thanks for very interesting episode
Great episode!
One possible reason they included the RAID functionality is to increase the maximum storage capacity. Drives were a lot smaller at the time. Could also have been for better drive performance when recording video.
the first 44 seconds of this videp are pure magic to watch
That opening gag made me do a double take twice, even though I knew what you were doing because I've seen these laptops in thrift stores. Fantastic timing and editing as always.
41:31 I like the sbemail reference
I've secured a boxed Kodak PalmPix, would you want it for future review as part of your "wacky portable things" and "bad 90s digital cameras" lineup?
Post the raw 90 minute rant! You're the best companion to watch while I work.
The laptop size gag kills me every single time 😂
When I was 12 I wanted a Qosmio x305 so bad... For some reason, I really enjoyed media center PCs. Thank you for the trip down memory lane.
Here in Germany we also had the Medion Notebooks (sold by Aldi) with built in TV Tuners. I had the Medion MD95500 from 2005, it also hat some Quick Start Linux with TV and DVD capabilities. It didn't use Windows Media Center, it used software from Cyberlink. I also think there was a Medion model in 2004 with TV Tuner built in, but I'm not sure
One thing that's vaguely intrigued me about all those built-in DVD player apps is how they handle interlaced content? Since DVDs include metadata flags to indicate whether it's interlaced or native progressive content that a player needs to convert to interlaced for NTSC/PAL-compatible output, I would *imagine* most PC DVD player apps will read those flags, and if it indicates it's progressive, just pipe out the raw video, and if it indicates it's interlaced, will run some basic bob deinterlace filter to output 60/50Hz video so it looks just like it would on a flat panel TV of the era.
I worked at Circuit City from 2004-2009. I remember when the Qosmio line hit our stores. They were extremely expensive and didn't sell well. I also remember working at the Firedog PC service counter and having to deal with many angry customers over the slow operating system load times during this era...fun times.
Awesome stuff! Lookin' good sir! Video was great too! 🍻🌎❤️🖥️🕺 I had a Packard Bell 486/25 (desktop) in 92 or 93 and I specifically got the model with built-in TV tuner and a universal sound card that would act like the different popular sound card options of the day. It had input and could screen shot but no record. I could do some homework, play some SimCity then watch Star Trek TNG before heading to bed. Good times! 🍻❤️
I like how you leave the bloopers in line
You mentioning s-video just unlocked a core memory of mine lol. I had a friend show off how insane the quality on his Xbox 360 was via s-video in highschool
I set up a windows media center computer in about 2009ish and loved it.
11:45 watching your video with 7 inch tables and it's still awesome.)
Man, I have ADHD and a friggin' short attention span, you are one of the very very few creators where I see there's a new upload and I'm like "uh, nice, a new video and that's almost an hour long!"