Sony VGN-AR70B - World's First Blu-ray Disc Notebook
Sony announced the new Sony VGN-AR70B notebook PC - with a Blu-ray Disc Drive. That's right: in a first of sorts, the VGN-AR70B gains the distinction as one of the world's first notebooks to sport a BD drive. Packing a punch with a wide 17" WUXGA resolution monitor, this is a high-end, high-performance notebook.
The Sony Vaio VGN-AR70B comes in a glossy exterior, and at the core is a, uhh, Core Duo T2500 (2GHz) processor. Sony slapped on a massive 200 gig hard drive (available in RAID 0 configuration) and an Nvidia GeForce Go 7600GT with 256MB graphics memory.
With a maximum WUXGA resolution of 1920x1200 pixels, you know your grubby little hands are itching to get themselves all over this bundle of joy. Other goodies include Bluetooth, WLAN (a/b/g), HDMI input (yeah baby!). With the noise Toshiba is making with HD-DVD and Sony with Blu-ray discs, Sony has just upped the ante by announcing the world's first laptop with BD support.
Available starting June 24, 2006 in Japan (no idea when it will hit the US shores), Priced at 400,000 yen (US $3,500). The Premium model will be shipped with the Sony Pictures Entertainment Blu-ray Disc release, “House of Flying Daggers,†providing a high-definition experience on the PC right out of the box. Full details are available from Sony.
Using an extensive suite of dedicated software applications, you can also edit high-definition footage and share it on Sony high-capacity BD-R and BD-RE Blu-ray Discs (up to 50 GB) or on traditional DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/+RW capitalizing on flexible storage, playback and recording.
Let Me Entertain You:
Packed with a host of entertainment features, the AR will ship with Microsoft® Windows® Media Center Edition 2005 and includes a built-in standard-definition NTSC
TV tuner (select models) and onboard TV controls, so you can watch and record live television.
The AR Premium also incorporates an NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7600 graphics card featuring 256MB dedicated video memory. It is ideal for handling high-definition content, television broadcast and DVD playback and bringing gamers closer to the action. The AR series also incorporates a camera and microphone allowing users to chat online with friends and family.
The AR-Series can shift effortlessly between roles as diverse as portable home theatre and games platform to video phone and mobile TV. The integrated Sony MOTION EYE videocam and microphone provide the communications hardware, while a powerful hybrid TV tuner means the AR-Series is fully Digital TV-Ready (DVB-T) as well as capable of receiving analogue broadcasts. TV functions are all available from the supplied remote commander, and the AR-Series is configured with Microsoft® Windows® Media Center Edition so it’s completely remote-friendly. Which means when it’s used as a TV, PVR or DVD player it offers all the convenience and ease of use of dedicated devices, just without any of their inherent limitations. “This is a pivotal moment,†says Jun Koyama, Director of IT for VAIO Operations Europe (VOE). “There’s a new processing paradigm with dual-core, a new video standard with HD and a new optical standard in the form of Blu-ray. The AR-Series embraces all three, which is plenty enough to make it a very significant product. But to achieve all this in a mobile platform, complete with a display that outperforms many HD televisions, well that puts the AR-Series right out in a category of its own.â€
Stumble It! | Posted by Paul on May 16, 2006 4:38 AM
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