> Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 17:04:55 PST
> From: " nick " <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> Someone just mentioned this, and its got me wondering - Whats the
> deal with
> portable DVD? Why would you pay that much for a DVD player+screen
> combo when
> you can get a reasonable sized TV, a cheap-ish surround setup and
> a few DVD
> titles for the same money?
You're right, I wouldn't pay for this setup at all. I'd buy the Sony
portable DVD player, which doesn't have a screen, and a Glasstron.
Except that's still not the perfect setup.
>
> And whats the point of portability on the thing anyway? Sure, you
> can still
> use it as a home DVD player, but for that money you could get one helluva
> deck, and a bit more on the side (about $A3000). I thought the
> strength of
> DVD was the introduction of surround sound, amoung other things, to
> disc-based movies. A movie is a "sit down and enjoy" experience,
> not a "15
> mins in the car on the way to work" Wouldn't a portable system
> kill the DVD
> benefits of surround sound if you were gonna use it on the road?
>
> Does anyone own one of these things? Enlighten me on it? :)
>
> Nick -> picturing a 'surround sound hat,' with front, centre, and rear
> headphone drivers, with optional top-of-head subwoofer
That's just being silly. All you need is a portable player that's smart
enough to decode multi-channel surround sound into binaural format. Sony
should have done this with their Glasstron LCD goggles, but they didn't.
Instead, they did it in a completely separate product, infrared cordless
headphones. Someone else made a comment that a laptop computer with a DVD
drive is a better value. I also agree, I have a Sony VAIO F190 which I
figure will be perfect on business trips. The Glasstrons in particular are
incredibly expensive. I'm not sure I should bring the laptop along on
pleasure trips though... Too bulky if all I'm gonna do is watch movies on
the plane and then occasionally dial up for email while on the road. (That's
what internet cyber-cafe's are for...) (I'm flying to Ireland the day after
Christmas; 14 hours from Los Angeles. I would really appreciate having my
laptop on the plane, but then for the next two weeks it would just sit there
in my luggage. Is it worth the effort?)
But anyway, if I could ever get specs out of NeoMagic for programming their
AV chip in the VAIO, I'd do the same thing - make a DVD player that decodes
the 5.1 audio tracks and uses a set of head-related-transfer-functions to
re-encode into binaural format, for the headphone output.
re: HP48 remote control and MD titling - I was one of the contributors for
the Sony codes in rem3.3 and 3.4, but I was never able to get a good scan of
the codes for my MD or DVD decks, and I've dropped out of that scene. Is
there a new version of the remote control program that handles the larger
bit-length codes of Sony's new gear?
-- Howard Chu
Chief Architect, Symas Corp. Director, Highland Sun
http://www.symas.com http://highlandsun.com/hyc
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