At
$2,800, the least expensive Vaio PC in Sony’s MX desktop line doesn’t seem like
much of a bargain these days, even for a 1.7-GHz, Pentium 4 with an 80-gigabyte
(GB) hard drive, 512 megabytes (MB) of memory, the exciting “home” version of
Windows XP, and two better-than-average speakers (the 15-inch Sony LCD monitor
shown is $600 extra). But the PCV-MXS10 that I tested — the various MX models
differ only in the bundled home-office software — is much more than just a powerful
PC. Of course, it does all the usual computer stuff like word processing, Web
browsing, receiving streaming media, and editing digital photos (a task eased
for Sony cameras by a Memory Stick slot). But using only the built-in hardware
and the supplied software, the MXS10 can also serve many other roles, such as
that of a personal video recorder.
Sony’s Giga Pocket software, together with the PC’s internal 130-channel stereo TV tuner and ample hard drive (up to 60 GB of which is available for video data), enables the MXS10 to provide many of the functions of a TiVo or ReplayTV hard-disk video recorder. These include timer recording at three quality levels, which correspond to degrees of data compression; playback of a point earlier in the program currently being recorded (using Slip Play) or of a previously recorded program; and recording non-copy-protected composite- or S-video signals from an external source. There’s an Internet-based program guide that can be used for point-and-click recording setup, and you can watch your recordings either on the computer’s monitor or on a TV via the MXS10’s interlaced NTSC-video outputs. Many of the Giga Pocket functions are accessible through the supplied infrared remote.
Surpassing all standalone hard-disk recorders in versatility, Giga Pocket and the MXS19 also let you, for instance, edit out all the commercials from a recorded program, but your editing needn’t stop there (more on this below). You can permanently store the edited results on disc using the built-in DVD recorder, a combination DVD-R/RW drive that’s the computer’s only optical-disc drive.
You can “burn” edited video programs or homemade video productions onto write-once DVD-Rs that can be played on most standalone players. You can make “practice” discs by recording first onto rewritable DVD-RW blanks and then duplicate your fine-tuned production, as many times as you like, using the much cheaper DVD-R blanks. If you limit your productions to around 7 minutes — all home movies should be edited down to 7 minutes anyway — you can even record in DVD format on dirt-cheap CD-Rs that will play in many computer DVD-ROM drives (but not in standalone players).
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The video productions you make, from either Giga Pocket recordings or imported MiniDV camcorder footage, can be edited and processed with a degree of sophistication unsurpassed — and probably unsurpassable — by any standalone DVD recorder because the software tools provided can turn this Vaio PC into a powerful video editing system. Besides Giga Pocket and Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker (part of Wndows XP), three more video-editing programs are supplied, some of them easier to use — yet more powerful — than a standalone DVD recorder’s editing features: Adobe Premiere LE and Sony’s own MovieShaker and DVgate. The Adobe program has near professional-grade power, giving you fine-grain control over such things as scene transitions and overlapping multiple images as well as assemble and insert editing. MovieShaker is a fun and easy to use assemble-edit system, and DVgate is good for importing MiniDV footage as well as assemble-editing.
Like most PCs containing a DVD-ROM or DVD-R/RW drive, the Vaio MXS10 can be turned into a DVD playerby using a software package. Sony supplies for this purpose its own strangely named Media Bar as well as Microsoft’s Windows Media Player. Media Bar gives you the option of viewing the DVD in progressive-scan format on the computer monitor or on a TV via a composite- or S-video output. It also sends Dolby Digital data through the computer’s optical digital audio output for external multichannel decoding. While there are no other surround sound facilities provided with the PC, if you listen through headphones via the front-panel jack, Media Bar can also perform Dolby Headphone virtual surround processing.
Aside from the latter two features, the MXS19 is basically a stereo device, as in the FM radiocontrolled by Sony’s SonicStage Premium software, which allows timer recording of FM broadcasts to the hard-disk drive (with a bizarre time limit of 2 1/2 hours per event). External analog or non-copy-protected optical digital audio sources can also be recorded. All audio recordings, including any tracks that you’ve ripped from CDs using any of three different supplied programs (more on that below), can be incorporated into a music jukebox. SonicStage is, in fact, primarily a jukebox with inputs for FM, external analog or digital audio, CD, and, believe it or not, MiniDisc. Yes, using SonicStage, the MXS10 can also be turned into a MiniDisc (MD) recorder/player— there’s a built-in MD drive.
Tracks ripped from CD can be “checked out” using SonicStage’s OpenMG music-security system to an MD at any of three data rates. Two are MD-LP (long-play) rates using advanced ATRAC-3 data compression, and the third uses the MD format’s original ATRAC-1 compression so the results are compatible with earlier standalone MD devices.
If you’d prefer not to use MiniDisc (still the most cost-effective way of carrying around large amounts of data-compressed music), you can also burn your own CDs using the DVD-R/RW drive as a CD recorder. In fact, you can burn audio and data CDs using several different supplied programs. The only major piece missing that would make CD recording as sophisticated as DVD burning is a high-quality audio editing program — but I was able to install both Sonic Foundry’s Sound Forge 5.0 and Syntrillium’s CoolEdit2000 without a hitch.
 SonicStage Premium lets you record to MiniDisc from CDs in the DVD drive, from the built-in FM radio, or from external digital or analog sources. |
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If you wanted to purchase all these functions in separate hardware and software components — plus a computer — the total would probably add up to much more than the price of the Vaio MXS10. Such is the synergy provided by combining the power of a late-model PC and the storage capacity of an 80-GB hard disk with the capabilities of specialized hardware features (like the MiniDisc drive and the TV and FM tuners) and a diverse suite of bundled software.
And it all works! Timer video recording using Giga Pocket operated precisely as advertised — I was able to watch the first part of the recent PBS documentary on Mark Twain even as I was recording the second part. While Giga Pocket really eats up disk space when recording in its HQ (highest-quality) mode, its SP (medium-quality) and sometimes even LP (long-play) modes were adequate for time-shifting TV programs, if not for permanent storage on DVD.
I got the same thrills as I did in my high school filmmaking course editing MiniDV footage into something quite presentable (and of very high video quality) and just as big a kick out of burning the final production onto DVD for distribution to friends. But this only became relatively easy once I figured out how the various video capture and editing programs interacted — none of the manuals gives much guidance on this.
What we have with the MXS10, in fact, is an embarrassment of riches. While Giga Pocket and SonicStage are unique in their TV recording and MiniDisc support, respectively, the other supplied programs offer at least two completely different ways to perform many of the major operations enabled by all the hardware. In the case of video editing, as we’ve seen, five different programs are supplied, but we aren’t told which is better for which application (video archiving, DVD burning, Web page creation, video compression for e-mail, and so on). Adobe Premiere LE is by far the most versatile of these editing programs, but it’s also the hardest to use and it won’t, by itself, burn DVDs. How to get your Premiere-edited video into either of the two DVD burners provided, Sonic Solution’s DVDit! and Giga Pocket, is left as an exercise for the user.
When it comes to ripping CDs to a music library on the hard drive, you can use either RealJukebox, Windows Media Player, or SonicStage Premium — and there are definite audible ramifications to your choice. The most versatile in terms of trading off capacity for sound quality is SonicStage, as it provides the widest choice of ripping formats — MP3, Windows Media Audio (WMA), WAV, and ATRAC-3 — as well as a far wider range of data rates for the first two than RealJukebox or Windows Media Player offer. (Windows Media Player won’t even let you make a bit-perfect copy of CD audio — everything is turned into compressed WMA files.)
Even
something as simple as playing a movie on a store-bought DVD can be performed
in two ways with different results depending on whether you use Windows Media
Player or Sony’s Media Bar. Only the latter provides a multichannel Dolby Digital
bitstream output, and it’s one of only two programs on the MXS19 that can turn
on its external composite- and S-video outputs (Giga Pocket is the other). But
Media Bar doesn’t have the slow-motion, frame-stepping, and multispeed-scan
capabilities of Windows Media Player. Then again, the PC’s remote control operates
DVD playback functions only when you’re using Media Bar.
Regardless of the DVD player program used, the progressive-scan picture looked superb on both the Sony LCD monitor and on a traditional tube monitor. Once I adjusted each monitor’s own picture controls with DVD test patterns, the fine details in the darkest areas of the image in the Can-Can scene of Moulin Rouge became visible — like the texture in the men’s top hats and tails. The picture took on a stunning depth and richness, as it did in other scenes of this visually amazing movie.
SonicStage has some quirks, like that 2 1/2-hour limit on a timer-activated FM recording, and the slight gaps it added between contiguous CD tracks ripped to MD using the original MiniDisc format (the two MD-LP long-play modes produced no such gaps) or ripped to hard disk in the WMA and MP3 formats.
But SonicStage’s most surprising quirk is that it totally ignores Internet radio — and the same is true of the other Sony-authored software supplied with the Vaio. Sure, you can listen to streaming audio, or watch streaming video, when you happen across it, using Apple’s QuickTime, RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player, but none of the supplied software will let you record any streaming audio or video signals, which could be extremely useful. Fortunately, this can be done for audio, at least, with third-party software like Total Recorder from highcriteria.com. Using this, I was able to record 132-kbps RealAudio Webcasts of the Metropolitan Opera with much better sound quality (wider dynamic range, lower distortion) than is provided over the air here in New York City by WQXR-FM.
On the other hand, I was pleased to find a couple of useful features I wasn’t expecting, since they aren’t mentioned in the documentation. For example, both Windows Media Player and Media Bar were able to access and play the secondary Dolby Digital soundtracks on DVD-Audio discs. And considering the machinations you have to go through to transfer music to or from an MD using SonicStage, it was an ironic surprise to find that this same program was able to rip the music from the CD-compatible layer of a hybrid Super Audio CD — which some record companies are favoring over DVD-Audio for its supposedly greater security!
I was also surprised to find that ultimately I grew to like the MXS10. Every new PC takes some getting used to, but this one seemed to take just a little longer. There ought to be a guidebook, with flowcharts, showing how to move video data files from one program to another, including the respective picture-quality tradeoffs. But after about a month of regular use, you’ll get the hang of it, as I did, and be able to do things like quickly dump DV footage from a camcorder onto the hard disk, edit it, and burn it to a DVD-R.
In the end, I found the Vaio MXS10 quite irresistible for its enormous versatility combined with its ability to keep the quality of A/V signals extremely high. The DVDs I made from edited DV camcorder footage were absolutely or very nearly identical to the originals, depending on the image content and provided I used the highest MPEG-2 encoding bit rate the programs allowed (8 megabits per second).
I also appreciated being able to have a massive music library ripped to hard disk using the ATRAC-3 codec (provided by RealJukebox and SonicStage), which to my ears gives results noticeably superior (much more like “CD quality”) to both MP3 and WMA at equivalent bit rates. While the system is limited in its upgrade potential (there’s only one free card slot and one free drive bay), the hardware capabilities are great enough that I don’t think I’d be ready for an upgrade anytime soon aside from adding even more hard-disk space.
You could get most of the features of the Vaio MXS10 by upgrading a non-Sony PC (all except its MiniDisc and Memory Stick capabilities), but that would require very careful shopping for add-in circuit boards and more than a little expertise in software installation to make sure that whatever you add will work properly with the other hardware and software. The primary advantage of the MX series is that the wide range of capabilities provided not only work together but can work synergistically in ways limited only by your own imagination. With its enormous expertise in the three essential fields of computers, digital audio, and digital video, Sony is one of the few companies in the world that could have pulled this off.
Tech Notes:
Considered as a piece of audio/video gear, the Vaio MXS10 performed very well.
Considered as a PC, its audio and video measurements were nothing less than
superb. For example, most computers’ analog audio outputs suffer from mild to
severe noise, due mainly to contamination by a host of intrusive digital signals
from the computer circuits. Not so with the MXS10. Playing CDs and 16-bit WAV
files through its line-level outputs using Sony’s SonicStage program, it delivered
A-weighted noise levels of –74.0 dB, only a couple of decibels higher than the
theoretical 16-bit minimum and unsullied by digital leakage. Its 16-bit excess-noise
level (+2.1 dB), linearity error (–0.1 dB), and noise modulation (0.25 dB) fell
in the same quality range. Interestingly, the results in these tests were a
couple of decibels worse when I used the other supplied player programs, RealJukebox
and Windows Media Player. But frequency response was within ±0.5 dB through
the audio range using all three players.
The speaker-level outputs were nearly as clean as the line outputs (–71-dB noise levels) but clipped at 10 watts (10 dBW) into 8-ohm loads and 16 watts (12 dBW) into 4-ohm loads. While these figures fall short of Sony’s “20-watt” rating, our results are in tough, real, standardized audio watts, as in our receiver measurements, not wimpy, nebulously defined “computer” watts. Besides, with closely positioned speakers as good as those supplied or better, even 10 watts can produce a very loud volume.
If you want even more audio power than the MXS10 can deliver, along with really clean sound, you should use its optical digital audio output, which was bit-accurate for 16-bit audio as long as the relevant volume control (the Wave or Compact Disc slider, depending on the player program being used) in the software output mixer was turned all the way up. This output is also the only way to get multichannel Dolby Digital DVD soundtracks from the MXS10.
The composite- and S-video outputs were very good when the PC was playing DVDs, with the luminance frequency response flat through most of the range and down only 3.6 dB at the DVD limit of 6.75 MHz (onscreen resolution was a full 540 lines). Setup level measured only +5 IRE (instead of the standard +7.5 IRE), but you can easily compensate for this small error if you calibrate your monitor using a DVD test disc. Onscreen letterboxing through the video outputs was poor — as it is on most of the DVD players we test. In contrast, progressive-scan image quality on a computer monitor was superbly smooth and free of artifacts.
Sony Vaio www.sonystyle.com/vaio, 800-571-7669