PC Mag looks at Sony VAIO XL1 200 disc Digital Living System

October 19, 2005

Sony has
announced that they are expanding the VAIO line with a new and rather exciting
home entertainment product. Dubbed the VAIO XL1 Digital Living System, here we
have a 2.8GHz dual core Pentium D model that may catch the eye of a CD
Freak. The system can replace your TiVo, CD changer, DVD player/changer
and DVD recorder. You can load this puppy up with as many as 200
optical discs and rip 'em all to the hard drive! Well that is until the 200GB
hard drive fills up. But, there are some empty bays for more HDD space if you
need it and you probably will.

The flip side to this is, that if you are
using the XL1 to capture your favorite television series, you can load up
as many as 200 DVDs and start burning to free up hard disc space. Not too bad.
Even though the system uses Microsoft's Media Center Edition 2005 (with the
service pack 2 roll up) the reviewer claims these discs will play on any set
top box, so there must be some third party software included, as MCE will
not provide this functionality without a little help. The reviewer says that the
XL1's "Click-to-DVD" burning utility is well integrated and only requires a few
clicks to get the job done. It even tells you how many discs you have left in
the changer and whether or not you need to add any blanks to finish your
project!

The XL1 Digital Living System consists of two
halves: the VGX-XL1A main unit and the VGP-XL1B 200-disc CD/DVD changer.
The XL1B is the muscle of the system. You can load 200 CDs into the
changer, call up the MCE interface, select the "manage discs" menu item,
and rip all 200 CDs onto the VGX-XL1A's 200GB hard drive. This is a much
better way to copy your music than what the typical MCE PC allows you to
do, which is come back every few minutes to swap discs. The saving in time
and convenience would be significant for the person with several hundred
(or a few thousand) CDs. In our testing, the XL1 still took 3 to 4 minutes
to rip a CD, but it does all 200 consecutively; so once you load them in
the changer, you can leave the system alone, say overnight, and in the
morning it'll be done. Loading and unloading the slot-loading changer was
a snap; loading or ejecting each disc took only a few seconds.

This very
unique configuration sports a wireless keyboard and remote which the review
fails to mention anything about. Frankly, it isn't a very informative look and
gives the impression that time was limited with this device. But, still it's
intriguing and leaves one curious to know more. It's being retailed direct for
about $2300.00 US at the SonyStyle store. For further information, you can
check out the review over at PC Mag.

Source: PC Mag