Date:06/09/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/09/06/stories/2006090603721400.htm

National

Portable personal computers target the movie-mad

Anand Parthasarathy

Laptops launched in India enable owners to watch and record TV, cinema; Linux version of PowerCinema

MOBILE MOVIE MASALA: The Lenovo 3000 Y100 brings cinema and TV to the laptop.

Bangalore: It did not take portable personal computer-makers long to figure out that the best way to woo Indian customers is to pander to their craze for movie `masala' — after all this is the country that produces the largest number of feature films in the world.

Elsewhere, laptop and notebook PCs are perceived largely as productivity tools — for the footloose professional. So portable computer-makers have largely stressed the security features, efficient software, the large storage — and the ability to latch on to Internet hotspots.

Now, it seems they have tumbled to the fact that a new category of upwardly mobile Indian is willing to pay for the ability to access multimedia entertainment — on CDs, DVDs and through feeds from terrestrial television stations — anywhere, anytime.

Just 15 months after having acquired the desktop and laptop PC business of the IBM, China-based Lenovo, has finally gone beyond the inherited range to launch products flowing from its own ingenuity. And one of the first Lenovo-created platforms to come to India last month, is also one of the first portable machines that comes with a built-in TV tuner. This means one can attach it to a TV antenna or cable connector to see all the usual television feeds.

The Hindu was enabled last week, to try out the first model in this line — the Lenovo 3000 Y 100 — which incorporates the popular PowerCinema software created by the Taiwan-based CyberLink.

This is a combo of tools which enable lay users to easily convert their laptop into a TV; a music or CD/DVD player or even a basic picture or video editor. One can also programme the laptop to spring to life in your absence and record your favourite TV programme for future viewing.

One can also directly `burn' a DVD to preserve the programme to create one's personal `serial' library. A ``Magic Director'' allows most of us dummies to edit our home movie shots and add titles and effects, so that they look reasonably professional.

The laptop's screen is a 15.4-inch high definition-ready liquid crystal display that has extra brightness so that it can be viewed even in bright light. And you don't have to boot the PC's Windows software to use it as a TV or a DVD player: these controls are available separately with start, stop, fast forward and rewind controls, much like a stand-alone video player.

It also has so-called ``Audio DJ'' controls for aspiring disk jockeys. The 3000 Y100 keeps cost down to under Rs. 56,000 by using the 1.73 GHz Pentium M processor and limiting the hard drive to 60 GB. A cheaper (Rs. 39,240) version uses a Celeron processor and substitutes a CD/DVD combo drive for the DVD writer — that means you can view DVDs and CDs but only burn CDs.

Lenovo may be the first — but it is not the only — player who is cannily targeting the movie-mad Indian customer. Only weeks ago The Hindu reported that Sony had launched its first laptop in India with a Blu-Ray DVD drive compatible with tomorrow's high definition TV standard (``Hand on with High-Definition''; July 20, 2006). In recent weeks, Hewlett Packard has also tied up internationally with CyberLink for its PowerCinema software and can be expected to offer its own TV-PC combo in the laptop form factor.

Dell, in India has also launched a new multimedia laptop in its Inspiron range, fuelled by Intel's new Core 2 Duo processor. Interestingly, the Lenovo 3000 series offers a ``One Key'' recovery utility to restore the laptop's last working condition in case of disk crash — and this is based on a Linux tool, not the machines Windows operating system.

PowerCinema too is being offered by its makers in a Linux version — and this opens up the interesting possibility that TV-laptops can be made even more affordable in the future by going Open Source all the way. That's real ``sasthey mein movie masthi'' for you!