Dell Finally Delivered my Dell XPS 420.

Now its very rare for me to get a PC for myself. The last time was May 2004.

At the time (2004) a Pentium4 3.0 Ghz was considered speedy, but it doesn’t cut it in today’s world of multi core and HD content.

What I wanted was speed and a large form factor machine to accommodate multiple hard disks and full length video cards. It also needed to be relatively quiet.

Basically I needed a “Big Box” of a computer, out my available choices the XPS 420 is aesthetically one of the nicest. It has the “Piano Black shiny look” to it, like you find on Samsung LCD’s these days.

Some thought has been given to the design but lets be real its more evolution than revolution.

In the Speed department I could have got away with any Intel Dual Core CPU. The machine’s primary purpose is HD playback and any Dual Core CPU above 1.8Ghz can do it.

So when I saw an offer for a Quad Core CPU at a very enticing price point I jumped at the chance.

The Machine Shipped with Windows Vista Home Premium I am new convert to Windows Vista Media Centre so my initial intention was to stick with Vista.

However my first out of the box experience was marred by how Vista was performing on what I knew to be a powerful machine.

The first issue was all the Dell installed software: Adobe, Roxio, McAfee etc. I don’t want any of it. So I slowly remove these one by one hoping the performance I was expecting would appear.

I took all of 45 minuets to decide Vista had to go.

I know what I need this machine to do and all of it can be done in Windows XP. At this point I look at Windows XP as Lean and Mean. It does the job without any flashy stuff you don’t need.

Now here is the problem. Dell don’t offer Windows XP Drivers for the XPS 420. But its not rocket science all the parts are pretty standard: CPU Chipset, Network Card, Sound, etc.

I would lose access to the MiniView the display on the front of the machine, but I saw through the usefulness of that in my first half an hour.

This link here points you in the right direction for locating the Windows XP Drivers.

So reinstalling an operating system is no biggie for me. So about an hour later I have completed the Windows XP machine and I managed to get for the first time a glimpse at how fast the machine could perform.

What I am looking for is a machine that can cold boot and then be ready for use in a very short time.

The XPS 420 seems to linger in the bios screen for 5 to 7 seconds and my Windows XP build is totally usable 30 seconds later. This is something I would find very difficult to match in Windows Vista land.

Problems

This machine shipped with a ATI 2600XT and for some reason during HD playback it would blue screen with a watchdog.sys error. This is video card/driver related.

I am tight on time at the moment so I elected to replace the 2600XT for a 2600Pro that I know was rock solid on the driver front.

Observations

Operating System: Most people could live with Vista, I couldn’t for an easier but slower life stick with Vista.

Build Quality: Pretty high standard, very similar to Precision I use, nice and neat inside. The cables are managed properly.

Performance:  In my scenario this performs amazingly well. I looked at the CPU usage while playing back HD. It idled at around 8%. This computer handles HD like older computer manage DVD, with ease in other words.

Other: Something I am not best pleased about is on the motherboard. The following capacitor being so close to the blue plastic release of the video card.

Replacing a video card is something an end user might do and Dell are asking for trouble placing a Capacitor in that location.

Summary: I am very pleased with my choice, Quad Core was a bonus. This machine now purrs relatively silently and handles all my HD requirements with ease.

Link: http://www.intel.com/products/processor/core2quad/specifications.htm

Link: Dell 420 Page

The above picture is a Joke, When I mean old, I don’t mean that old.

So to answer the question: Yes and No

Here is my experience

Dell Dimension 8300: Pentium4 3.0 GHZ / 1 GB RAM / Windows XP Pro

Now that spec does not meet the minimum CPU requirements. Not that it stopped me from trying.

The machine was an aging Dell Dimension 8300. The 8300 had an AGP video bus.

Luckily ATI do an AGP based video card the 2600HD (this comes in both PCI-e and AGP). I needed the older AGP version Circa £50.

Tip: For HD playback your video card needs a minimum of 256mb of video. If the card can also do on-board video decoding all the better.

So I figure if I am slightly under the spec on CPU the video card can take some of the slack as it has onboard video processing via the ATI AVIVO technology.

Note: You need to consider how to manage any HDCP issues you may encounter unless your are going HDMI all the way.

I hook up an Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive (to the PC over USB)

Upgrade my PowerDVD 7.0 Ultra (it can play back HD-DVD and Blu Ray)

I pass the audio out over SPDIF on my sound card to an amp.

I connect the PC to a 32″ 720p display over VGA.

So I then sit down curious if all of this is going to work and to my surprise it did.

720p video playback was fantastic, smooth no problems.

So why the yes and no?

Well Hi-Def content can do things like picture in picture video and this seems to be double trouble for a slow PC. The video goes out of sync. More or less it is dealing with 2x HD video streams.

I was pretty sure it was CPU performance related so quickly tested this setup on a Dual Core 1.86Ghz and the sync issue goes away instantly.

Advice

Would I recommend an old PC as a candidate? on reflection No. Start with a Dual Core and Decent video card.

Recommended Buy: The ATI 2600 Series. I have tried 3 of these cards in various PC’s and they do a really great job on Video playback.

The dual monitor support also seems pretty solid. However this isn’t a gamers card. But this is reflected in the price.

If you have any questions please use the comments.

To read my other posts about the Toshiba Qosmio G40 Click Here 

Here is my experience/observations about watching 1080p HD content on the Toshiba Qosmio G40.

Toshiba loaned me the G40 over the Christmas holidays.

Before I get started the issue of the Hi-Definition format war needs to be addressed.

There are two formats HD-DVD and Blu Ray. Until early January 2008 both were competing for consumers. However Warner Bros announced they would be going Blu Ray exclusive from June 2008. This means that 70% of the movie studios support Blu Ray and 30% HD-DVD.

If you are getting into HD in 2008 the smart move format wise is to go Blu Ray (regardless about how your feel about one side or the other).

So in this article I will concentrate on the HD laptop experience.

The Qosmio G40 has a HD-DVD Drive that can playback HD-DVD movies and is also a HD-Writer. I did not have optical media available to test the writing capability of the drive.

Software 

Toshiba provide DVD and HD-DVD playback software, the user interface of this was very neat and understated. The player had an interesting feature of being able to playback DVD/HD-DVD content from the hard disk. This feature isn’t available on other software players for copy protection reasons.

The Qosmio G40 boasts that it’s display is 1080p

All HD-DVD and Blue Ray movies typically have video on the Discs encoded in 1080p format. This is so it looks great on large HD screens.

The key here is large. On a laptop a 17″ screen is large, but in home cinema terms a 17″ display is the complete opposite..tiny.

So is having a 1080p screen on a 17″ laptop meaningful? Yes and No. You need a resolution like 1920×1200 for a 17″ display anyway and this gives you 1080p by default. However even though you are watching 1080p and the quality is amazing a 17″ Screen will never do 1080p HD Content justice. A much larger screen say upwards of 46″ and 1080p begins to shine.

How does Hi-Def compare to DVD?

I got hold of the same movie in both DVD and HD-DVD formats the recent SCI-Fi film Serenity and played sections back to back for comparison.

The first thing you notice about Hi-Def is the sharpness of the image quality.

In layman terms the HD version of the movie has about 3 times the amount of detail.

DVD looks absolutely fine until you compare it to the same source in HD. Then any of your “DVD is fine” arguments go out the window. Mine included.

So HD playback on the Qosmio G40 was fantastic, The screen in the G40 looks amazing especially when playing back HD video.

Connections

I connected the G40 to my 32″ 720p Display using HDMI without a problem. I did the same comparisons between DVD and HD-DVD on this larger display. Naturally HD looked considerably better. In this example I was comparing 720p up scaled DVD to 720p HD-DVD.

I would have liked to see an Coax Out for my digital sound, but I am old fashioned I guess

Conclusion

The Qosmio G40 is about as much fun as you can get for digital media playback.

The combination of a really fast CPU, great video card and fantastic speakers means you never have to compromise with your digital media, the G40 does it all effortlessly.

Official Link: Toshiba Qosmio G40

I like to watch these just for Steve Jobs presentation style.

You can see the stream here: Mac World 2008. Watch the Keynote

But as PC user you would be amazed how much Apple is becoming part of your digital life.

Things I liked this year..

The MacBook Air: this looks fantastic and I am a fan of really slim laptops. I used to be a Dell X300 owner and that was really thin and one of my favourite laptops.

So I am looking forward to reading some peer reviews because as nice as it looks there must be some pitfalls. Example 1 USB port sounds really limiting but I guess I am not thinking wireless enough.

Above is the Dell X300 I used a few years ago. I miss it, but hey now Dell can build the next generation super thin laptop now the shrunk down Core2Duo chip exists.

Digital Media

Charging iPod Touch users for applications doesn’t seem very cool or Apple like.

iTunes

Ok movie rental downloads have arrived in the iTunes music store.

In the US you can now rent and download movies via iTunes. You have 30 days to keep them on your computer but only 24 hours to watch them once you hit play.

Basically what is happening to digital music will probably happen for movies over time (10+ years). The one problem I have with the digital rental model is I like to own not rent. I wouldn’t consider renting digital music for example and I feel the same way about movies.

I want companies to stop telling me what I can and cant do with the digital content I pay for.

But no doubt the rental model is very convenient.

So I imagine in the future that a two tier model will exist.

1) The disposable digital rental.

2) The Disc based Full Hi-Def version 1080p

I can live with that.

Kudos to Apple for offering HD-Def content with Dolby Digital 5.1 but they lose the kudos for charging more for the privilege. Hi-Def Downloads are $1 more expensive. That would be the Hi-Def tax I keep talking about.

This is still a long way off and is complicated in Europe by how movie’s are marketed and sold via distributors.

I hate quoting myself but..(Link see Comments 31/10/2007)

One company could end the debate over formats in a heartbeat and that is Warner Brothers, if they chose a single format instead of supporting both, the game would be over.

Yesterday January 4th 2008 Warner Bros have announced they are going to pick Blu-Ray over HD-DVD, thus ending the raging format war between the two camps Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

Just to point out the obvious they waited a full 10 days after Christmas 2007 to announce this, milking the last out of early adopting HD types.

Being a PC guy I would have chosen HD-DVD as my preferred choice. Microsoft also chose this format for PC and Xbox 360. So I would have guessed wrong but I would have been in good company. Microsoft, Toshiba etc.

Interestingly both Dell and Apple chose the right format (Blu-Ray). I think HP offered both.

Well the good news all the format nonsense is now over. Sadly there are millions of consumers stuck with the “Betamax” of this century.

So lets look at the lay of the land.

Standard Def DVD: By far the most dominant by miles. It looks great and is inexpensive to buy titles and players.

Blu-Ray: There is no and I mean no low cost route into Blu-Ray. You need either a Sony Playstation 3 or a dedicated Blu-Ray player. These are currently going to set you back £250 upwards. Until the hardware is between £49-£99 your average consumer is going to run a mile.

Digital Downloads: Hi-Def streaming and downloads are just around the corner. In the UK Sky have just signed up major movie studios so this is going to take off in 2008. Likewise Microsoft will weep momentarily about HD-DVD then fill the Xbox market place with more HD content for download. Finally iTunes will start renting movies this year.

The Blu-Ray HD format is now dead in the water. It is going to be beaten savagely by the aging Standard Def DVD format in the coming years. During those years Digital Downloads will slowly take hold.

The HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format war a good thing, it kept driving down the cost of Hi-Def to the consumer.

Blu-Ray is the new laserdisc, Standard Def DVD is the new VHS