Home Entertainment on Laptops
Most people have become hooked to the Apple iPod Touch as their main entertainment media both at home and on the road. Imagine what a laptop can do instead. Of course, it will cost more and may not last any longer on the road than an iPod. But in terms of getting more pleasure out of it, the laptop has the edge. But there’s no compulsion of the two to compete.
The laptop has its other functions that the iPod can’t do. On the other hand, the iPod has better portability and a more focused mobile media function. But just in case you have you’ve grown tired of your iPod, here’s the advantage of using a laptop as your home entertainment option.
Ample Storage
While the iPod’s 60GB internal non-replaceable hard drive is more than enough for all the mp3 and video files you will ever need on the road, the Laptop does all that and more. You can rip your favourite CDs into wave files and have an easier and faster time transcoding them to a more compressed mp3 format. Of course, you can rip as mp3 files right away. But if your are stickler to high fidelity rips, using a software like EAC with the latest LAME software is reputed to do the most competent job in creating mp3 files. With hard drive storage from 250GB upwards, the laptop can accommodate more high quality 320kbps mp3 files that approach CD quality sound.
Better Playlist Management
iTunes on a desktop or laptop is a joy to use. You can maximize its features but first it’s important that you catalog each and every song in your library like any database item. This makes searching and filtering more detailed and exacting. Attributes like artist name, genre (rock, pop, disco, classical, etc,), grouping (piano, guitar, big band, orchestral, etc.), year of release as well as a commentary that can include the occasions for which a song is most appropriate (Christmas, Halloween, disco party, etc.) can be used to bring unparalleled versatility is your playlists. You can listen exclusively to piano music one day, jazz or pop the next have all your Christmas carols in one playlist.
Better Video
That’s an easy conclusion. Movie watching is certainly easier to the eyes on a 12” or 13” LCD display than on the 3.5” screen of an iPod Touch. Soon, laptops will have Blu-ray optical drives as standard the way DVD writing drives became standard about 5 years back. This essentially brings high definition movies on your laptop which can be connected to a large LCD or plasma display for better viewing pleasure. You can’t very well do this on an iPod.
The usual VGA analog connection will do the job but with HDMI increasingly available in laptops, this is the best audio-video connection to your TV. It makes your connection digital all the way with both audio and video information in just one cable. But no matter, you get full 1080p high definition resolution from either VGA or HDMI connection.
Admittedly, your laptop’s 250 GB hard disk won’t be up to the task if you want to store MKV or ripped M2TS files from Blu-ray copies or downloaded from internet movie distribution sites as each file can eat as much as 30GB per movie. But there are excellent compromised high definition files under 16GB downloadable form the net but will still challenge your hard disk capacity before long. An external 500Gb USB drive should address your storage shortfall when it comes to storing high definition video files. GP
About the Author
ITC Sales are a leading supplier of Dell and HP Laptops such as the Dell Precision and Vostro. ITC also supply servers such as the Dell PowerEdge
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