Sony's $3,000 MiniDisc PC from Japan - Vaio PCV-MX2
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- Опубліковано 12 сер 2021
- Exploring a multimedia PC from the year 2000: the Sony Vaio PCV-MX2! And it's a beautiful silver hi-fi beast of a thing. Not only is it a Windows 98 desktop computer, but it's packing a built-in amplifier, CD/DVD player, FM radio, and a MiniDisc drive, all usable via remote control. Fantastic hardware that was only sold in Japan, let's test it out!
● LGR links:
/ lazygamereviews
/ lazygamereviews
/ lazygamereviews
● Download an archive of the hard drive contents here:
archive.org/details/sony-vaio...
● All background music licensed from:
www.epidemicsound.com
#LGR #Retro #Computers - Наука та технологія
Greetings from japan.
My friend had this pc, and we were teenager in 2000.
We talked about pc games, it's nice memories.
Playing a MIDI file through Winamp in Windows 98 on a minidisc PC is peak 2000.
It really whips the llama’s ass
Baaaah Baaaaaaah!
i still use winamp lol
@@MaxiMuM1441 Hell yeah brother and i haven't even opened a bank account yet lmao
@@mackenziebullied4900 That is not something to be bragged about.
Age of Empires 2 without music is EXACTLY how I remember playing it back then, I was kinda shocked when I got the HD remaster and it had MUSIC.
Try the DE edition, it has been revived and there is an ongoing 100k tournament going on now.
@@monsG165 That's the one I got 😁
Wait what??? Both the base game an Conquer expansion cds I had growing up had music on them
I just love the fact you don't feel the need to have sponsors in your videos. So refreshing not being told to play some crappy PTW mobile game or to buy cheap ear buds. Keep up the great work.
Thank you! I’m fortunate enough to be in a place where I don’t need sponsors, and I hope to keep it that way as long as I can :)
@@LGR Fell down a rabbit hole tonight watching your videos. I've just realised i've watched about 85% of your uploads so I guess it's only fair that I head on over to Patreon to help you keep making the great content. \o/
I just want to say, all of my friends think I'm really weird for watching videos about obscure media formats or vintage PCs, but as long as you keep making high-quality videos like these, there is no way I can stop watching them!@@LGR
Imagine getting this as a kid in the year 2000. Dialing into the internet, installing Diablo II, and just feeling like an absolute boss....
Deus ex on this thing? sounds like a good combination.
God, just thought the same, awesome
My 10 year old self would have passed out if my dad brought this thing home. I don't know if I would have survived
@@revanjagergaming8714 I had a VAIO in 1998. My dad was usually cheap so it was especially shocking that he got us a VAIO for our first computer! It was an excellent computer and looked so cool. I remember friends at school always thought I was lying when I said I had a Sony VAIO. We got another customized VAIO in 2003 and a VAIO laptop later. It's a shame Sony no longer makes computers (although not all of their designs were great).
Early 2000 would have been the cusp of high speed in my area (Pacific Northwest) and you'd have been a boss with your bad-ass near 1mbit speeds.
I know a introducing MSX. so I'm very happy to introduce you to a Japanese PC and see some great comments on it. As a Japanese, I used to use VAIO and iMac side by side. Also, a small size VAIO has existed since the Windows 98 era. Sony knew the demand. I used it for a while. Sony VAIO for me is just a good memory.
He did a video about the MSX, though it's many years old. I love the MSX as well, here where I live (Arabia) it was very popular. Greetings from Dubai.
vaio+imac ?! so you were rich or a computer enthusiast
@@namesurname4666 japanese, that’s erich
Used one Vaio product, a laptop, and it was amazing.
Vaio gang! My first PC was a VAIO. PCV-RS502. Still got it running windows XP like a beaut.
All of those Vaio visuals and sound effects take me back, wow. My dad's radio communications and tower leasing business was THRIVING in the '90s, so even though I wasn't aware of it at the time due to being a kid, my family had money to _burn._ My dad LOVED tech and anything Sony, so in the late '90s everything in our house was Sony including our desktop PC. It wasn't THIS particular model, but it was a big purple Vaio with the same Vaio-unique sounds and wallpapers.
I graduated high school in 2003, and the Christmas before I started art school for college (I'm an illustrator now) I got a Sony MiniDisc player that hooked up to the computer for writing and managing music on the discs themselves, and I used the hell out of it in all of my studio classes before replacing it with the last generation of iPod that hit without a color screen. I still have that MiniDisc player up in a closet somewhere with a shit-ton of recorded discs.
Watching this channel has opened my eyes to just how much my dad actually spent on the electronics I grew up with. I was so spoiled as a child and didn't even realize it, _wow._ It makes me even more glad that I was a weird kid who treated all of my electronics like they were made of spun glass. 😳
VAIO has one the coolest logo.
It represents the analog and digital signal.
I've never noticed that, awesome!
In other obvious news:
The sky is blue.
Water is wet.
blah blah blah.
And no. The logo is actually shit because it fails what a logo is meant to do.
For a start it is to complex. For letters it doesn't work as with words we read the shape so the logo breaks that (road signs aren't all upper case for this reason!) and it doesn't work in nations that don't speak a language formed from Latin.
Logic: you mention the fact like it is an easter egg... Erm... The whole point of advertising is that things are explained or explicit. LOL
@@razerow3391 dude what the fuck? It wasn't that serious. And besides, the logo looks nice to me and it is clearly readable. You are those guys who believe the earth is flat, right?
@@razerow3391 "For a start it is to complex"
Are you one of those ass hats doing over simplified logos like the win 11 four squares?
The problem is not on the logo but you not knowing what complex is.
"For letters it doesn't work as with words we read the shape so the logo breaks that"
It's easy enough to read.
"it doesn't work in nations that don't speak a language formed from Latin."
So all text based logos are bad? Sure thing buddy.
@@razerow3391 Yikes
Wow man 12-year-old me would've *LOVED* to have that beast back then.
34-year-old me would love to have it today
@@LeinaDZiur 42-year-old me totally agrees!
me too! even more that i've never had a proper stereo system of my own... but with that price tag my parents never would have been able to afford it.
21 year old me wants it today... I rebuilt my families old pc from the year i was born a few back.
I was 16 in 1999, but yes, Likewise
That editing masterpiece needs to be uploaded to the Blerbs channel so it can be properly appreciated.
A dream PC back in the day!
Previous owner must have been into photography. There were Fujifilm and Canon folders in the applications menu. A man of culture indeed.
Sony has always had such a great sense for design and aesthetic that really speaks to me. From Walkman to CD and DVD players, televisions, computers, game consoles and even smartphones. Timeless, elegant and classy design.
I don’t think so. They were obsessed with the silver color for years. I mean they did make a good product ones made in Japan not the chinisem
Heck they are using the same VAIO trademark on their laptops, not sure if they are still making the PC though.
@@Tyler-dn8wn Speak for yourself. I love silver colour for consumer electronics. My current smartphone is a Sony Xperia 5 in silver/grey.
@@murkser4149 it’s just so distracting I spray painted my old trinitron TVs. For me black is the best color for tv bezels
@@Tyler-dn8wn In early 2000s the Silver Grey was a trend.
They weren't obsessed with that.
I just love all those videos. They take me back to a (seemingly) simpler time. Got my first PC with about 14 years of age. Waited weeks for all the parts to be delivered. Then assembled my glorious 40Mhz 4MB RAM hero. Later upgraded to 8Mb of RAM - what a monster XD. And there were rumours about some guys in school owning a 133MHz giant!
This one is about the first I would add to the "new" generation of systems, with WIN98 and all those fancy stuff in it. Still gives me nostalgia vibes. How come I now have a 100times faster system and RAM and 4K 165Hz image ... yet I just can't feel the same moment of awe I had when I first started my fav game X-Wing successfully on that old DOS-Computer after fighting with the 640Kb short memory problem I had with all the games back then. Those were the times.
It's sort of interesting to think that most modern phones run essentially what most mid-high outputs that was considered top tier in the 90s
Of course people in the 90s would say similar comparing computers of the 60s/70s. Their computers would compile most of what advanced computers of the 20 years prior to the 90s and going back another 20 years from the 60s/70s people would just be sorta shocked in general that electricity can compute calculations that it can. After that it'd probably be seen as witch craft xD
Yes I know there was the enigma machine from the world wars, but most people didn't understand or know exactly what that was. If memory serves computers during the 50s were sort of simple filing machines. And there's some credit given to a woman mathematician who said that electricity *could* assist mathematicians with complex computations and gave a good idea of how the machine would operate. All I'm saying since the general concept of a modern computer was developed going through 20 year spurts would give people shocks or pause considering how far the technology advanced and how it's shrunk. The same level of power being driven by a smaller computer. Then the shock of a similar sized machine outputting insane amounts of computer power (at least until our current situation where there's not much more we can go with the same 16/64 bit based chips)
Hey LGR I bet you didn’t know this: The V and A in the VAIO logo make up an analog wave while the I and O represent a 1 and a 0 representing digital computer code!
Clever!
The concept of the analog wave logo was by art designer Mr. Teiyu Goto. He did the sounds as well.
The startup tone of the early VAIO was based on the DTMF tone when you press the V-A-I-O buttons on your telephone.
pretty sure it stands for "video audio input output (machine)"
It’s a Transverse wave, it’s an awesome piece of graphic design
Video Audio I/O (integrated operation)
That thing is still relevant in the looks department. Beautiful machines.
I agree just add some more modern internals with AMD hardware for better Linux compatibility, and an HD, and DAB FM Radio tuner, plus HD TV Tuner where you can switch to which ones you need depending on where you live, and a widescreen super fast 1440p(a lot of PC's still struggle with 4K gaming, so a high refresh rate 1440p makes more sense to me) LCD to match.
Though I like the mx2 better, the PCV-70 shown at 1:04 is crazy considering it was released in 1996. That legit looks like a modern pc!
It's old enough that it has that retro cool look without looking too dated like the silver bubbly designs of the time.
I think you would have to ask many people without a penchant for retro anything to gauge its broad appeal in today's market. They should probably be under 30 as well so they have no reference point.
@@WhatsOnMyShelf The problem is they would think of any Desktop or HiFi as retro. 'What does it do that my phone and a Bluetooth Speaker can't ?"
Back to looks I loved my Vaio VPC-CA laptop, until I cpmpletely failed to get Windows 10 to run on it (no working drivers and no support from Sony).
Not gonna lie, the case of that pc looks so sick as hell, its literally perfect for an multimedia PC 🙂
Sony had taste when it comes to PC's. Both desktops and laptops.
Yeah thats a really sweet case for a Multimedia PC
May I ask what your pfp is it has me wondering man of culture.
It NGLed and it literallied 😩
To me a Multimedia PC sould have a flat slim case designed to fit underneath the TV. Sony actually made a Pentium 4 like that which came with a TV card as standard. The problem with them is that almost everything is non stanard form factors I have a Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo E under my TV which has the advantage that I was able to upgrade the motherboard to a Core I3.
Was living in Japan for 1 year in late 2000, and minidisc was such a hit there back then. Cars, and stereos at home got minidisc changers even. Such good times. Also Sony used almost exact same remote on flat TV sets at the time.
Aynen dostum. Güzel yıllardı.. 👊🏻
@@ryzentevfik kesinlikle 👊
too bad sony itself sucked in audio quality, however that onkyo unit looks very interesting
I lived there a few years later and MP3 players were starting to take over but MD players were still very available. I wanted one so bad but didn't get one.
@@natef15 Yeah I suppose wouldn't make sense buying one after that MD era. I had a Sharp model, used for few years and then,I stopped bothering with 1x optical recording speeds on discs after seeing MP3 format taking over.
Wow! That computer looked insane. It looked like the luxurious and futuristic look of this PC.
I still use my MD everyday. I have a home stereo with it, walkman and have a head unit in my car. Everyone that gets in my car always gets a kick out of it. Love not worrying about scratching them as I stack them in my car. What an awesome tower you have shown us. Thank you and keep MD alive.
I use DAT
Is you car headunit Sony? jdm cars had them oem would be cool to see any md headunit
@@CRAPO2011 Pioneer had a MD headunit..
I have a Dell Optiplex in my shed that I haven't used in about a year.
Lucky you! Thinking back to my MD walkmen, I could cry that I sold them when they were broken instead of trying to get them fixed. Nobody believes me when I tell them how superior the sound was. Except for one colleague who had a MD unit in his previous car, I know nobody who had a taste of minidisc. Sigh.
Man, Sony knew how to make proper multimedia PCs. My friend owned a Vaio and it came with a built in video capture card and a TV tuner. So many great memories with that thing.
I wish today's large OEM's offered multimedia specific PCs.
Totally agree, the killer feature for me would be to access multimedia without needing to boot to Windows.
OpenMG Jukebox was an app that let you download and playback copyrighted music content.
Unfortunately, drag-and-drop of PC music files to MiniDisc was not enabled until the newer generation VAIO MXS series which had NetMD drives.
Back then in year 2000, downloading digital music was a terribly disputed concept. People had started to share and download copyrighted material on the internet. Record labels were trying to prevent that by massive amount of lawsuits and applying pressure on manufacturers of digital audio players so that none of the devices accept PC music files.
OpenMG Jukebox app was Sony's attempt to tackle the issue: It created an encryption "Cocoon" inside the PC and let you download and playback copyrighted material as long as the user stays inside the cocoon. It connected to some online music stores of the time, and let you purchase music files. The music files were also encrypted so that they never leave the cocoon. The NetMD format was designed so that MiniDisc can be an effective part of the encryption cocoon. It could playback encrypted content as well as the conventional non encrypted content. The newer VAIO MXS series had an integrated NetMD drive so it allowed its users to copy PC music files to MiniDisc.
This inconvenient encryption trend continued until Apple bluntly broke the rules with their iPod and iTunes which let users freely copy PC music files; that became an immediate hit (naturally). Apparently the record labels forgot to pressurize Apple as they were not seen as a manufacturer of digital audio players ;-)
28:25 I absolutely love how "What in the world" syncs with the music.
What a beautiful tower- Sony just knows how to design timelessly.
For sure, I also love their software design to. It sounds like you're scrolling through a PS1 rpg game menu if that makes sense. So unique
well most of the time since apparently they couldn't fit in decent cooling with the PS5's design so i'd keep a small fan around back of it on low to facilitate better cooling.
Ok, this is one of the coolest machines Ive seen in a long time. Also, anyone else annoyed that the ABC karaoke didn't follow the letters properly?
Japanese ABC song is in Japanese, go figure :P
Well, considering that LMNOP is in fact more than one letter (it's actually like three or four, I think), it makes sense to break it apart for people learning the alphabet. Especially when they way it's written in Japanese makes most of those letters two syllables each.
I need one of these so badly. I just finished sourcing parts for my w98 build, inspired by LGR, and now I absolutely need this pc for the case.
i gave the 69th like, nice
Flat out amazing. I was a media student in 2001, and I did all my coursework on minidisc and zip drive, 100% this was a wet dream system. And with the period upgrades it looks absolutely brilliant.
I never realized how good and obvious it is to combine stereo system with a PC computer. This should have been the norm in the beginning of 21st century!
Sony did come out with some really unusual systems back then - some of their laptops were supremely advanced for the time in terms of features or form factor.
I'm not sure what they were thinking when they did their Core2 Multimedia PC (which might have been the last) shaped like a Hat Box).
Steve Jobs even approached Sony and asked if they wanted to run Mac OS X on their Vaios (which is impressive given Jobs was the one that ended the clones program and wanted total control over every design aspect of the system, so he must've really liked Sony)
I owned a couple of their laptops back when I was satisfied with running Windows. They were very nice.
I miss all these Sony-style buttons with integrated LED of all shapes so much!
Ya ever see Teacs glowing buttons?
This is such a neat computer. It has so much class and character. The Canyon theme midi is somehow very nostalgic.
Japan has always worked toward conglomerating everything in a system together. Biggest reason being that much of the Japanese people had limited space, still do. So they kept coming up with these all in one electronics to fulfill multiple roles in a household or apartment.
@@justinianthegreatandnerd6377 what
@@justinianthegreatandnerd6377 very helpful
Sony attempted a similar thing with the Playstation 3.
That really puts things into perspective for us in the US
@@thelazyworkersandwich4169 I think that was more just to use it as a "trojan horse" to get Blu-ray players into homes
Until today, I've only ever seen exactly one - and what a delight it is to see one again and in such nice condition.
I enjoy this video 🌈
This is rad, I’d love a modern reinterpretation of a system like this.
But why?
When I was in the U.S. army (11B Infantry 2ID Korea) in 2009 one of the guys in my platoon had a Sony Vaio laptop and the aesthetic was sleek. Didn't have a MiniDisc slot though. Outrageously priced at $1,500 for specs common among $500 laptops, but slick lookin'.
@@jim_bocho because my computer already is the centre of my hifi setup
@@Damien_N What media would you put n it?
I was thinking exactly the same thing. Of course these days it'd probably just have a Micro SD card reader and amp.
I was way into these types of systems back in the late 90's. I managed to get ahold of a TV tuner card and started recording TV shows and such. It was connected to our TV and sound system. Found a RF controller card for it and could sit back on the couch and watch recorded shows on my computer. The gold ole days.
was the sound system a bookshelf one like sony/aiwa or a standard one?
@@namesurname4666 It was a Kenwood 5.1 sound system.
@@JobeStroud how could you get a multichannel source in the late 90s?
3dfx had a voodoo card that had a tv tuner as well, it was pretty impressive
@@PILMAN I am not denying that. I just didn't have the money to spend on voodoo cards.
5:50 - As someone who was in Japan frequently (before the pandemic), it's still not common to find AC outlets with a grounding lug in Japan. Some places have been retrofitted, but pretty much every hotel I was at (including expensive ones) still don't have them regularly.
Because it's not the standard. Usually they are found in Hospitals or around equipment that deals with water.(kitchens/Aircons and washlets)
This is the most early 2000 M U L T I M E D I A PC I have ever seen.
As an audio engineer, I am actually seriously surprised by the Tripath amp.
A company that unfortunately was to far ahead for its time.
I was searching for "tripath" in this comments section i was curious if anyone else was recognizing this beautiful piece. I really would like to see a review about hooking up some full range high end speakers and the surprise on his face. I still own the topping tp-21 and tp-60.
Sony pushed a lot of modern tech standarts we used and use today. Sadly other corporations did not help at all with the standarization of a lot of them
@@lemn8 +1, stopped the video early on at very moment i spot "Tripath" on front panel.
@@babagandu 😱
@@lemn8 sorry pal forgive me ... I'm using Denon ...
This thing must have been super in 2000! It still has more multimedia options than today's PCs! Today's PCs can do almost nothing without internet and almost always need an amp for speakers and headphones.
Ahh, I remember one of my teachers having a new vaio laptop every friggin year when I was in school.
Always figured it was just some crappy thing, never realised it was actually up market!
I wonder what one could do with that case in terms of modern hardware and still keep as much of the minidisk, LCD and multimedia functionality intact...
That was a fantastic look at that computer! So cool to see the weird changes to the hardware for the media focus.
I bet the MD drive is just connected to a serial or USB port and the output of the sound card with that interface board sending the same kinds of syncro commands you would get on a standalone device that could rip a CD to MD. So it's probably not directly accessible to the computer at all.
I had a similar issue with Aureal DOS sound support on my Vaio Slimtop when I was working on that. If yours is similar to mine the drivers it came with suck and if you install another proper 8830 driver it should work. Once I did that I got DOS sound working in the Windows 98 DOX box but I don't think it worked in DOS Mode still.
I just love to see some of my favorite vintage tech guys do "crossover episodes" in the comments.
I have zero experience of MD data, but would there be any way of 'hacking' the drive to read/write to MD data? Would have been a novel thing to have on a 'mainstream' home PC, kind of like when built in Zip or SuperDrives were a thing
@@Liamtotherescue I don't know a lot about the technical internals of MiniDisc or MD Data, but my guess would be that everything aside from the drive mechanism wouldn't be able to read or write those discs. So you'd either have to write your own drive firmware or design your own controller board for it.
What's a "DOX box"?
I was wondering how deeply integrated the drives are with the computer. It’s a bit split-brained assuming the CD/DVD drive is accessible to Windows, and as a stand-alone player. I guess it could be using the SPDIF output to connect to the MD recorder, which would prevent having to do a bunch of data bus arbitration.
Assuming the MD is only connected via a transport control link (vs having data access from the computer), that’s still really interesting because there’s an opportunity to see what is being transferred to control the drive. That opens up possibilities for hacking MD appliances that use compatible drive mechanisms, writing new control firmware, and so on.
Having full data access would be even cooler, but I doubt that’s the case.
27:50 is like watching a trainer data set being plugged into an AI editor from 20 years ago. Watching "sup" and "farts" just trail schizophrenically across the screen really spoke to me on an emotional level.
Same
@@LunarWindows sup
@@pepe6666 farts
Recording from pc audio directly to minidisc would've been amazing back in the day. I used minidisc all the time. I would've loved to be able to record my favorite game music in a time before I had internet.
As a VAIO owner I just wanna say they're great until they break. I bought one specifically for video capture and editing and when the power supply blew on it, it turned out it used a special proprietary power supply that was smaller than normal, a normal one won't fit in the case. Then I found out the Capture Card is hyper proprietary as it encodes to MPEG-2 inside the device before it even touched the PC. This means it *ONLY* works with the proprietary software so if you lost that, you're SOL. No homebrew solution worked at all because nothing new how to handle a pre-encoded MPEG-2 video stream. So basically, it's a Sony.
That's why I usually avoid Sony anything. Cameras especially. The extra money would be worth it for the style. But Sony's greed always ruins it.
28:54 my god this computer came with SAPARi .. wish it was still installed there but ay, at least the shortcuts are still there!
When you consider all the features the computer has, it takes the place of a lot of other media equipment. Those speakers are sick!
Frankly I was impressed. Considering your playing these games on a twenty one year old system lol. Thank you for the walk through 1999-2001. 👍
This computer is amazing and would've blown me away had I had a chance to mess around with one back in 2000.
This is a perfect LGR video. I mean honestly. Everything in this video is perfect and HOW TO HELL is this PC so incredible clean inside and out?!
It's probably a collectible even for the previous owner
We found the one Japanese person who didn't smoke in the early 2000s
That desktop was immaculate
The cookie monster, "clear their cookies" quip sent me, Clint. I salute you!
Wasn't That funny..
@@AboveEmAllProduction We're all allowed to have our own opinions, go troll somewhere else.
I recorded dozens of concerts with my minidisc models back in the day. this tech defined a large portion of my teenaged identity.
I recorded Hum, Deftones, Modest Mouse, Bright Eyes, The Sea and Cake, Tortoise, Mogwai, Sonic Youth, June of 44, Veruca Salt, Don Caballero, Cursive, Dianogah etc concerts. The recordings are sharp and accurate.
All of this is prior to smart phones. Yes, I am old.
I still use my minidisc players/recorders to this day. They provide better audio quality than the phone in your hand.
Cool to see that "JRPG menu sound effects" are actually just "Japanese Computer Menu sound effects".
You outdid yourself with this one. I mean, all your content is great, but I don’t think anyone could have covered/showed this thing off better. Bravo Clint!
28:38 that was wonderful, I legitimately loled at the chaos & farts, A+.
That smooth jazz was a perfect fit for LGR video too!
I would love it if he uploaded that gem to the blerbs channel
I used mover maker on XP more then I should that was madness 😂😂
I'm studying minidisc for a design project. This video sure got me even more excited about them! Thank you LGR
The worst part of these computers was that everything worked exactly on the OS that it came with. If you tried to upgrade the OS, you basically lost all the features. This was due to a combination Microsoft's driver interfaces being OS specific, the manufacturers using undocumented APIs, and manufacturers simply not caring.
All OSes have this
It all comes back to that: programmers, document your damn code!!
Mutual feelings towards the VAIO line here. My absolute favorite is the PC R VGC-RA820G (catchy name) from 2005, which is a Pentium 4 XP machine that still looks modern and sleek to this day, and has the absolutely wonderfully unique floating top layer, resting on two front and back pillars, and you can stick your hand right through the middle of the case. Absolutely jaw dropping.
The pf pic is horrendous
Ohh my god! This machine just screams the year 2000!
Wow this setup is such a vibe. That MD player and the orange lighting is just chef's kiss.
What an awesome piece of engineering. Super futuristic for something from 2000....
Been lusting after this series for a while, seriously so cool. Sony's design team was on another level during this time.
You have to send this to Techmoan. This would be perfect for him
He'd love it
Would could get more Techmoan karaoke footage!
Ikr, since he is more intrested in these types of things hehe
He'll be up all night to get lucky.
Oh this is so good thought. He's probably the person in YT that would appreciate this hardware most.
Its interesting to see a Tripath / Class T amplifier actually advertised on an product. Those were quite forgotten and later "rediscovered" in the Lepai TA2020 t-amp hype for their great sond at ultra low power use.
I worked at a Best Buy-style electronics store circa 2005-2009. Sony Vaios were far and away the most stylish PCs/laptops on the average consumer market at the time, probably the only ones that were genuinely aesthetically pleasing.
Seeing winamp pop up gave me WAAAAY to much joy 🤣
yes longer exits
Somewhere, the llamas are nervous.
Man once you mentioned that Riva TNT 2 the nostalgia hit me hard. That was my first card that i upgraded myself
WINAMP! It really whips the llama's ass!! 🦙👋
Id almost forgotten about that.
@@Demonslayer20111 you can never forget about that 😅
24:00 I wholeheartedly expected you to sing along; the buildup was so great lol
It's so pretty! I love the computer design of these Vaios from back then.
Tell me I'm not the only grown man that went "awww" at the space bar. Also, this is super cool. Makes me wish my amp had some PC capabilities built in.
I would love to have a modern PC inside that case, with the LCD and volume knob functioning.
Really I just want a case that looks like that, and has functional buttons and knobs on it. And an LCD screen that displays... temps or something I dunno.
Well you can buy external sensor monitors that fit in a CD bay. Obviously your case needs to be able to hold a CD drive. I never realized that cases now a days didn’t have any bays up front until I upgraded a few months ago.
I completly agree that this pc would be a great contendor for doing a sleeper pc (thats where there is new hardware inside but outside looks the same). If the dac is not on the motherboard and instead on the amplifier, I could see this as one of the better audiophile systems.
The Vaio wallpaper with the Windows 98 startup music has a nice aesthetic to it
17:43 音楽だって、バイオにまかせてくれ means "Leave music to the Vaio". No kidding. You wouldn't need a separate hi-fi if you had this (minus cassette). It makes sense that this would do well in Japan but I'm sure that urban apartment-dwelling Americans would have really appreciated something like this
I love how WINAMP still looks the same as it always has.
I'm using Winamp 5.623 right now. It has The Matrix skin with Morpheus, Trinity and Neo.
The media player time forgot. I wonder what the new, updated Winamp will look like when it is released.
Winamp 2.3 had a plug in to do different flash patterns with the cap lock nun lock and scroll lock lights on the keyboard, RGB 20 years before RGB was cool 🤣
i still use winamp. and its still looks the same. best music player ever.
I would love to see a mchine with these functionalities built into an All in one form factor, by Sony, like the AIO. Imagine an all-in-one computer with built in MD, DVD and floppy drives.
'00s vibe at its best
This looks like a great living room / entertainment PC. The included minidisc makes sense as CDs were VERY expensive I Japan. Albums were commonly rented and copied to MD at home.
Minidisc was such an underrated format imo. I still have my NetMD recorder, and its still functional. I never knew that there were PC's with minidisc built in. Very cool.
Of all the cool retro tech you've reviewed and featured on your channel over the years...i've never wanted anything more than this entire setup. Words cannot describe just how much i want this in my life.
I was in college when the minidisc format came out, and I was an early adopter. Loved it, and stuck with it even as mp3 players started dominating the scene.
_it was a bad day, until LGR uploaded a 40 minutes long video_
hehehe thanks a lot !
This is fascinating. I have a Sony MDS-PC3 standalone MD player I bought new 20 years ago. It has software that does a lot of this. I used to plug it into my PC, drag and drop MP3’s into the software, and the. Burn them to minidisc. I still have a few blank discs as well as the discs I still have music on. I really loved it for taking into the car as I also had a Kenwood KMD-X92 Minidisc head unit. Thank you for sharing this!
I like the "digital dream" written in the VAIO wallpaper. I hope they made that wallpaper appropriate on later OSes, Windows ME and Windows Vista, by changing it to "digital nightmare".
Sound of Techmoan drooling in the distance
You have to copy the Audio Files from Age of Empires II to the Game Folder sometimes
Vaio we’re always super cool to me as a kid. Like Clint said, the designs really stood out and they seemed super high-end and fancy. Which they were. The price tags also added to the ultra unattainable mystique. Sony knows what they’re doing and they are always way ahead of the curve, especially back in the day.
I’d argue a lot moreso back in the day. Now they’re a little more reserved as far as pushing premium systems, presumably because they’re in a bit of a worse financial spot.
@@GTAfan421 I would agree with that. I think there was also more room to innovate. They had a good sense of what people would be interested in as far as products and also design. Plus they were known for top quality. Now a days, Sony kind of blends in to the rest of the tech landscape in my opinion and when they do something innovative like the design of the PS5, it’s polarizing (like seemingly everything these days. I don’t love the design but it’s fine).
i love your retrospectives Clint. so appealing to listen to in the background while i game
Once again I am thanking you for including subtitles for us hard of hearing folks
Sony Vaios are the most unique PCs! I just showcased my vaio all-in-one, the PCV-W20. Love the Vaios and their quirkiness! Awesome seeing that Vaio came with a decent video card, not the case with mine.
Ive always wanted one of those vaio umpcs with the slide up screens… they looked so cool!
This is very nostalgic PC!!
Honestly this is not the most high performance model, but so attractive.
Yet,raptop model like C1 and GT and 505 are pretty good.
"Multimedia" was slogan in Japanese electronic maker in these era.
MX is one of the realization product of that.
You would of been the coolest kid of the street when you got this!
Could have napster'ed that 30 gb hd full of pirated music in no time! (with a high speed internet connection of course, 56k would have taken dedication and some time to fill that thing up)
@@iamatlantis1 definitely!
@yefdafad are you ok
@@Agri458 God, that went right over your head, dude. "Must of" is not a thing
@@jbfarley oh god sorry lol
That combined modem/PCMIA card would not have gone over well back in my childhood. Thunderstorms and old phone lines meant that we got a fried modem every other year.
If you unplugged the phone line from the computer from the wall when it wasn't in use like every other normal user did, you wouldn't have fried modem cards.
@@theannoyedmrfloyd3998 Good advice 25 years late, my friend! I was just a kid at the time so it didn't come to mind, and my folks weren't the most tech savvy.
Your short intro is so satisfying, windows 98 was my best OS experience 👍
What a nice computer, especially with the audio features and the useful MiniDisc drive. I have the same Sony LCD monitor and a Sony Vaio PCV-RX752 (also in silver and blue). It was my first computer. It is a great XP computer that still works well, has a unique design (that still looks futuristic), and came with a lot of software, especially for music and video. The back of it looks similar to the back of the one in the video, and even the labels for the ports have the same design. Mine does not have a MiniDisc drive or many of the audio features on the one in the video, but it does have a memory stick drive, a DVD/CD drive, a separate CD drive, and a floppy drive, and iLink ports.
man those VAIO desktops looks amazing.
Yeay, another LGR hardware video thing! I love to see these old PCs!
One of my favorite episodes of LGR! Dang I wish I have that monitor of yours Clint! :)
Very interesting PC for the time. I REALLY love that orange LCD built into the front panel. LCD panels in the case are even fancy by today's standards.
I need this in my life
Don't we all?
I have this, but not complete set.
@@miskonsem I'd pay good money for it.
@@miskonsem Same, I’m only missing the monitor. It’s crazy that it has the first Nvidia gpu in it.
@@miskonsem What do you mean?
My friend had one of these when I was a kid, I was amazed. So much nostalgia in this episode, from the windows boot music to the games.
Stop lying. There were 3 tiers, an open price, barely any copies were made, let alone sold, it was only in Japan, and importing stuff like this just didn’t happen as often as now, and it was fucking 3-4 thousand dollars, let alone your friend being able to somehow pay in yen.
You are such a dumb liar
Not going to lie 80's, 90's and 2000's tech was so durable and just cool. When I was a tot in the late 90's my dad let me play with his 80's computer he used in college. It still worked well into the 2010's until my sister dropped it on the ground pretty hard when she was moving it.
wow. i just got a strong flash back to when i was 8 and got a old pc from my aunt and i was playing frogger pretty much all the time on it and it was way retro like this... keep digging up old memories clint. Love you