Sony PCV-RS630G
This system offers decent value and can record TV, but its performance was somewhat disappointing.
Artwork by Rick Rizner, John Goddard
The $2070 Sony PCV-RS630G is aimed at buyers who want a PC that can record and play back TV as well as perform general computing tasks. But we found it to be somewhat slower than similarly configured systems.
A built-in video-capture card and TV tuner and the Giga Pocket personal video recording software handle TV recording. Besides recording live TV, this setup can capture analog videos and copy them to DVD. Sony bundles a selection of movie, photo editing, and music software with this system as well.
But despite being built around a 3.2-GHz Pentium 4 processor with 512MB of DDR400 SDRAM, the PCV-RS630G performed rather sluggishly, turning in a WorldBench 5 score of 83. The two other PCs we've tested equipped with the same CPU posted scores at least 11 percent better--though they also had twice as much RAM.
The system's classic silver case looks stylish and holds both an 8X multiformat rewritable DVD drive and a 16X DVD-ROM drive. The system comes with a 250GB drive, too, giving it plenty of space for recording TV programs and editing video. A hinged door near the bottom of the case covers Sony Memory Stick, CompactFlash, and SmartMedia card slots. Three USB 2.0 and one I.Link (Sony's name for FireWire) port sit under the cover. Another FireWire port and four more USB 2.0 ports are mounted on the back, along with an optical audio-out port for connecting the system to an amplifier or to a high-end speaker set.
The basic Sony speakers accompanying our review system sounded disappointingly average. Sony's 17-inch SDM-HX73 LCD display performed acceptably, but images looked somewhat dark and muted in DVD playback and on our photo tests. The keyboard (which includes eight shortcut keys) felt higher above the desktop than we're accustomed to, and the keys had a somewhat mushy feel. The mouse is small and unpleasantly lightweight.
So-so performance and the less-than-stellar peripherals cause this system to stumble where it should shine.
Victor R. Garza
Artwork by Rick Rizner, John Goddard
Photograph by Rick Rizner
Photograph by Rick Rizner