- Display Support: 720p over HDMI
- External ports: 3 USB ports, 1 micro HDMI, speaker
- Keyboard Support: USB, USB RF, Bluetooth
- Mouse support: USB, USB RF, Bluetooth
- In the package: Dock, keyboard, mouse remote, HDMI cable, charger
- Apps: Mozilla Firefox 3.6.13 supporting HTML5 and Flash; Entertainment Center
- Display: On a 30” Dell display at 1280x720P@60Hz, using Firefox environment looked pretty good.
- Keyboard, mouse, remote: I used a full size Microsoft 3000 keyboard and mouse and I experienced no lag at all. The stock Bluetooth keyboard was the size of a large notebook keyboard, or full size. The stock mouse felt cheap, but worked fine. I was happy I could use the remote in Webtop mode at all and used it for rudimentary actions like scrolling.
- Robust browser: The HD Multimedia Dock has the same functionality as the Lapdock with Mozilla Firefox for Ubuntu, the “continuous computing” browser handoff and speedy simple sites.
- Productivity App Compatibility: I successfully used Touchdown Exchange, Microsoft Web Office, Google Docs, Documents to Go, QuickOffice, andOutlook Web Access. I didn’t even need to be connected to the cloud to use QuickOffice or Documents. I even connected through LogMeIn Ignition access MS Office productivity apps. Not ideal speed, but it still worked.
- Shared storage: Since there is only one set of storage on the phone, you will always have one set of local information. One place for documents, content, address book, etc.
- Two environments confusing: I found the dual modes as unappealing with Webtop as it was on the Lapdock. They were two completely different worlds with very little sinew between them.
- Sluggish: Webtop with Firefox many times felt “sluggish”. It was slow particularly when hitting a complex site like ESPN or CNN or when browsing in multiple tabs. Hulu was very sluggish, even at full screen SD. Even Twitter.com (new) was slow.
- Task switching: As with the Lapdock, this was slow to pop up which makes multitasking very difficult.
- Expanded Phone Apps: The problems of stretching 4” apps to the 11.6” screen of the Lapdock are only compounded when going to a 30” display. Everything gets big and blurry. Imagine taking a 320×240 video and expanding it to 1024×768. You get the point.
- Not as Productive: Apps like Docs To Go and QuickOffice and browser-based productivity sites worked but I felt myself working in slow motion. I am used to working with many windows and tasking back and forth and I really had to stretch to get things done at the pace I expect.
- Games: Android games suffered from the “stretch effect” of stretching the 4” 960×540 screen to 30” 1280x720P display. Games like NFS Shift looked pixelated and blocky beyond belief. Web games were slow also but seemed better than the Android games. I had a few Flash crashes too and I had to restart the web game. Gaming was not an enjoyable experience on a large display.
- Remote: The remote was very compact and straightforward with all the controls you would expect in a media-centric device.
- Music: The phone correctly pulled screen art and was arranged into the all very familiar “Now Playing”, “Songs”, Artists”, and “Albums.” When songs played a very enjoyable living background started moving to the beat of the music.
- Pictures: Pictures were arranged in folders and interaction was snappy.
- Videos: Those videos that could play loaded very quickly and appeared to play at 30 FPS. 1080p videos down-sampled to play on the 720p display. For the most part, videos that wouldn’t play or were incompatible with the player didn’t show up in the play menu.
- Content Location Simplicity: All of your content is in one place, one device, not two.
- Playlists: There is no way to program or import a playlist.
- Video Bitmaps: The dock didn’t display the bitmap images of the videos. It is difficult at times to find the video you want based on the filename and not the picture.
- Limited Video Formats: The Atrix HD dock in Entertainment Center mode appears to play even fewer video formats than the phone itself. The only thing I can think of why this would be is that the Entertainment Center is a Linux application, not an Android application, and the designers have opted not to support the formats.
- Lack of Services: Anything called an HD Entertainment Center should have some video services like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora and Amazon on Demand.
- Image Improvement: There was no evidence of image or video improvement. I didn’t experience any image stabilization, noise reduction, or sharpening.
- Games: Gaming is entertainment, right? The Entertainment Center has no games, not even Angry Birds, and that’s on everything. J
- More powerful processing: Like the Lapdock, adding dual or quad core processing, and better graphics could solve many if not all of the performance challenges. This could all be done with a single APU. If power management and cooling issues arise, develop a way to turn off and turn on functionality depending on its docking state. Maybe add some cooling functionality to the dock. That adds cost, yes, but if it could replace a device then it would be a net savings. In Webtop mode in a desktop environment, this would surely assist in true multitasking, not the fake task switching.
- Bimodal apps: A single user interface would greatly improve the experience. Google appears to be on this track with their multimode APKs.
- Decent Games: I don’t know completely why the game experience was so lousy. What NVIDIA showed at CES 2011 seems different than what I experienced on a larger screen. I think what is required is a native Android output at 1080p plus heavier duty 3D graphics. The lack of any games in the Entertainment Center is more a marketing than technical choice.
- Improved Content: To be a credible living room DMA it needs to have services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon VOD. Music services like Pandora and Amazon Cloud Music need to be available in the Entertainment Center. Photo services like Picasa Web and Flickr need to look good at 10’ as a living room DMA.
- Hardwire Network: I see no reason not to have 1Gb wired Ethernet as the HD Multimedia Dock is always at home in the study, kitchen or living room.
- QWERTY Remote: For the living room DMA mode, the best remote for 10’ Webtop mode would be like today’s current Boxee Box remote. It’s the size of the Apple TV remote and has three simple buttons on the front, but flip it over and it has a QWERTY keyboard.
- 1080p Video Out: This is on everyone’s smartphone graphics roadmap, so it will be there, but I need to mention this.
Patrick founded the firm based on his real-world world technology experiences with the understanding of what he wasn’t getting from analysts and consultants. Ten years later, Patrick is ranked #1 among technology industry analysts in terms of “power” (ARInsights) in “press citations” (Apollo Research). Moorhead is a contributor at Forbes and frequently appears on CNBC. He is a broad-based analyst covering a wide variety of topics including the cloud, enterprise SaaS, collaboration, client computing, and semiconductors. He has 30 years of experience including 15 years of executive experience at high tech companies (NCR, AT&T, Compaq, now HP, and AMD) leading strategy, product management, product marketing, and corporate marketing, including three industry board appointments.
- Patrick Moorheadhttps://moorinsightsstrategy.com/author/phfmphfmgmail-com/
- Patrick Moorheadhttps://moorinsightsstrategy.com/author/phfmphfmgmail-com/
- Patrick Moorheadhttps://moorinsightsstrategy.com/author/phfmphfmgmail-com/
- Patrick Moorheadhttps://moorinsightsstrategy.com/author/phfmphfmgmail-com/