Sony’s 17-inch Vaios Get Blu-ray, CableCard

Sony has rolled out an updated version of its Vaio AR600-series 17-inch notebook computers, offering Blu-ray drives and CableCard options.

Let’s face it: there are basically two types of people who opt for notebook computer with 17-inch displays. The first—smaller—group is coders and developers who need every pixel of portable screen real estate they can find so they can compile, grep, code, cat, gawk, and revel in a world of command lines, switches, and hashes.

Then there’s the group who just wants to play games, watch movies, and be entertained.

Sony is pitching the latest revisions of its 17-inch Vaio AR600 series of notebook computers at this second—larger—group, offering three new configurations sporting Blu-ray drives, CableCard support, or both. Starting at $1,699.99, the Vaio AR630E features a 17-inch 1,440 by 900 pixel widescreen display with Nvidia GeForce 8400M GT graphics and 256 MB of dedicated video RAM, a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 processor, 2 GB of RAM, space for up to two 160 GB hard drives, and a BD-ROM drive. The system also sports 3 USB 2.0 ports, a four-pin IEEE 1394 port, video output (HDMI, VGA, S-Video), a 1.3 megapixel Webcam, and Vista Home Premium. Moving up to $2,399.99, the Vaio AR660U packs a 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, WIndows Vista Ultimate, and offers CableCard support for watching (and, of course) recording HDTV cable content. For the best of both worlds, the $3,299.99 Vaio AR690U notebook offers both the CableCard tuner and Blu-ray drive, and packs a mammoth 1,920 by 1,200 pixels into its 17-inch display.

Sony expects to begin shipping the new Vaio AR600 series in early October.