10.1” Samsung N210 (White) $360
$359.99
Friday, May 21, 2010
I caught an interesting development with Jolicloud today: 1080p HD support for netbooks with the new Pinetrail Atom processor, without needing a Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator! This includes netbooks with either an Atom N450 or N470 processor, which include GMA 3150 graphics. If you’ve got an GMA 950 based netbook, you’re out of luck when it comes to 1080p HD video.
You’ll be able to play 1080p HD video in various file formats (DivX, Xvid, etc) excluding H.264. As for 720p HD video, they should all be supported including H.264, which isn’t a surprise since previous gen netbooks could handle that as well, with the right software (CoreAVC codecs).
If they can’t get H.264 1080p HD video then that means this is all being done in software, rather than utilizing any kind of video playback hardware acceleration, of which there is none. Still, you’re much better off slapping a Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator if you can.
The update will be coming at the end of this week or early next week.
I’ll leave you with Jolicloud’s demo video showing off 1080p HD video on a Samsung N210 netbook:
Source: Liliputing
“If you’ve got an GMA 500 based netbook, you’re out of luck when it comes to 1080p HD video.”
If I had to guess, I would have imagined things going the other way (everyone other than GMA 500 netbooks being out of luck) as some folks have already implemented hardware acceleration under Linux for a number of chipsets that support DXVA under Windows.
I’ll be curious to see how they have managed to pull this off without hardware acceleration.