Mini-ITX does double display duty
VIA TECHNOLOGIES today announced the VIA EPIA M700 Mini-ITX board, the first to feature the VX800 chipset, for digital signage and retail display systems.
The board comes with a 1.5GHz or a 1.0GHz fanless C7 processor and a Chrome9 HC3 integrated graphics core for DirectX 9.0 3D graphics and up to six-channel surround sound, while the Chromotion video engine provides hardware video acceleration for MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV9, VC1 and DivX video, plus a VMR capable HD video processor.
It flings files using two PCI-Express based Gigabit LAN ports and has a front panel DVI port, pin headers for an additional DVI or HDMI port through a daughterboard and support for 18-bit TTL displays.
Digital video input is available through pin headers supporting CCIR-656/601//transport stream video, and there is also an S/PDIF connector.
Storage is taken care of by an IDE port with a shared Type I Compact Flash ports, 2 SATA II ports and up to 6 USB 2.0 ports, two through onboard connectors.
Samples will be available in early June to project customers and in channel distribution later.
L'Inq
Via
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I've had a Via EX15000 sitting in the cupboard for the last year.

Like many of via's boards this is sold as supporting linux/mpeg2/4.vc1 etc.

Don't believe it for a second - the hardware may well support all the stuff that these press releases make out but good luck ever finding drivers that enable any of it.
"MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV9, VC1 and DivX video, plus a VMR capable HD video processor"
stuart there is NO SUCH THING AS "MPEG-4" video....

there IS "Mpeg4-part2" , aka DivX/Xvid.

and there IS "Mpeg4-part10" aka AVC,H.264, or even at a pinch, Mpeg4-AVC


also as a side note, WMV^ is NOT a Video Codec, its a container....

i expact this salesman type trick to use "Mpeg4" to sell and clear out their old antiquated kit while we wait for the real deal AVC En/Decoder kit, but not from the likes of our tech news sites.

please try and use at least the short "AVC" version name if your talking about the latest Mpeg4-part10 video codec standard....
Via have about 85 different ITX based boards, when all they really need is ONE that's sold en-masse at the right price.

It's cheaper by FAR to get a mini atx board and a base Pentium Duo.

So, why do these racing snails cost so much more?

Is it the complexity of the boards? The extra crap they cram on that only a few % of people will want? What is it?

I've been watching VIA slowly release slug after slug at the price of a greyhound and waiting for that critical price to performance ratio to become more realistic.

Dont get me wrong, I dont really want massive performance. But I dont want to pay Ferrari prices for a Hyundai.

*note* that reference was supposed to be relating to cars. Hard to tell these days though really.

SM replies [back off buddy. I drive a Hyundai]