- Monday, 11 January 2010
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The email of the species is more macho than the femail (Inq Bad Language)
Asus to launch a home media player
JUST AHEAD OF COMPUTEX, sources have told the INQ that Asustek will be launching a media player at the show that's built around a previously unknown and therefore somewhat mysterious Realtek chip.
Hardware Info reckons Asus's new media player will include eSATA storage connectivity and support network streaming, 1080p playback and output including 24p, and DTS decoding to LPCM over HDMI. That last feature will be fairly unique to this product initially, since DTS support has been noticeably lacking in this market segment.
The recommended price of the unit will be just €119, which should be low enough to worry vendors of competing media players that don't offer eSATA, network streaming or DTS decoding. µ
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What is so special about this device being able to output (presumably multichannel) LPCM over HDMI? Other products based on chipsets like Sigma Designs SMP8635 not only can also output multichannel LPCM over HDMI, but also can output non-downsampled DTS-HD MA or Dolby TrueHD over HDMI 1.3. Look out for HDX100 for example, which lack of eSATA is the only drawback of the device.
[QUOTE]...which lack of eSATA is the only drawback of the device...[/QUOTE]
How about stable actually working firmware? If its not crappy playback on older divx movies, no support for playlist, bad support for subtittles etc.. There are so many things thats doesnt work.. After having owned a A-110 for a few months it drives you insane. Its probly a better idea to get a HTPC for the mental health.
HDMI 1.4, and slap it on a ROG board.
One of the major manufacturers pitched up with a RMVB player, been debating about buying one of the noname chinese ones for awhile. Guess I'll wait a bit longer:-)
...they havent bothered to update their application icons since 1995!
All those lovely tru-colour 3d icons on your desktop and then you see those delightful flat Realteks looking like its Win95 all over again.
Mmmmm classy.
Is there that big a market for the thing just because it has HDMI output?
Been using my 320gb ATMT Mobile Media HDD player (£90 at Maplin) for over 5 years now without a problem, and same for my Chinese 2.5" and 3.5" hard drive media players I bought years ago on Ebay.
They may not have HDMI but between the SCART or the RCA type jacks used by almost every tellie ever made I haven't had a problem hooking them up to anything.
Want a really great HDD based media player? Get a Neuros OSD Linux Media Recorder - plays and records almost any media format, has ethernet/serial/infrared/usb connections, and can play from and record to SD/MMC/CF/CF Microdrive/Memory Stick and USB external hard drives! Only £90 at thinkgeek.
I wonder how many people even have a hi-def tellie they can actually use. I see tons of rip-offs in the shops with an HD badge but are less than 50 inches, making the majority of them realistically unusable for hi-def in most cases, unless someone were sitting with one directly in their face. These are 'poser' HD tellies, and they seem to make up the majority of HD units in homes.
The bulk of the hi-def sets out there for sale are nothing but hype and they only hi-def in the loosest of definitions.