Things are finally hotting up in
NVIDIA's ION camp. An official press release now tells that the first batch of "incredibly small and affordable PCs" (like the
Acer Hornet rumored for an April 8th launch) are due in Q2 -- that's as early as today folks, on up through the end of June. Along with the new gear, NVIDIA is promising optimized software support from powerhouse developers like Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and Electronic Arts in an effort to signal the platform's suitability for serving up 1080p video over HDMI in a home theater as well as gaming, photo editing, and general computing in nettop- and netbook-sized devices. Bring it, we say... we're so over Intel's GM945-class chipsets.
posted Apr 2nd 2009 4:12AM
hotting up?
Engadget is to cool for proper grammar.
It's the new hip and happening shizz yo.
Ha, we're hardly trailblazing the phrase...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/visit-wales/food-holidays-in-wales
http://tinyurl.com/c77jos
Thomas
Been hearing a lot of this Ion talk for awhile now Nvidia. Release some real products, or STFU already.
Sorry, but that video told me nothing except that you can get any douche bag to praise your product. :) "ion is so hot, revolutionary and small, i want it in my anal cavity".
OMG IWANTNAO!!!!!!!
"Hotting up" LMAO!
Me want one, now!
this has more USB ports than my tower :(
you must have a Mac, but you still have the option to buy the extra USB from Apple.
Actually the current Mac Mini is more powerful than this, it's just much more expensive. A $249 Apple TV based on this chip would be nice though.
In other words time to put your current netbook on ebay/craigslist before everyone else finds out about this
Com'on Guys, it's just a chipset.
what is so fantastic about a chipset that can handle1080p video? integrated SoC chips like Sigma Designs cant do today with their SMP 86xx series brigning 1080p video for less than $10 per chip?
yea..but can yur netbook or nettop play games like battlefield 2 and wow at decent framerates? i think not my friend
Yeah and Hubble is just a pair of lenses...
Have you ever tried playing even standard definition video on a bog-standard Atom netbook? It can only just about cope with the demand, with CPU usage staying above 80%. Forget about any high-definition video...
He He hubble is just a pair of lenses, good one. Seriously, The announcement doe snot state that The chipset can handle games in Full HD, only that it can handle 1080p, but it does not state in what format/codec for movies or whether it can also handle 1080p for the much more graphic intensive Directx applications. The reason why your Atom netbooks are being killed by a 1080p movies is that it is a software decoder on top of the general purpose CPU and not at Hardware decoder chip made specifically for playing varoius HD def movie format, put that on your board on you have not prob running tons on app on your cpu while having a dedicated hardware chip to run your movies.
@r3loaded:
Last night I was playing 720p mkv on my mini 9 with no stutter.... Although then I opened up facebook and even sd videos came to a cccccrrrrraaaaawwwwwwllllll.
@loopyoyo:
netbooks can't play wow and battlefield because they were not designed to. They are designed for mobility. If you want to play games on the go, I would suggest getting a real laptop, or learn to be entertained by casual gaming like tetris or sudoku.
1080p on netbooks are worthless, the screen is too small/low res. 1080p on nettops is a great idea. Although they should be marketed as a set-top-box that can do computer stuff, and not a computer that can do STB stuff.
@ electrobreed: are those chips available in a $300 system?
As for them not saying it'll run games, if you look back at previous ION articles, there's a presentation video where they show it running L4D. That's not too shabby.
@elBravo: why is 1080p pointless on a netbook? It may not find a use for everyone, but I can think of tons of uses for it, such as high quality presentations in a portable form factor, as well as outputting to a hotel room's HDTV for after work relaxing. Although I'm not on the road every day (more like 3 days a month), both those features would come in handy for me.
ION definitely looks promising, if it's available paired with either Atom or Nano for a reasonable price I'll get one for sure.
Having said that, my current AspireOne has no problem playing 720p mkv or WMV files (throught a projector), in fact it can handle a 720p mkv and a standard definition rmvb at the same time.
I think these machines will be great to try out CUDA based software. It's seems like a miracle to me to have a machine being able to deliver 1080p with no distress, be able to run some decent games, have this handfull of I/O connections and all in a sub-$300 box. I hope nVidia (or any other vendor) sells something that actually look like the machine in the picture. Design is that such a big thing for me, but it's great to see how companies like Acer are planning to deliver such affordable and powerful machines for leisure.
Can't wait for the next Mac Mini. Install Boxee, and it will be my first media center computer.
Rumor has it Zotac will be releasing just that:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/11591/zotac_could_be_building_an_ion_desktop/index.html
OMG that so could replace my mac mini. but i can see it's gonna be difficult plugging in USB devices when the ports are that close and touching each other like that.
@ashan: it's good think the Mini's have a decent graphics card now, but I still think they're quite expensive for what it is, and I could use at least an e-SATA port on my mediacenter, specially being so small. Have looked into an AppleTV? They're quite cheaper and if all you need is to connect it to a decent TV/LCD and whatch, might be enough for you. Also there is a massive "scene" for that device, a good bunch of people are working hard to eliminate software gaps and it's quite easy to install any other OS as well.
Will Apple TV play L4D in 720p? :D
At last a decent solution for under the TV... movies, browsing etc...
Oh yeah, ESATA!
Nice!
Anyone know how much this is supposed to cost? (please mention the currency too)
i don't think the photo is real, just something to resemble the idea. Or just hoax, being april and all...
huh? Of course it's real.
Here, it's on nvidia's site - http://www.nvidia.com/object/sff_ion.html
yeah pico itx form factor, its been around for ages!
Looks like the artigo builder case
"hotting up"...
This will be the third time I will politely request that you spruce up your editing staff... Proofreading is a GOOD thing...
Dunno why everyone is so up in arms about the phrase "hotting up"? The English language is an extremely maleable(sp?) thing - different phrases are being created all the time. That being said, "hotting up" is an acceptable phrase here in the UK.
Support for the product will magically disappear 2 weeks after launch.
the phrase "hotting up" is not exactly new, and not an error, i've heard it thousands of times in the UK
WOOHOO!
But lets hope Intel doesn't sue-ify them before it launches.
1080p video was "invented" to sell us a new generation of televisions (and a new collection of shiny discs). On a netbook you don't need that kind of resolution for video, period.
You're missing the point...that's you hook them up to your home theatre with a video out port.
You'd be surprised how many idiots on here have said they wanted to watch 1080p video on their netbooks.
True, no need for such quality of video on a netbook, but just the fact that is powerful enough to play 1080p implies other good things, like be able to run some decent games while on the road. And now you can say that anybody who wants to play games should buy a machine with 1000 GPU's and a gazillion of RAM. Still, it's good progress to be able to see such power on an affordable, ready for the road machine.
Damn I'm super excited about this, now put these little kids in netbooks and I'll take 4. ;)
So where does the Blu-Ray drive go ? I'm assuming that this will play back 1080p Blu-ray video but will die trying to play .MKV in which case it's not really much use as a media center is it ? especially if it can't manage to run the front end on software like MCE.
Uhm... it plays back 1080p media files no problem. Look at Engadget's ION history to find video demoing it.
NVIDIA CUDA can decode a lot of those MKV files you are talking about. For the most part it will be able to decode any Level 4.1 material @ 1080p with less than 4 reference frames. For 720p mkv files the reference frame max jumps up to 9. In general people try to stick to these standards when releasing Blu Ray x264 encodes (except CG movies where it really benefits from lots of reference frames). Hope that helps.
I think people are missing the point of the small case in these demos. It's not necessarily the production form factor. More of just a "look how small we can get this thing" type of example.
Real world hardware will most likely come in multiple form factors and configuration. I'm sure somebody will slap a bluray drive in one, but that will move it off the $300 price point I suspect.
almost bought an eee netbook, guess i will hold out to see what the nvidia platform can do.
ha - Copyright© 2008 NVIDIA Corporation
My Phenom X4 9950 said copyright 2006 on it so I think they've had stuff like this in the works for a while.
SUPAH EXCITED.
Srsly, just bought a Dell Mini 9 and if these ION platforms pwn those, Idunno what I'mma gonna do. Probably buy a desktop and see what it can do.
The short video is just a bunch of hype of personal opinion. It should be a video showing you the product, what it does, and what it exactly is. Let the people decide what they think of it, don't be filling peoples heads with other peoples opinions, before everyone gets to see the product its self..
Uhm... they did show it off in Feb. Engadget had a link to a tweaktown video of it in action....
Running on Windows 7 they were playing an HD movie while downconverting it in the background. They also showed that it was capable of playing L4D at 720p (I think the guy said at medium settings). That's not to bad for a $300 box.
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/11369/nvidia_demo_windows_7_multi_tasking_on_ion_video/index.html
I am really looking foward to this. I just mainly want it as a HTPC :) I recently got a WDTv and it is pretty awesome but very limited. Ive read about the popcorn hour also, but it is still limited since you cant just do whatever you want. I just want to have a nice htpc that could handle all 1080p content plus be able to support any possible codec and also as a bonus download mame and load it up with arcade games :) and have a gui like a media center with support for a remote and i am set!
It sounds like this low cost platform *might* open doors for HDTV manufactures to offer built-in HTPCs in their high end TVs. It seems to me besides CPU+chipset+memory cost, the other thing they need is low cost storage. If they manage get Microsoft to build Windows media center version that can run out of flash memory and store media content somewhere in the network, they might just get it done. Some (I guess it was HP only?) HDTVs have built-in media center extender, but they require a PC running media center somewhere, which is fine for a few people, but not for majority of consumers.
yea i was wondering why they didn't just bundle theire TV's with a build In HTPC, probably due to the fact that it makes the screen Thicker, and they are always trying to make them thiner... who knows
Thats EXACTLY what i need!!!!! W000t!!! for some reason our school bought a 1080p Projector!!!!! I want a ION netbook with HDMI !!!! (and still.... VGA ) ahh just give me all outputs ever made, and i'll be fine xD
YAY for Nvidia!!!
ah yea, and a Dual core Atom would be sweet!
SUPER excited as well.
The other benefits nobody's seemed to mention here are low power usage, and quiet operation. Perfect for an always-on, low-cost, all-in-one HTPC/home server solution. Putting it into a netbook form factor so that it can be portable is just the icing on the cake!
I really just can't decide when to buy in. Do I just wait for Ion? Do I wait for Ion with a dual core ULV processor? Do I wait for USB 3.0? Do I wait for Apple's version of it? :P
How powerful is the ion platform supposed to be? Output 1080p video only? Output 1080p video to a 2nd monitor while streaming audio to another room, and surfing youtube on the primary monitor? Dual screen Windows 7 MCE? It seems like this platform, with 4gb ram (CHEAP nowadays!) could be pretttty powerful, but just how powerful?
I think its all capped by the CPU peformance... , but surfin youtube and showing HD content should work, since showing 1080p content only takes 20% cpu, you have about 80% left for youtube!! What do you mean by Dual screen Windows7 MCE? if you clone it, of course it will work...
I am personally going to wait for a netbook with following specs:
Nvidia ION
Dual-Core Atom(since i am a multi tasking maniac)
8+Hrs Battery time
10" screen / 720p resolution
Vga Out AND HDMI out (1 for projectors/presentations and the other for my HD projector)(although 1DVI-I port would work as well)
450-500$
So I'll probably have to wait until Windows 7 Launch.. but this is going to be SWEET!
one more thought tho... how much power will this consume running 1080p video??
@Finnschi
Nvidia ION
Dual-Core Atom
8+Hrs Battery time
10" screen / 720p resolution
Vga Out AND HDMI out
$450 - $500
Put me down for one nettop and one netbook with those specks, as well as one matching low-profile dock for my main hoem theater!!
The scene: Walk into the house after a long day of work, snap my trusty netbook into the home theater, sit down, and proceed to watch whatever it is my backend server downloaded for me that day... at 1080p!
Going on the road for a week? Just bring the trusty netbook, 1 HDMI cable, and 1 small external drive...
GOOD SHIT MAN!
I'm waiting for a 12" 330 Dual Atom with this chipset, W7 and an OLED screen, and an SSD.
Think of the battery life...
Maybe by that time there will be more than 2Gb max on Atom boards...
If the price is right, I would take one nettop as my HTPC and one netbook as my travel companion.
Good thing I didn't jump on the current Intel Atom netbook and just sold my N800.
Hell yeah! This is long overdue. I can think of so many places I'd like to be able use these ion platforms. MythTV frontends. Kitchen multimedia box. Lightweight portable gaming machine. Net top I can carry easily between home and work and just plug into my extra monitor cable. And I may actually be convinced to buy a netbook if I can get some decent graphics.
linuxmce?
If your lucky enough to get it to install... :(
ROFL! looking at the picture I assumed it was a 5 1/4 front panel connector.
The VIA Artigo kit which also uses pico-itx boards can be mounted in a 5.25" drive bay, if you compare the case with ION's case they are almost identical, so in theory this could be mounted in a drive bay also.
Do they have an IR port?
yeah, it is next to the hayes 1200 baud modem.
NVIDIA ION can't achieve the smooth 1080p playback directly from Blu-ray disc due to the high bitrate (up to 60 Mbps), check this:
http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=n&u=http://www.frazpc.pl/artykuly/681/NVIDIA/ION/idealne/polaczenie&sl=pl&tl=en
It's possible that Dual-Core Atom 330 could slightly increase the performance in high bitrate sections of video, but don't expect it will play smoothly all the time. I assume that little overclocking (up tp 1,85 - 2 GHz) could help to solve this problem.
I hate color coded audio jets, all jets should be gold plated, not plastic.
Look good, but I would like to have a network port on my computer thanks!
WTF NO INTERNET?
...Its on the back.
Its so small that they have to have I/O on both sides