Video: VIA EPIA-P720 Pico-ITX motherboard plays 1080p, doesn't sweat much
By Darren Murph 
posted September 19th 2009 12:06PM
posted September 19th 2009 12:06PM
posted September 19th 2009 12:06PM
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Price?
And is it coming to netbooks. (And keeping the netbook cost in the netbook price range)
What's the point of wanting 1080p playback on a sub 13 inch screen?
I however see this being used in a nettop where a monitor could actually be big enough to support true 1080p res.
I don't understand either. I have a 50' Samsung Plasma 720P and it looks amazing. It probably does not have the micron technology in this board.
At .45 Micron or less it has no fan on graphics and chip.
Netbooks 10' screen; why? The only reasoning I could understand is external hookup to a HDTV, but most netbooks don't have an IR receiver or MS Media Center.
@ 7egend, higher pixel density screens are coming. 1920x1080 is possible in a netbook size display.
Using the calculator here: http://tvcalculator.com/ you can plug in the values for a 10 inch 16:9 widescreen and see that it would come out to 48527 pixels / sq. in or about 220 pixels per inch. There are already displays being made at an amazing 546 pixels per inch:
http://www.slashgear.com/casios-quarter-high-definition-2-inch-lcd-has-highest-pixel-density-2517310/
slap that next to a core i7 on an asus mobo and call it hybrid. am sold!
A lot of people like the idea of having a small computer they can use to both stream HD content plus play there own, ie, ripped, downloaded, blu-ray. Especially if they can take it with them and use instead of having a dedicated desktop used to stream to an HDTV.
Can it run windows though?
Yes. VIA's C7-m processor (which I assume is what this board runs as all their current boards do) is fully x86 compatible so will handle windows just fine
When you say it can play 1080p are you referring to decoding Blu-ray VC-1 content and playing it back or can it do those online movie trailers as well (the quicktime ones, not flash based) and other video files as well?
Quicktime uses H.264 which is the same as Bluray, but I don't believe the software on Windows is hardware accelerated.
The Windows Silverlight Player uses hardware acceleration. I found this out when my Netflix streaming went all wonky a few weeks ago. I called CS, and a tech reset my feed so that I'd get an older version streamed (since my ancient computer doesn't support hardware acc.), and everything has worked fine since. He told me to call back whenever I upgrade my graphics and they could restore the stream to the latest iteration.
http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/alex_golesh/archive/2009/03/29/silverlight-3-quick-tip-hardware-acceleration.aspx
price please ?
It becomes more annoying to read these articles where things are said to be able to play 1080p !
Which kind of 1080p does it play ? More compressed HD video like MKV or Xvid use alot more porocessing power to decode over MPEG or others.
And exactly what kind of Media Center software can this setup run without making me want to pull my hair out ?
I've found a cheap dual core Celeron/Pentium/Athlon to be the bare minimum for Win7 MCE and 720p MKVs so how would this setup run ? It shouldn't be hard to post slightly more indepth articles you do have Engadget HD which is supposed to specialise in such things !
MKV is not a video codec, just a container format. I'm assuming you mean h264 in an MKV container though, as that is what seems to be most common.
As long as the file is encoded at Level 4.1 or below, (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC ) this should play it back fine. 4.1 is the standard Blu-ray level. People occasionally encode > 4.1, but rarely.
http://www.coreavc.com/ for a very fast h.264/AVC decoder, comes with the (free) haali mediasplitter for mkv's, although you might already have that.
Sorry to sound like an ad again but that is a damn good effort that plays HD on older systems, and it even uses CUDA now, if available.
I agree. It would be nice to get some specifics on what decoder is being used. The clip quotes hardware support for H.264, VC1, WMV, MPEG2, MPEG4, however, this doesn't come for free and requires decoders to take advantage of this.
VIA chips are x86 so I don't see why not. My inner geek has always been stroked pretty easily by the form factors VIA produces, the CPUs just seem underpowered for my needs. Then again, they specialize in embedded SFF systems for machines moreso then consumer desktops. Still, interesting to see.
I've been of the same opinion, especially when you look at their pricing points vs a 'full sized' box.
However, if you could get hold of a decent ?VESA Compatible? case, I could see this being a good option as an XBMC 'front end'.
What is the price on this thing?
Sure would make a hell of a HTPC
I see one SATA port, and no NIC - not looking all that promising.
ok, and you don't see any other IO... gee I wonder what those shiny copper pins laid out around the perimeter of the board could be used for...
The VIA EPIA-P720 uses a specially designed I/O add-on-board, the VIA P720-A, it adds , (among other things) a Gigabit LAN NIC. :)
...which is all clearly shown in the video.
I know what an HTPC is... but wtf is an SFF HTPC?
A small factor HTPC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_form_factor
Please do not confuse with an SS BBW. trust me
The VIA EPIA-P720 Pico-ITX mainboard is highly compatible with many Linux distributions.
The VIA VX855 unified digital media IGP chipset provides hardware acceleration for H.264, VC1, WMV and MPEG 2/4 codecs. And gigabit NIC. More details on http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/embedded/ProductDetail.jsp?productLine=1&id=950&tabs=1
Good luck trying 1080p playback on Linux.
It works wonders with nivida-cards on VDPAU applications. This technology is making its way into the opensource intel drivers now.
How the heck does VDPAU benefit a Via chipset, and their backwards, half-arsed approach to Linux support? Granted they /could/ make use of it, but so far they've shown little interest in supporting Linux properly.
Nvidia has released the API for it, and it is making its way into the intel drivers i think. My comment was geared towards video on linux in general, as was the dummy comment. VIA has lately join the Linux Foundation. They better support it wholeheartedly because without it they dont have a leg to stand on. http://www.openchrome.org/
Want. It. Now.
hay-ch
i think you need to stfu with your spam
Looks Like a XBMC skin that It's running thats all I'd use it for anyways.
for some reason gizmodo reports that engadet says it's Intel's Ion and they can't seem to quote correctly
http://gizmodo.com/5363223/via-pico+itx-motherboard-runs-1080p-video-like-a-champ
I dont' remember Intel ever having an ion chipset unless they bought out Nvidia.
since most of the video on the internet is still flash based , if this thing can't scale a hulu or youtube video to 1080 , then it won't make a dent in any market
None of these solutions will help until Adobe updates flash with hardware acceleration for video. Something expected within "the first half of 2010".
You do realise flash video just has the same damn data/codec but just wrapped in a flash container? So it's up to adobe if they use available hardware for decoding acceleration I guess, unless you use a third party flash video player that just unpacks it from the container and then uses standard acceleration techniques, but then you might to first need to download it.
This is going in my car.
First thing I thought as well. If you had a double-din player I think you could cram this + HDD behind a screen in the dash. move the psu wherever you want and you'd be set. It sounds like this will run x86 stuff so everything already out should work awesomely.
what's the story with ram on this thing? is it all onboard or what? didn't catch it in the video.
@Jeff L
I had the same question. I found this in the user manual:
"One DDR2 800/677 SODIMM slot (up to 2 GB)"
did anybody else notice the juttery- playback aside from me?
If you mean of the video in the background of the guy, no, it seems to play smoothly, but perhaps your youtube connection is sub-par? Or your flash is having issues?
And since he shows it's only using 41% CPU it would be strange if it was jittery, unless the videobuffer was too small I guess, anyway doesn't matter since it isn't jittery.
If it doesn't sweat wouldn't it overheat? :P
In case you missed it: 1080p is the "multimedia" of our age.
Will it get slapped all over like an "HD" ready sticker? -yes.
Will it always be what you thought? -Tune in true believers!
The point here is to show that it's capable of 1080p video. I'm sure you can hook it up to a bigger screen via the hdmi connection included. I've always wanted to build me one of these tiny pc...I just might do that.
Some info for ya all
MSRP: $369.95
http://www.via-itx.com/epia-p720-10e.html
http://resources.via-itx.com/EPIA-P720/P720-DS.pdf
The next step: eyeglasses with 1080p output.