Saturday, August 1, 2009

Acer Aspire One gets Broadcom injection, morphs into netbook HD powerhouse

Acer Aspire One gets Broadcom injection, morphs into netbook HD powerhouse
Playing video on most netbooks is risky business; any file with a moderately high resolution and/or bitrate quickly devolves into a 1fps headache. The solution, as HP has already figured out, is a mini PCI-e Broadcom HD video accelerator, exactly what the folks at Terracode managed to wedge into an Acer Aspire One. That enabled the system to handle 1080p content without a hitch -- through an external monitor, of course, since watching 1920 x 1080 content on a 1024 x 600 screen is like making a VHS copy of the Watchmen Directors Cut Blu-ray. And, since the tiny portable didnt have enough storage for more than a few minutes worth of content at such a mighty resolution, a 64GB Kingston ssdNow V was added too. The result? See for yourself in the before and after videos that are just a short click away. Spoiler alert: no more slideshow puppy dogs.