Acer Prepares HD-Friendly Aspire One 571

Saturday, May 16th 2009

Acer's Aspire One is the world's leading brand of netbooks, and the company is building on the lineup with more, premium variants. The chassis of the Aspire One 571 resembles that of the D150 series. Under the hood are some interesting components: Intel Atom N280 clocked at 1.66 GHz, aided by Intel's homegrown chipset. The 10.5-inch screen provides a resolution of 1280x720 pixels (HD 720p), and the netbook boasts of HD video hardware acceleration thanks to the Quartics QV1721 multimedia coprocessor, that accelerates full-HD (1080p) video encoding/decoding. Removable storage is care of a V-Media disc-drive left of the touchpad. A V-Media disk is a Blu-Ray disc with a diameter of 32 mm enclosed in a plastic sheath (floppy-style). It provides 1 GB of storage, with a 2 GB version in the works. Its launch-date isn't known although with Computex around the corner, this netbook may have found its launch-vehicle.

Source: macles*

posted by btarunr - 7:59 AM | Related News |

User comments

by Wile E (8:02 AM) - Reply

FINALLY!!!! It's about time we got 720p in a netbook. Now, just give it to me with ION, an Atom 330, and I'm set. I would say I'm interested in this one, but I don't want to pay for the V-Media drive. Just not interested. I'd rather just use a usb stick. Although, if they made a version without the V-media drive, I might still be interested in this, if the co-processors works well.

by PlanetCyborg (8:30 AM) - Reply

im pretty sure that atom cant play smooth hd video!(at least the singel core version)

by Wile E (8:31 AM) - Reply

by: PlanetCyborg
im pretty sure that atom cant play smooth hd video!(at least the singel core version)

It doesn't have to. Read the first post.

by Error 404 (8:33 AM) - Reply

by: btarunr
Removable storage is care of a V-Media disc-drive left of the touchpad. A V-Media disk is a Blu-Ray disc with a diameter of 32 mm enclosed in a plastic sheath (floppy-style). It provides 1 GB of storage, with a 2 GB version in the works.

RETURN OF THE FLOPPY DRIVE!! :eek: I'd be interested in this, but only if someone manages to get Team Fortress 2 working on that multimedia accelerator. :D

by lemonadesoda (8:47 AM) - Reply

With the "upgrade" they should have also increased the size of the trackpad. Shame. Why a 4:3 trackpad and a 16:9 screen? Anything to improve those tiny trackpads would be an improvement.

by Weer (11:04 AM) - Reply

A 10.5" 1280x720 netbook that can play 1080p? If it's got HDMI, or at least DVI it will sell like hot cakes.

by wazzledoozle (10:23 PM) - Reply

1gb micro bdroms? What a waste. You can get a 4gb microsd card for $10.

by Weer (7:39 AM) - Reply

by: wazzledoozle
1gb micro bdroms? What a waste. You can get a 4gb microsd card for $10.

Wow, I didn't even see that. That is.. beyond stupid.

by Mussels (12:30 PM) - Reply

by: Wile E
It doesn't have to. Read the first post.

remember that video card based acceleration only truly works when playing disks. This will work on the micro BDroms they speak of, but the video acceleration wont work on files. You'll never see a 1080P capable netbook, without a more powerful CPU - a 939 3800x2 dual core can handle it fine with room to spare, so the netbooks wont take too many more generations to get there.

by lemonadesoda (1:13 PM) - Reply

by: wazzledoozle
1gb micro bdroms? What a waste. You can get a 4gb microsd card for $10.

Agree. We dont need yet another proprietary format riddled with DRM. People are NOT going to buy moives all over again on micro-bd, and people are NOT going to use this for a data backup media when there are much quicker and cheaper alternatives.

by iStink (10:01 PM) - Reply

This is just another reason why I don't want to rush into a netbook. I just know as soon as I buy one, another one that does everything I absolutely want will come out for just a few dollars more lol. Guess i'll wait for windows 7 before buying a netbook

by Wile E (7:21 PM) - Reply

by: Mussels
remember that video card based acceleration only truly works when playing disks. This will work on the micro BDroms they speak of, but the video acceleration wont work on files. You'll never see a 1080P capable netbook, without a more powerful CPU - a 939 3800x2 dual core can handle it fine with room to spare, so the netbooks wont take too many more generations to get there.

It's not video card acceleration. It's a coprocessor. The drivers behave differently. How that effects video playback, I'm not sure. And video acceleration works fine on files if you use the right player. Both MPC Home Theater and VLC accelerate on the video card.

by Mussels (2:16 AM) - Reply

by: Wile E
It's not video card acceleration. It's a coprocessor. The drivers behave differently. How that effects video playback, I'm not sure. And video acceleration works fine on files if you use the right player. Both MPC Home Theater and VLC accelerate on the video card.

no, they dont. Everyone who says it does, upon testing finds out it doesnt. DXVA acceleration can work with SOME file types (the files have to be encoded in a specific way), but getting Nvidia or ATI's direct hardware decoding to work is impossible - there are no players out there that can do it. Cyberlink powerDVD is the closest, but it doesnt work on MKV files.

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