New Nano-ITX Boards Shown At Cebit 228
Subartik writes "The new nano-itx boards from Via have been shown at the CeBit show in Germany. It looks like it will be a suitable platform for all kinds of small form factor devices. See
VIA embedded and
Linux Devices for the specs and pictures"
An anonymous reader points to PC World articles about the Nano-ITX board itself as well as the first system which will include it.
Pictures (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Perfect size for a media center? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:useless to me (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pictures (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Heat? (Score:4, Informative)
"None of these processors require a cooling fan, which means that the PC can be substantially quieter than other computers based on processors requiring cooling fans."
Bah.
Re:Heat? (Score:2, Informative)
Pictures (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Heat? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:notice the AES hardware encryption... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Heat? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My head hurts, again. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No DVI :( (Score:3, Informative)
Do you really need Linux? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Still Mini-ITX form factor (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Price for MythTV compatabile/fast enough system (Score:2, Informative)
It's got an MPEG2/MPEG4 chip, okay ?!
Q1: Yes
All C3 "Nehemiah" CPUs starting at 1GHz can do this. I assume, since I do not use MythTV. I use the C3 on a full-fledged server and used it for KDE/Desktop work for months. I had no problems replaying standard MPEG2/MPEG4. The EPIA boards have an MPEG2 decoder, the new ones will have MPEG4 in addition. The new CPU will be faster then the one I use.
Q2: Yes. Many people use a TV card with MPEG2 encoder on their EPIA systems
Q3: Noiseless if you cool it passive
Q4: No, people have done it with the even larger EPIAs
Q5: That depends on your skills and desired features. The Nano-ITX board *might* cost around USD200-250 at introduction. Got this from a sales-guy at a Mini-ITX shop I know.
Re:Price for MythTV compatabile/fast enough system (Score:1, Informative)
You mention that "The EPIA boards have an MPEG2 decoder, the new ones will have MPEG4 in addition."
The EPIA boards (and quite a few other gfx chipsets: ati, nvidia etc
What they have is "integrated hardware based MPEG-4/2 acceleration" -- taken from http://mini-itx.com/news/nanode/
Which, simple means that the card has 2 features a viable:
some sort of fast copy acceration (aka fast bitblt)
some sort of hardware scaling (like the Xv extension for X)
I haven't looked into whats diffrent with there new boards that adds MPEG4 acceration. New hardware features ? or just some MPEG4 codecs that use the acceration features ?
VIA support Open Source weakly (Score:3, Informative)
On hunting around, I found the EPIA Linux Howto [viaarena.com], which is a January 2004 publication (apparently), and fairly nifty. In the chapter on video support [viaarena.com], the editor interjects with a clarifying comment about hardware MPEG support, stating, "The source code is available to large OEM customers under NDA/licensing agreements. It is not available to end-users." Strike one for open source.
The video drivers for EPIA-M boards can be downloaded from their CLE266 Linux [viaarena.com]page. There is a note about source code at the bottom of this page. They say the following about full source code access: "Users need to sign Binary License Agreement (BLA) and Source Code Addendum (SCABLA) to obtain the source. Typically, only requests from companies developing product for sale will be approved." Strike two for open source.
But there's a more limited source release available, apparently, and for that you need to go to the VIA Open Source Developer's Data Request Form [viaarena.com]. Here you will be warmly greeted with the following notice, accompanied by a honking great form full of mandatory personal information fields.
VIA's open source support is weak at best. Maybe there are good reasons why they are obliged to put obstacles in the way of everything, rather than just providing the damn code, but their pitch as given leaves me pretty cold. I like their stuff, but I'm sick of half-baked software support.