Acer Aspire One 571 now comes with HD video decoding

Darius Chang | May 18, 2009

(Image credit: macles*)

One weakness of the current crop of Atom-based Netbooks is their inability to render high-defintion video, a capability which the AMD Neo-based HP Pavilion dv2 proudly trumpets. While the upcoming Intel GN45 chipset is suppose to give minilaptops a proper video-decoding hardware, Acer is not waiting. The Acer Aspire One 571 has a dedicated video-decoding chip in the form of a Quartics Q1721 multimedia coprocessor and is able to playback HD movies with ease.

Granted the rest of the specs are run-of-the-mill, with a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 processor, 1GB RAM and magnetic harddisk occupying the innards. What sets this machine apart is the high-resolution 10.1-inch display which has been bumped up to 1,280 x 720 pixels (most Netbooks have 1,024 x 600-pixel resolution), good enough for 720p videos. Instead of a full-size integrated optical writer, the Aspire 571 comes with a VMedia drive (located on the left of the trackpad) that reads the small 32mm Blu-ray format. Resembling a smaller version of the Sony MiniDisc media, the VMedia Blu-ray disc is encased in a plastic shell and holds up to 1GB of data.

Pricing and availability of the Aspire 571 are unavailable at this time. In any case, we are expecting this Netbook to make its debut when VMedia discs start popping up in the market.

Via macles*

Filed under: Notebooks
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