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Rumor Has It that the Asus Eee PC 1201N Could Pave the Way for Other Netbooks

Ryan Whitwam — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:04:03 -0500

So you want a Netbook, but you’re not crazy about dealing with a slow computer? You’re in luck. The recently leaked specs for the upcoming ASUS Eee PC 1201N should make any geek’s wallet feel a little too heavy. The 1201N is said to be packing a 1.6 GHz Atom N330 Dual Core CPU paired with 3GB of RAM. The standard configuration will have a 320GB hard drive as well.

The thing that really sets it apart is the video. The 1201N will be rocking the Nvidia ION chipset (Geforce 9400M), which will be pumping video to a 12 inch display with a resolution of 1366x768. You can also expect an HDMI out with the ION chipset.

There will also be a less powerful version, the 1201HA, with a standard Atom chipset and Intel graphics in the same 12 inch chassis. No pricing information is available right now. Release date is also a mystery. The fact that they both run Windows 7 indicates they won’t be available until after Windows 7 is released on October 22.

Blu-Ray on TV by Way of Laptop

The Maximum PC Staff — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:45:47 -0500

I have a Gateway P-7811FX gaming laptop. I was looking at getting a 37-inch 1080p LCD TV to hook up through the HDMI port to extend the monitor/play games/watch movies on. I found an external Blu-ray disc drive that hooks up through the USB port on the laptop. Will this setup give me good quality video to watch on the large TV? If not, any other suggestions?

—Peter DiGiorgio

Peter, as long as your laptop and LCD are HDCP-compliant, you should be fine. The P-7811FX comes with an Nvidia GeForce 9800M GTS GPU. Nvidia’s product page for that GPU touts its Blu-ray performance, and it should be able to output 1080p video via your laptop’s HDMI port. You should double-check, of course, but the Doctor doesn’t see anything wrong with it, in theory.

SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION Are flames shooting out of the back of your rig? First, grab a fire extinguisher and douse the flames. Once the pyrotechnic display has fizzled, email the doctor at doctor@maximumpc.com for advice on how to solve your technological woes.

DFI Hybrid Motherboard Runs Two Systems at Once

Ryan Whitwam — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:05:09 -0500

Mainboard maker DFI has a rather interesting product on the way. The upcoming Hybrid P45-ION-T2A2 motherboard is capable of running two computers on a single board. It supports both a high performanceP45/LGA775 based systems, and a low power Atom/Ion based system.

They include a small external button assembly that can be used to switch on the fly between platforms. The two platforms can both be run at the same time, or you can shut down the one you aren’t using. The back panel is a bit confusing. There are some shared ports as well as dedicated ports. It has a block of four shared USB ports that are available to both systems. The audio and DVI ports are also shared. Each system has a dedicated set of USB ports and an Ethernet jack as well. The Ion chipset on the Atom side has its own dedicated HDMI port for some low-wattage HD video action.

Overall, this is a terribly impressive feat of engineering. Watch the video at the link to get the full effect. The possibilities for true multitasking are a bit staggering. Imagine encoding video on the LGA775 platform while outputting HD video with the Ion from the same box. There’s no firm release date or price as of yet. Would you consider getting one?

White Paper: HDMI

Michael Brown — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:00:00 -0500

Dive into the details of this high-definition video interface

HDMI (the acronym stands for High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is one of the consumer electronics industry’s more remarkable innovations. This de facto HDTV interface enables the transmission of high-definition digital video, up to eight channels of digital audio, HDCP encryption, the Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) protocol, and five volts of electrical power over a single cable.

HDMI 1.0, introduced in December 2002, had all of these features. The latest version, HDMI 1.3c, boasts several more, including support for Deep Color, auto lip sync, and the two high-definition multichannel audio formats used in Blu-ray discs. Let’s take a look at how HDMI accomplishes all this while remaining backward-compatible with the earlier DVI standard.

As the Version Turns

As with DVI, HDMI relies on Transition Minimized Differential Signaling (TMDS) to encode and transmit digital video, but HDMI uses TMDS to encode and transmit digital audio as well. TMDS uses a technique called differential signaling to reduce electromagnetic interference, which enables signals to travel faster with less chance of error.

The sending device—a Blu-ray disc player, for instance—encodes the digital signal and transmits it along with an inverse copy using two separate bundles of copper wire (as with Cat-5 Ethernet cables, HDMI uses twisted-pair wiring to reduce noise. Noise induced in one half-twist has a propensity to cancel noise induced in a neighboring half-twist). The receiving device—an HDTV, for example—decodes the signal, measures the difference between it and the inverse copy, and uses this information to compensate for any in-transit signal loss.

Each new version of the HDMI standard has used the same basic type of cable and the same 19-pin connector, but each iteration has increased the standard’s bandwidth capabilities and introduced new features (some of which are optional). HDMI 1.0, for instance, supported a maximum pixel clock rate of 165MHz (4.95Gb/s of bandwidth), which was sufficient for delivering HDTV at 1080p at a 60Hz refresh rate and WUXGA resolution (1920x1200), also at a 60Hz refresh rate.

HDMI 1.1 added support for DVD Audio and HDMI 1.2 added support for Super Audio CD. HDMI 1.3 more than doubled the pixel clock rate to 340MHz (bandwidth of 10.2Gb/s), which enabled even higher-resolution displays, such as WQXGA (2560x1600), using a single digital link. Type A HDMI connectors (the most common) and Type C connectors (designed for digital camcorders) use single links; a Type B HDMI connector uses a dual link, but since the single-link connectors are capable of such high bandwidth, Type B connectors are not currently in production.

HDMI 1.3 also added support for Deep Color and the xvYCC color space. Deep Color describes a method of using an extremely high number of shades, hues, and luminosity to increase the number of colors that can be displayed from millions to billions. Deep Color utilizes 30-, 36-, or 48-bit depths, compared to the 24-bit color on tap in HDMI 1.0. The xvYCC color space, also known as x.v.Color, represents color using the full range of values (0 to 256) in an 8-bit space. RGB colors are represented by a subset of the values (16 to 235) in an 8-bit space in order to compensate for the limitations of analog displays.

Audio Enhancements

HDMI 1.0 supports eight channels of LPCM (linear pulse code modulation) encoded at sampling rates up to 192kHz and with 24-bit resolution. HDMI 1.3 added support for eight-channel surround-sound streams encoded using the lossless compression algorithms Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. All HDMI versions carry the older Dolby Digital and DTS lossily compressed bit streams, too.

Complex video processing can sometimes cause latency, resulting in the audio signal arriving at its destination before the video signal does. When this occurs, the actors in the movie will look as though they’re speaking a different language and the soundtrack was poorly dubbed. HDMI 1.3 added a feature called auto lip sync that can automatically prevent this from happening.

All HDMI versions support a set of control functions known as CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) commands, although the specifications for the commands themselves weren’t completely spelled out until HDMI 1.2a was finalized. CEC commands utilize HDMI’s capacity for bidirectional communication to permit a single remote control to operate multiple devices connected with an HDMI cable. One-touch play, for instance, will
automatically trigger the necessary commands for the entire home-theater system to power up and begin playing when the Blu-ray disc player’s Play button is pushed. The addition of a few CEC commands and a few arcane details are all that distinguish HDMI 1.3 from HDMI 1.3a, 1.3b, and 1.3c.

Know Your Options

When shopping for HDMI equipment, be aware that some features—including support for Deep Color, the xvYCC color space, and even Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio—are optional. Although the HDMI spec does not spell out a maximum cable length, there are two types of HDMI 1.3 cable: Standard, or Category 1, cable has been tested to perform at speeds of 75MHz, which is the equivalent of a 1080i signal. Such cables typically max out at about five meters (16 feet) and are manufactured using 28 AWG copper wire, although neither of these factors are part of the official HDMI 1.3 spec.

A cable certified as High Speed or Category 2 has been tested to perform at speeds of 340MHz and can handle 1080p signals and increased color depths. High Speed HDMI cables can also accommodate higher-resolution displays (e.g., 2560x1600). These cables are manufactured using heavier gauge wire—26- or even 24 AWG—and are capable of running longer distances.

Longer cable runs can be achieved by using repeaters, which use electrical power to boost the HDMI signal; “active” cables, which operate in a similar fashion; and extenders, which use fiber-optic or Cat-5 cable.

(click to enlarge)

Here Today, Gone to Maui? Hands-On with AMD's HTPC Platform

Michael Brown — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:30:00 -0500

Sorry, we couldn’t resist the headline. For the record: We’re not predicting the early demise of AMD’s new Live Home Cinema reference platform (which is code-named Maui). AMD sent us a sample build several months ago, but we wanted to live with it for a while before publishing our thoughts on the design.

We’re big fans of home-theater PCs, especially the build-it-yourself variety (be sure and check out the May issue of Maximum PC for Will Smith’s terrific how-to guide to building one of your own). If AMD can resolve one major issue, we think Maui will be the best home-theater PC platform on the market.

With a home-theater PC, you can stream all manner of Hollywood content for free (from websites such as Hulu) or for a small fee (from online stores such as iTunes, Netflix, and Amazon’s Unbox). While you can accomplish the same thing with a media center extender and any PC equipped with a version of Windows that includes Windows Media Center, a dedicated HTPC leaves that other machine available for other tasks. A home-theater PC with a Blu-ray drive can play HD movies, too, but comparing home-theater PCs to Blu-ray disc players—which are becoming increasingly PC-like—is more problematic. We’ll get to that soon enough; for now, let’s take a detailed look at AMD’s Live Home Cinema platform.

The hardware to build this particular AMD reference design would cost around $900 at retail. It’s based on an AMD Phenom X4 9350e quad-core processor plugged into an MSI MS-7411 micro-ATX motherboard (which MSI markets as the Media Live Diva). The MS-7411 uses AMD’s RS780M/SB700 chipset with an ATI Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics core (the RS780M is a mobile, low-power version of AMD’s RS780G chipset, with added support for component video output). AMD stripped all legacy components (except VGA) from the motherboard’s design; you won’t find serial or parallel ports, PS/2 mouse or keyboard ports, or even a PCI bus.

Cool Running

The CPU is cooled by a closed-loop cooling system, the Noise Limit SilentFlux Media heatsink and fan. The SilentFlux boasts a very low profile that’s optimized for horizontal installations, such as a home-theater PC: Its radiator rises just 2.36 inches above the CPU. It’s also extremely quiet, with a stated noise level of just 21dB. We didn’t encounter any problems running the PC in our enclosed entertainment center, even those times when we forgot to turn on the ceiling-mounted cooling fan inside there.

AMD shipped this evaluation system with 2GB of Aneon DDR2-667 memory, a Pioneer BD202MR Blu-ray, and a 500GB Seagate Pipeline HD hard drive.

Awesome Audio

The Maui design’s biggest claim to fame is the presence of a D2Audio DAE-3 digital audio engine, which can output 2.1-channel analog audio from the motherboard. Alternatively, you can pair it with either a five-channel amplifier card or a seven-channel pre-amp card. D2Audio designed both these components, and AMD sent both for evaluation. If you buy MSI’s Media Live Diva 5.1, you’ll get the amplifier card; purchase the Media Live Diva 7.1 and you’ll get the pre-amp card.

The amplifier delivers up to 100 watts per channel to passive speakers (you connect your eight-ohm speakers directly to the card, there’s no need for an A/V receiver or even powered speakers—other than a powered subwoofer, of course). The amp delivers an impressive signal-to-noise ratio of 105dB and total harmonic distortion (THD) of less than 0.5 percent. It will drive four-ohm speakers, too, in which case it will deliver 200 watts per channel. You’d have to spend a great deal of cash to find a stand-alone amp with comparable specs.

The pre-amp card boasts an even higher signal-to-noise ratio of 110dB (with 0.5 percent THD) while adding support for a pair of rear surround channels. You connect this card to your A/V receiver (or powered speakers) using conventional RCA cables—there’s no need for funky adapters or anything else in the signal path. Alternatively, AMD’s RS780M chipset can deliver compressed 5.1-channel digital audio over HDMI. The reference design also includes a Realtek ALC888 audio chip on the motherboard that delivers digital audio over a coaxial S/PDIF connection (optical S/PDIF is not supported).

Can’t Get There From Here

Most people considering a home-theater PC will be looking to play Blu-ray movies, and this is where AMD’s solution (indeed, all PC solutions) falls short. There’s no problem getting high-definition video to your display: You can use either HDMI (integrated into the motherboard, so here again, you don’t need an adapter) or component video cables (although you might have a problem transporting DRM-protected video over component cables). The problem lies in the audio realm, an area in which this solution is otherwise absolutely marvelous. It has nothing to do with technological limitations and everything to do with the D-word (DRM, or digital rights management).

The AACS (Advanced Access Content System) copy-protection system used to encrypt Blu-ray discs dictates that Blu-ray player software (e.g., Cyberlink’s Power DVD Ultra) must use a so-called “protected path” to send high-definition audio (e.g., losslessly compressed Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio) across a user-accessible bus such as PCI or PCI Express. The objective is to prevent anyone from intercepting the unencrypted audio and making a bit-perfect copy. The Blu-ray video bit stream is subject to the same restriction, but the Windows ecosystem is capable of handling this.

The D2Audio chip on the Maui platform uses a closed, proprietary bus, so it does seem to be in compliance with AACS. Unfortunately, AMD has so far been unable to convince any of the companies developing software Blu-ray players to send unencrypted HD audio over that bus.

The work-around is for the Blu-ray software player to decode the losslessly compressed audio, down-sample the bit stream from its 96kHz sampling rate with 24-bit resolution to a 48kHz sampling rate with 16-bit resolution, and then pass the uncompressed eight-channel LPCM (linear pulse code modulation) bit stream to the D2Audio chip. The D2Audio chip converts the bit stream to analog and sends it to the pre-amp card, the motherboard’s line-level outputs, or the amplifier card. The D2Audio chip does not pass digital audio of any form over HDMI.

Needless to say, down-sampling is less than an ideal compromise. Then again, the mere availability of a movie on Blu-ray disc doesn’t automatically mean that it has a Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack or that it’s encoded using the highest possible specs. You’ll encounter many films with audio encoded at a 48kHz sampling rate with 24-bit resolution, for instance, and many more that are encoded at a 48kHz sampling rate with 16-bit resolution, at which point down-sampling isn’t even necessary. The website CinemaSquid maintains a comprehensive searchable database of Blu-ray releases that includes such information.

Many people will contend that the average consumer can’t tell the difference between HD and lesser audio—but who’d be willing to spend $900 or more for a PC that can’t offer one of the features that a $300 Blu-ray player can. In our book, audio quality is the second biggest reason to buy any hardware that’s capable of playing a Blu-ray disc and Maui represents a compromise on that score—whether we can hear it or not is moot.

Amped Up

We played with the amplifier card for a bit, and while it does deliver excellent audio quality, we’re not ready to take our A/V receiver out of our entertainment center. For starters, the amp doesn’t accommodate rear surround speakers (it’s limited to left and right surrounds). And as terrific as it sounds, even a home-theater PC isn’t set up to handle all our audio sources (although the motherboard does have a pair of RCA jacks for analog line-level input. Plug in a stereo source—such as a VCR—and you can route the audio to the amplifier.)

But we also use a satellite receiver/DVR to watch and record television, and there’s no way to pipe surround sound from the satellite tuner to the PC. And while we could use the HTPC to stream music from our Windows Home Server machine, we still prefer the Sonos Multi-room Audio System for music listening. Besides, the pre-amp delivers a higher signal-to-noise ratio, and it sounds fabulous.

The reference design supports AMD’s OCUR TV tuner for use with the digital cable set-top boxes, but you can still only buy such a card as part of an OEM system build. Our reference design came with AMD’s ATI Theater Pro tuner card, but the value of over-the-air tuners such as this is severely by the fact that they can’t access premium cable and satellite channels (HBO, Showtime, et al).

On the Case

AMD chose nMedia’s HTPC 1000B enclosure for its reference platform, the look of which fit right in with the other components in our entertainment system. The aluminum case has a single 5.25-inch drive bay for an optical drive and four internal 3.5-inch drive bays. The front panel has a cut-out for an LCD (the reference design had one, but the display is not included in the price of the case), and there’s a flip-down panel that hides one eSATA, one FireWire, and three USB ports; a media card reader; and 1/8-inch jacks for a mic and headphones.

We added Microsoft’s Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000, but we swapped out the useless (in a living-room environment, at least) mouse for a Gyration Air Music Remote (which you can now find for a pretty reasonable street price of $85). We connected the PC to both an Epson Cinema 500 video projector and a ViewSonic N4285P 42-inch LCD television.

Trouble in Paradise?

Everything went smoothly until we connected the Maui system to a Sherwood RD-7503 A/V receiver: The computer would not send the receiver a video signal over HDMI with resolution any higher than 640x480 (480p). Curious to see whether the problem was with the computer or the receiver, we then connected the HDMI from HP’s Pavilion HDX 9000 notebook PC, which is equipped with AMD’s Radeon HD 2600 XT videocard: We ran into the very same problem.

We then tried a second desktop PC, which was outfitted with an Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT (with a DVI-to-HDMI adapter). This time, the Sherwood receiver performed as expected. We also didn’t encounter any problems with the HDMI outputs from an upscaling DVD player and a Samsung Blu-ray disc player.

The last we’d heard from AMD, they thought the problem to be related to the computer not reading the receiver’s EDID profile correctly, although they told us they’d never encountered a problem with other A/V receivers they’ve tested.. Sherwood told us they’d seen a similar problem with a Motorola DCH3200 digital cable set-top box, but that they weren’t familiar with AMD’s Maui platform and had no further comment on the matter.

Final Thoughts

AMD’s engineers deserve a big round of applause for giving so much thought and consideration to audio while designing the AMD Live Home Cinema reference platform; sound is all too often overlooked in PC designs, and Maui’s D2Audio components are divine.

We know AMD is working hard to convince Hollywood and software developers that it provides the protected audio path that software Blu-ray players need to avoid down-sampling Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks. Should they succeed, however, stand-alone Blu-ray players will still have one advantage over the PC: They can send both HD video and HD audio to an A/V receiver using a single HDMI cable: Maui will always need at least an HDMI cable for video and as many as eight RCA cables for audio.

Aside from those limitations, Maui is a splendid destination.

Renesas Now Shipping Tiny, 1080p-Capable Cell Phone Processor

Andy Salisbury — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:23:03 -0500

Just this week Renesas Technology Corp. announced their SH7370, a SH-Mobile HD1 application processor for mobile phones. The tiny processor is the first to support full 1080p (1920 x 1080) video playback and recording potential, and can support H.264/MPEG-4 video compression at 30 frames per second.

This processor also has two 24-bit dedicated audio digital signal processors that help lower the CPU’s load, while lowering power consumption. This allows for audio to stream at up to 5.1-channel Dolby Digital quality.

The whole thing is currently shipping with 512Mbits of synchronous DRAM, integrated onto a single package. Said package measures in at a compact, 10nm x 11mm.

Image Credit: TechOn!

Western Digital Introduces Sneakernet Home-Media Device

Nathan Edwards — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:00:00 -0600

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes speeding down the highway." - Andrew Tanenbaum

Western Digital's bringing back the sneakernet with a media player that displays video, audio, and photos from your USB devices on your TV - no networking required.

In fact, the WD TV HD Media Player doesn't have any networking capabilities at all. Instead, this little device plays files from your WD Passport (or other USB devices, although WD would love it if you used their portable hard drives) on your TV screen, in glorious 1080p resolution.

The WD TV includes an intuitive on-screen menu, not unlike a less-cluttered version of the PS3's home screen, wherein users can sort by filename, date, and other tag info. It also has a thumbnail and list view.

We had a chance to check out the WD TV last week at the W Hotel in San Francisco, and, although we were skeptical at first, the idea makes sense. After all, many people have huge amounts of music, video, and photos on their computer but lack either the time, the equipment, or the patience to set up media streaming in their home. Being able to drag your files to a USB drive and take them with you to the living room is a good move.

After all, non-techies understand taking media on a physical object into the living room and playing it. It worked for VHS tapes, CDs, DVDs, even laser discs. It's intuitive. Home networking, well, not so much.

The WD TV's outputs include RCA video/audio jacks, optical out, and HDMI.

It helps that the device will play a metric buttload of video formats, from .avi to .mov to XviD, DivX, H.264, even .isos and .vob rips. And that it supports HDMI.

The WD TV is on sale at shopwd.com starting today for $130. It's an interesting idea, but is it worth it? We're on the case. Look for a full review here within the next few weeks.

Wireless HDMI Streamer Coming from Sony

Paul Lilly — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:44:41 -0500

Coming this fall, Sony will unveil its first WHDI device, the DMX-WL1T. If you haven't been following, WHDI is a new technology co-developed by Amimon, Hitachi, Motorola, Samsung, Sharp, and Sony that provides a high-quality, uncompressed wireless link for transmitting video data rates of up to 3Gbps between an HD source and an HDTV.

Giving the device widespread flexibility, Sony's DMX-WL1T will come equipped with four HDMI inputs, one component input, one digital audio input, and a stereo analog input. The two-piece system will transmit uncompressed 1080i video and audio, but according to Sony Insider, HD content will likely only stream to a Sony DMex compatible Bravia HDTV.

Concrete details have yet to emerge, but it looks as though the WHDI device will offer a range of up to 100 feet and possibly more. Three IR Blaster ports also suggest that users will be able to control other third-party devices. Sony is expected to officially announce the DMX-WL1T later this month at the IFA conference in Berlin. Until then, it's all speculation, including pricing and availability.

Image Credti: Sony Insider