Windows 7 Video playback of and Review
Conclusion of ASRock ION 330
Bluetooth 16 Sept 2009
H.264 playback
One of the reasons why we paired up the system with
Windows 7 32 bits Release candidate is because this upcoming OS is slightly
different from past editions of Windows. With the media player within Windows 7,
you can now playback H.264 clips with ease. The same clip if played on a
conventional atom system with the 945GC chipset would utilize almost 50%-100% of
the processing power. The video won't be smooth too with PowerDVD.
Using the Windows media player in Windows 7
Ultimate RC. We threw the demo clip of Bourne Identity that was encoded in
H.264. The video play smoothly and is able to take up very little resources as
compared to non ION based systems. Here is a video clip to demonstrate the CPU
utilisation in real time. It averages to around 10%.
Conclusion
The
ASRock ION 330 system is something that I have been waiting for. I love
the small footprint of the unit and low fan noise. In fact, one of the most
important feature is the Good Night LED. No more annoying LED lights while
watching a movie.
Although the ASRock ION 330 Nettop has some nice features we mentioned earlier.
It seems to have left out something important. Apparently I did not see a reset
or button on the unit. A WiFi-N enabled Net top would definitely be added on.
The unit also doesn't seem to support a remote control so far. It would
also be nice to have a 2 USB ports on the front panel. eSATA ports would also be
great if added onto future versions of the Net Top. How about having small
speakers embedded within the box.
Overall, the ASRock NetTop ION 330 is quite an amazing box I would say. It would
be nice to bundle in PowerDVD or WinDVD as part of the package. That will make
it more complete.
