Digital Home Thoughts: Broadcom's Crystal HD Helps out Intel's N450 Chipset

"NVIDIA's Ion technology may be hogging the limelight when it comes to netbook graphics, but Broadcom's no stranger to the space. After giving Acer's Aspire One HD playback capabilities that it could only dream of just months prior, the company's newly announced Crystal HD platform could provide Intel's Atom N450 with the multimedia boost it badly needs."

Intel's Atom 450 chipset doesn't do squat for HD video playback - I guess Intel hasn't gotten the memo that this HD thing is kind of big - but Broadcom's Crystal HD chip will give any Intel 450-based system the ability to play back 1080p content, including acceleration of the Flash 10.1 player. This is a chip we'll supposedly see in netbooks from Samsung, Dell, and Asus. I suspect HP will be on that list too, as the HP Mini 110 can be purchased with an earlier version of the Broadcom chip. HP has a $30 up-charge for the current Broadcom chip, so as long as the new chip is in that range, I can see consumers going for netbooks that can handle 1080p videos.