In case you couldn’t tell from the flurry of news this morning, CeBIT 2010 started this morning. And Asus has a number of new and updated products on hand at the trade show in Germany. This morning the company introduced a new kid-friendly netbook model, and the new Asus Eee PC 1016P and 1018P are expected to make an appearance soon. But Asus has a few non-netbook products to show off as well:
EeeMedia EM0501
Asus describes this the EM0501 as a “High Definition Entertainment Center.” Basically it’s a small box about the size of an Eee Box nettop. On the inside, it’s got an 800MHz ARM-based Samsung processor, 512MB of RAM, and a 2.5″ hard drive slot. It features 802.11b/g/n WiFi and a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet jack and comes with an IR remote control.
The media center can handle 1080p HD video playback in a variety of formats including MPEG1/4, H.264, WMV, VC-1, DivX, Xvid, VOB, and MKV as well as most common audio and image formats.
Overall, it looks like a souped up version of the Asus O!Play media streamer with a more powerful processor and better connectivity options. No word on a price or release date, or what the user interface looks like.
Eee Box EB1501U
This appears to be a slightly updated version of the Eee Box EB1501. The primary difference is that the Eee Box EB1501U has 2 USB 3.0 ports on th efront of the box.
The rest of the specs are the same, including a dual core 1.6GHz Intel Atom 330 CPU, NVIDIA ION graphics, 2GB of RAM, up to 320G hard drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, HDMI output, and Windows 7 Home Premium.