The Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator allows low power netbooks with Intel Atom processors to play 1080p HD video without breaking a sweat. Normally if you try to do this on a machine with an Atom CPU and integrated graphics, you’ll end up watching a slideshow rather than a full-motion movie. Not all media players play well with the video accelerator. But the list of support applications is growing.

Broadcom issued a new version of the HD video accelerator driver recently, and also updated the list of applications that are known to work with the Crystal HD card. In addition to Windows Media Player 12, ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre, CyberLink PowerDVD and Adobe Flash Player 101, the following freeware media players now make the cut:

The latest drivers support the Broadcom BCM70012 and BCM70015 cards and are designed for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Source code is also available for Linux drivers.

via Blogeee

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5 replies on “Broadcom Crystal HD now adds HD video playback to more media players”

  1. Sweet a plug for the KMPlayer, my personal favorite. Great speed, dxva support, utility and GUI.

  2. Nice to see, that this little thing slowly gains momentum.
    Especially when it comes to open-source software.

    BTW: Is there any chance this device runs on any “Smartbook” (ARM-based) device? I’m just thinking of some kinda Archos5-like tablet with low-power ARM, new Ubuntu Netbook-Edition for ARM-based CPU and this neat little thing? THe ability to play HD Youtube or connect it via HDMI to the big screen and get 1080p would be a bummer.

    1. These media players were supported in the last version of the drivers as well. The latest drivers just add a few fixes for the BCM70015 card which hasn’t been released yet.

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