Dell is now offering the Inspiron Mini 10 netbook with an optional Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator. The decoder gives the mini-laptop a bit of help decoding 720p and 1080p HD video, something which an Intel Atom-powered netbook would normally struggle with.
The announcement comes hot on the heels of the launch of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta 3, which adds support for the Braodcom accelerator. In other words, not only can you watch HD video stored on your hard drive, but you should be able to stream high quality and HD content from sites including YouTube, the BBC, and Hulu.
In order to get the Broadcom video accelerator, you’ll need to select Dell’s “Performance Plus” package, which boosts the starting price from $279 to $409. But in addition to the HD accelerator, you also get a 10.1 inch, HD 1366 x 768 pixel display, 6 cell battery, and 250GB hard drive. And at $409, the Dell Mini 10 is one of the cheapest HD-capable netbooks on the market.
Oops! Better make that a 6-cell battery, not “5 cell” as stated in the middle sentence of the final paragraph.