In case people here missed it:

BeagleBoard looks real neat. Tiny board, but decent processor. No standard expansion and no network connection, but it's got HDMI/S-video, USB, Audio and an SD slot. The price is right as well, $150.

More info at http://www.beagleboard.org/

Hi Olaf,

$149 is a step in the right direction.

Toshiba is selling the same ARM core on a board we developed for $99.

That said, TI does an excellent jod documenting everything and providing very solid software support.

Can you provide more details? Are you involved?

R&B :)

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http://bbrv.blogspot.com

I am not involved, and I don't have any more details beyond what's available on their website already.

I just saw the board on linuxdevices.com last week, and thought it looked neat. A friend got his in the mail the other day, so I got to take a firsthand look at it as well.

Where can I find more information on the Toshiba/Genesi board? Thanks!

This is an excellent presentation:

http://dkc1.digikey.com/us/en/PTM/296_BeagleBoard.html

And, the site here is also done well:

http://beagleboard.org/

Our hat is off to TI and DigiKey. This is also impressive:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDvNu9tFkk0

The Toshiba Starter Kit is here:

http://www.toshiba-components.com/micro ... AS910.html

R&B :)

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http://bbrv.blogspot.com

amazing little board for sure. I'd be very interested in getting one if there was a network slot.

please tell us your feelings once you'll have tried one.

yeah that does look like a nice board, but as SoundSquare posted, there is no network. i read i could get a usb ethernet, but then that is more external stuff, takes away from the compact form.

nice that it has digital video out, but what about the audio ? again, i would have to get a usb audio device for digital out.

seems like a multimedia device, but missing some key features to be a multimedia device.

also, i looked through that lengthy pdf and could not find any info about what the max resolution is for the graphics.

matt

720p? 1080p?

http://beagleboard.org/hardware

@matt

i've been reading some doc and stuff all around about it, and i've read 1280x1024 on some sites and 1024x768 on others. So i have no clue. But it's far from "HD" anyway.

Actually i'm really interested in getting one to run linux on it and have a few ideas about the way i would use it. I suppose it would be quite easy to sell it back to the beagle community in case it doesn't fit my ideas.
Maybe next week :)

By far the most common downloadable HD resolution is 1280x720p or thereabouts; the chip is definitely capable of doing that.

It's not far from HD, it's exactly HD.

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Matt Sealey

alright, i was referring to 1080P but you're right. HD is also 720p etc...

lcd's that can do 1920x1200 and tv's that can do 1080 lines are easy to come by and are common. i would not buy a device that can not do that resolution.

also, hdmi is the standard now too. the beagal board is partially there. (still trying to figure out why why the wii missed that one)

matt

They're also far more expensive than just-as-good cheaper LCDs - Samsung Series 4 and Series 5 televisions are exactly the same styling and features as Series 6, but with a 1366x768 panel resolution.

It's really quite good for sitting 8 feet away. I don't see HOW you could see 1920x1080p resolution, I can barely make out pixels on rounded edges from here.

Watching a movie, you will see even less, since the whole point of the video codecs used to encode HD video is to smooth out the differences and only encode things the eye will actually see.
Then you are not going to be buying any portable devices that decode video any time soon.
Beagleboard supports DVI-D which is the same transmission standard as pushed over an HDMI cable. You just need an adapter.

The Wii did not miss anything. It was INTENTIONALLY designed to only render at 480p. This means you get a box the size of 3 DVD cases stacked, and has only a very small outlet fan.

Product design is a lot more than finding the fastest, hottest things you can use to give the biggest numbers.

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Matt Sealey

i assume hdmi/dvi can do 480p ? my complaint about wii is its analog.

i agree that efficiency is better, thats why i am interested in these devices.

i borrowed a wii from a friend once, PITA to connect it as all my stuff here is digital. i had to dig out some old comptuter desktop spearkers and hack something to it to work.
i was thinking of something that would work on the desktop as well as being portable. my lcd here is 1920x1200, i would like to use all of it.

also, i think of displays like in airports and stores that show media, those are large screens. not sure what the resolution is. i guess thats not considered portable.

matt

I am having much fun with my beagleboard.

Even on the 3d department it is more then capeable.

Currently i am finishing my crosscompile environment on windows xp for compiling applications with freepascal for it. Compiling application using .so libs brought up some nasty errors, but not anymore.

So now i can start bugfixing my pascal unit calling opengles.

And here is the next generation of Beagle Board. They added a faster CPU, and what is more important: Ethernet and USB ports. For more info, see:
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/BeagleBoardxM/

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CzP
http://czanik.blogs.balabit.com/