Looking for an alternative to the iPad that looks enough like Apple’s tablet to fool your friends into thinking you have one — until they see you start tapping on a start menu or playing Flash video? Then it looks like the upcoming HP slate might be the way to go.

HP has released a promotional video that markets the slate pretty much exactly the same was as Apple is marketing the iPad — except the HP slate will play web video from sites like Hulu, as you can see in the promotional video.

To drive home the point a bit more, the folks at Adobe have put out a five and a half minute video showing the tablet running Flash and Adobe AIR, which opens the tablet up to a whole world of applications that aren’t available on the iPad of iPhone.

You can find both videos after the break.

Of course, none of this should be surprising, because the HP slate has an x86 processor and runs Windows 7 — which means it can run pretty much any Windows application. It features the touchscreen features of Windows 7 including a rather awkward looking on-screen keyboard and multitouch gesture support for zooming, rotating, and performing other actions.

We still haven’t seen final pricing on the HP slate, but something tells me it ain’t going to come cheap. And with an x86 processor and a desktop operating system, I’m guessing we’ll be lucky if the HP slate gets half the battery life of the iPad. But hey, it supports Flash.

via Engadget

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Adobe has just released Flash Player 10.1 beta 3. And for netbook owners, one of the most exciting updates is that there’s hardware acceleration support for some netbooks. Basically, if you’ve got a netbook with an Intel Atom Z5xx series processor and integrated GMA 500 graphics, you should be able to watch 720p, and maybe even 1080p HD Flash video on your netbook with the latest version of Flash Player.

The update does not apply to the vast majority of netbooks released in 2008 and 2009, which have Atom N270 or N280 processors and GMA 950 graphics.

The reason for this is that GMA 500 graphics feature hardware acceleration for H.264 video, while GMA 950 graphics chips do not.

Some of the laptops that have GMA 500 graphics, and which should benefit from the Flash Player update include the Asus Eee PC T91MT, Eee PC 1101HA, Sony Vaio P, Dell Inspiron Mini 10 (original), MSI Wind U115, Viliv S10 Blade, and Fujitsu UH900.

Unfortunately, Flash acceleration won’t necessarily make these computers feel much faster. In terms of overall performance, computers with Atom Z520 and Z530 processors tend to feel slower than those with Atom N270 chips. I have, however, heard decent things about the performance of netbooks with 2GHz Atom Z550 processors and GMA 500 graphics, although I haven’t had a chance to extensively test one myself.

Update: Engadget reports that Flash Player 10.1 beta 3 also adds support for the Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator.

via Netbooked

Google Android doesn’t currently support Adobe Flash, which means that a fair number of web sites look like they have blank boxes when you visit them in a browser on an Android-based tablet or smartphone. But Flash support is coming soon — and a number of tablets and other devices on display at Mobile World Congress in Spain this week are sporting a pre-release build of Flash for Android.

Sascha from Netbook News stumbled across one of those tablets at the NVIDIA booth. It appears to have a 9 or 10 inch touchscreen display and an NVIDIA Tegra 2-based chipset. Tegra 2 combines a low power ARM-based processor with NVIDIA graphics, which means you should be able to watch 1080p HD video on this low power device. And since Flash Player 10.1 will feature hardware acceleration for the Tegra 2 platform, it should even be able to handle 1080p HD Flash video.

But Flash isn’t just about games. In the video below, you can see Sascha checking out the Farmville Flash game on Facebook.

Say what you like about Apple’s stance that the iPad and iPhone don’t need to run Flash, that instead the web needs to move toward new standards like HTML5… but the truth is, right now there’s a ton of Flash content available. And adding Flash capabilities to a tablet like the NVIDIA demo featured in the interview makes it a heck of a lot more useful today. Or you know, whenever Flash Player 10.1 for Android is available.

Oh, and just in case you thought Flash 10.1 was just for Android or Tegra-based systems, it’s not. Lenovo points out that it’s working on adding Flash 10.1 support the company’s upcoming Skylight smartbook with a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset and custom Linux operating system.

Video after the break.

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When I reviewed the Acer Aspire 1410 with a Core 2 Solo SU3500 processor and Windows Vista a last month, I found that it was much faster than your average netbook when it came CPU-intensive tasks like transcoding audio and video files. But there was one thing it still couldn’t do: play HD and high quality Flash videos on its high resolution 1366 x 768 pixel display.

But this week Acer released an updated version of the Aspire 1410. The new model has a 1.2GHz Intel Celeron SU2300 dual core processor and runs Windows 7 Home Premium. And according to Peter at Netbooked, it can handle HD YouTube videos reasonably well. But you don’t have to take his word for it. You can check it out for yourself by watching the… HD YouTube video below.

Playback isn’t 100% flawless, but the videos look very watchable. When you try watching similar videos with the older version of the Aspire 1410, it feels like you’re looking at a picture slideshow instead of a video. That’s no longer the case.

And that makes the new Acer Aspire 1410 the cheapest laptop I’m aware of with an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, 4+ hour battery life, and HD Flash video capabilities. You can order one today from Amazon for just under $400. Of course, the $400 HP Mini 311 will give the Aspire 1410 a run for its money once Flash Player 10.1 is released. That’s the upcoming version of Adobe’s Flash Player that will support NVIDIA ION GPU acceleration for Flash video, allowing you to watch 1080p Flash video on a netbook with a low power Intel Atom processor (provided it has NVIDIA graphics).

You can check out Peter’s video after the break:

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Just in case you had any doubt that NVIDIA and Adobe were preparing to announce a new version of Adobe Flash with GPU acceleration soon, representatives from the two companies showed off an HP Mini 311 laptop with NVIDIA ION graphics playing HD Flash video at the NVIDIA GPU conference in San Jose yesterday. You can check it out for yourself by watching the 1:00PM webcast on this page.You’ll have to scroll to near the end to find the clip, but it’s there.

What you’re looking at is a laptop with an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU, and an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor. Today, that device shouldn’t be able to play HD Flash video without stuttering. Not even high quality content from YouTube or Hulu plays smoothly on devices with those specs. But Adobe is expected to push out an updated version of Flash Player that will take advantage of the high performance GPU to take the load off of the low power CPU in NVIDIA ION powered netbooks.

A few days ago, German site Notebook Journal posted a similar video, but it’s been removed. From what I can tell, Adobe hasn’t officially announced the new version of Flash yet, and even though it’s been demoed onstage at a trade show, I think Adobe wants to keep the new software under wraps until the Adobe Max conference begins next week. So there’s not much extra information about the new version of Flash, when it will be available, or whether it will support non-NVIDIA hardware. But you should be able to expect those answers soon.

Netbooks with Intel Atom processors generally have enough power to handle 720p video playback. And if they have 1024 x 600 pixel or lower resolution screens, they can handle standard definition and some high quality Flash video playback in full screen mode. But there are two things that no netbook I’ve used to date have been able to accomplish:

• 720p HD Flash video playback
• Smooth high bit-rate Flash playback on a 1366 x 768 pixel or higher resolution display

That’s true even for machines with NVIDIA ION graphics. Because Adobe Flash doesn’t currently take advantage of the GPU. Instead it relies on the CPU, and the Intel Atom processor just isn’t up to these tasks. In fact, I had trouble getting even the Acer Aspire 1410 with a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500 processor and GMA 4500MHD graphics to handle standard definition video from Hulu in full screen mode.

But it looks like a breakthrough is just around the corner. Earlier this year Adobe announced it was working with companies including NVIDIA and Broadcom to support hardware acceleration for Flash video. And now Notebook Journal in Germany has posted a video showing a machine with NVIDIA ION graphics playing HD Flash video smoothly on a high resolution monitor.

It looks like the video was taken at a recent presentation, and I have a feeling Notebook Journal wasn’t supposed to post the video online so soon, so you might want to check it out before it’s gone. If I’m reading the presentation in the background properly, NVIDIA and Flash are promising to make the technology publicly available during the first half of 2010.

You can check out the video after the break. Update: As expected, the video has been temporarily removed.

via Netbooked

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NVIDIA, Broadcom, and Adobe are working on adding GPU acceleration for Flash video to their video solutions for low power netbooks and MIDs. Because, while you can stream full screen standard definition Hulu video pretty well on a machine 1024 x 600 pixel display and an Intel Atom CPU, good luck trying to do the same thing on a 1366 x 768 pixel screen. And you can forget about high definition Flash video.

NVIDIA’s recently launched ION and Tegra platforms bundle NVIDIA graphics processors with low power Intel Atom and ARM chips to improve overall graphics performance. But since there’s no GPU acceleration for Flash yet, web video playback is typically handed off to the CPU. And the truth is that most low power netbook processors aren’t up to the task of handling high quality Flash video yet. That’s why I’ve been disappointed with the performance of low power machines that should make excellent home theater PCs. Because an HTPC that can’t handle Hulu and HD YouTube videos is so 2003.

Anyway, it looks like relief could be on the way. Unfortunately it won’t arrive until next year.

Both NVIDIA and Broadcom have announced that they’re working with Adobe to bring GPU acceleration for Adobe Flash to their products. Broadcom makes the Broaddcom Crystal HD accelerator which will be available as an option in the recently announced HP Mini 110 netbook. Both platforms will be able to handle high definition Flash video using he H.264 codec, which means you should see better performance from YouTube, CBS, Hulu, and the BBC iPlayer.

Unfortunately, Broadcom says its solution won’t be available until the first half of 2010. There’s no timeframe at all in the Adobe press release.

via Engadget