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XBMC Running On an Atom-Based MID
reborn writes "Someone's got XBMC running on one of those MIDs. This one is a Compal Jax10. It runs Linux and is powered by an Intel Atom processor clocked at 800Mhz along with Intel's GMA500, which is basically a licensed PowerVR SGX GPU. Except for the better GPU (and its screen and keyboard, of course), it is similarly specced as some of the lower-end netbooks. XBMC would make a great portable media player, given its ability to play media off the network and virtually all file formats, but in the end it depends on the price-point of these MIDs. Here's the video."
http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/omap3530.html
The omap3530 can do HD, and it's not even an Intel processor, it's an ARM, so the power savings are enormous.
http://openpandora.org/
This device will be able to play HD in about the size of a DS lite. It's not out yet however.
http://beagleboard.org/hardware Right now, you can buy a beagle board which will do mostly the same thing, except not in a real handheld.
From what I've read elsewhere, the chipset involved does have video decode acceleration support. After googling, anandtech.com has an article that says that the chipset can support 1080i and 720p decode. A tomshardware.com article says that it can do hardware decode of H.264, MPEG2, MPEG4, VC1, and WMV9 formats.
He said, "You'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you helped assemble the first NT supercomputer," and I cringed.
I don't get it what's the big deal here. An Atom-Based MID is a PC, which can run Linux, which can run XBMC. Just install Ubuntu Intrepid, add a couple of lines to /etc/apt/sources.list and a dozen pressed keys later you have XBMC installed. Yay.