Nettops like the $475 Asus Eee Box PC EB1501 aren’t meant for getting work done. Instead, they promise an end-around to the closed environment of your cable box, opening up your living room to the near-infinite amount of content available via various online video sources. With its clean, understated design, the Asus Eee Box EB1501 not only looks the part of a living room component, but it also has the technical chops to play almost any kind of content, including most 1080p video sources. We could almost recommend this system if it wasn’t caught between new, more affordable Web-enabled Blu-ray players, and more capable slim tower PCs that cost just a little bit more. The Asus Eee Box PC EB1501 is the second-generation Nettop from Asus, and is the first we’ve seen from the vendor with Nvidia’s Ion chipset. While the Ion chipset brings an assortment of underlying technologies to low-power Netbooks and Nettops, the most relevant piece of graphics hardware is its Nvidia GeForce 9400M chip, a budget 3D chip designed to provide basic video and 3D graphics capabilities, including, according to Nvidia, support for high definition video playback at 1080p. We’ve seen a few GeForce 9400M-based desktops that can play 1080p content smoothly, namely Apple’s most recent Mac Minis. This Asus system has its limitations–it plays 1080p QuickTime files with noticeable chop–but, unlike the Dell Inspiron Zino HD and the Acer Aspire Revo R1600 (the $199 model), it can at least play 1080p files …
A quick look at the DVD slot, 1080p HD video and XBMC use with the provided remote control for the ASUS Eee Box EB1501. From my Eee Box EB1501 review: netbooked.net