One of the more obvious signs of for that you just bought a netbook or nettop computer is that they often lack the common optical drive. Both to save space and cut costs. Motherboard maker ASRock and its Ion nettop ION 330 has broken the rule of thumb and installed a multi-function DVD burner. Soon ASRock will make better use of the integrated graphics circuit of NVIDIA Ion, with a Blu-ray version of the ION 330 nettop.
Thanks to a dual-core Atom 330 processor, NVIDIA’s Ion chipset and 2GB RAM the nettop should be powerful enough to even play High Definition Blu-ray videos. Even if a Blu-ray player will raise the price quite a bit it is an interesting solution.
A supersilent and power efficient HTPC that supports all thinkable video formats, including Blu-ray. The Blu-ray version will be around $140 more expensive, going from sensible $320 to $460, Blu-ray player included.
An early review of the unit can be found at TweakTown that shows that ASRock delivers on its promise;
We were super impressed with the Blu-ray 1080p HD playback – it was silky and smooth and didn’t miss a beat at all. Audio quality is also impressive.
