To test the multimedia capabilities of the Zbox, we loaded up a 1080p WMV-HD (Windows Media) clip and a 1080p QuickTime, H.264 encoded clip. In the foreground of these shots you can see Windows Task Manager Performance Monitor graphing CPU utilization, giving you an idea of how taxed the system is during this test.
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HD Digital Video Playback Tests
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CPU Utilization and System Resources Required For HD Video Decoding and Playback
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Iron Man 2 Trailer - 1080p, H.264 Quicktime Video
Speed for IMAX Demo, 1080p Windows Media HD Video
We should note that both of these 1080p clips were played back using Windows Media Player. In the Performance Monitor graphs, you can see the 4 logical Atom core threads are represented, with two threads per physical Atom core, thanks to Intel HyperThreading. In the H.264 Iron Man 2 trailer above, we saw CPU utilization oscillate from about 20 - 30%, peaking higher occasionally to 45% or so. With Windows Media, the system barely broke a sweat and both clips played back very smoothly with good system responsiveness available to during playback of the clips.
* A Note On Flash Video -
At this time NVIDIA's Next Generation Ion GPU has issues with Flash video playback and performance is sub-standard. However, we're told that NVIDIA will be releasing a new driver for the platform on or around 5/24/2010, that will alleviate these issues. We don't envision this to be an issue moving forward, especially in light of how well the system performs with other types of HD video media.