I must apologize, it appears I am a little late on this one. Broadcom has a product called the Crystal HD Enhanced Media Accelerator. Mouthful of a name aside, I think this is one of the coolest add-ons for a low-end PC out there and every netbook should have one.

Have you tried to watch the high res video on a netbook, or even a low-end notebook? It generally isn’t pretty, especially if it’s streamed through Flash like on YouTube or Hulu. Even if the video is smooth and doesn’t drop frames like crazy, you don’t have much capability to do anything else with the system and clear audio playback is questionable as well.

It looks like Broadcom’s CHDEMA (my own abbreviation) might change all of this. It is a PCI-E card that should take over dedicated video and audio encoding/decoding duties to not only reduce the strain on the computer’s dedicated CPU/GPU subsystems, but improve the entire process. Announced about a month ago, this beauty is now available for purchase, but only in the HP Mini 110 netbook as a $30 option.

If the HD support wasn’t enough, later this year or early 2010 will see the addition of Flash support as well, which is absolutely the way to go. Online video is only growing and with everything from a 10-inch netbook all the way to 100-inch screens via projector supporting HD resolutions, this solution is needed until integrated GPU’s can catch up. Or until Intel stops punishing people for using NVIDIA Ion.

There’s no word on whether Broadcom will sell the card standalone, which would be a great option for those who want to use their netbook for more than text. I would love a 10-11 inch netbook with a good keyboard layout, HDMI output, and this card. Hell, I’d like to stick it in my X61 to take any HD video strain off the puny Intel graphics.

HP Mini 110 & Broadcom: [Engadget]
Broadcom HD Accelerator: [Lilliputing]
Broadcom Press Releases: [Mini 110] & [Flash support]