Asus Eee Box B204

Having created the mini-notebook with its Eee PC Asus followed up with the Eee Box, a tiny desktop version.

Surprisingly successful as a general-purpose home PC, the original Eee Box format was also the ideal candidate for a sitting-room media centre computer, except that it wasn’t powerful enough to handle High Definition (HD) video.

Now Asus claims its B204 and B206 computers (the B206 has a built-in battery backup) – have been improved enough to enable them to handle HD video. To achieve this there have been two major component changes: the main processor and the graphics processor. The models still use Windows XP Home.

The central processor is now a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 and the graphics chip is an ATI Mobility Radeon HD3450, which should in theory work together to provide HD video support.

We were disappointed to find that the B204 still can’t really handle HD video. Even using the lower resolution 720p format, playback was jerky with dropped frames in standard media software.

This is mainly because the ATI chip offers its hardware boost only under Microsoft’s DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) and some video player programs don’t support this.

The freeware player MPC-HC does support it, however, and when we loaded this, 720p videos played without problem. With the higher-resolution 1080p material, though, there were more playback problems.

The B204 offers other improvements such as 1GB of memory and a 160GB hard disk. The only video output is an HDMI socket for connection to the flat screen, but there are still four USB sockets and an analogue audio socket, which comes with a converter for digital audio output.

As with the other Eee products there is no CD or DVD drive so any video you play will have to be downloaded or taken from an external hard disk, or you will have to buy and plug in an external disc reader.

The Eee Box itself looks much the same as it did before: a box about the same size as a large broadband router, which can be laid flat on the desk, mounted vertically on its slightly shaky stand or fixed directly to a flat-screen TV using a standard Vesa mounting bracket.

The stand and mount are supplied, as are a wireless network aerial and a remote control, complete with an infra-red adapter.

So, this Eee Box is better on the video side than earlier models, but is still not the ideal vehicle for a small-format media centre.