Netbooks are here to stay.  We use them to surf the web, answer email, post on Facebook and Twitter, and watch the occasional video on YouTube.  The one thing a lot of people have been clamoring for has been the ability to play HD video.  This has not been possible since netbooks, almost by definition, have always been under powered.

Well, thanks to video card manufacturer’s Broadcom and Nvidia, this may not be the case anymore.

According to an article over at CNet:

For playback of high-resolution HD video–such as 1080p–Intel has “validated” an additional Broadcom chip that Netbook suppliers can include in systems, according to Anil Nanduri, director, Netbook Marketing at Intel.

However, consumers are going to have to find out on their own if their netbook has this new chip, the BCM70015 Crystal HD chip. Hopefully this process will be as straight-forward as it is too find out if a netbook has an nVidia Ion chip in it; otherwise, they will be stuck with 720p playback only.

Over at Nvidia, there is the nVidia Ion chip.  These chips will be demonstrated at CES this year.

“With Ion you’ll be able watch Hulu HD or YouTube HD at either 720 or 1080. With standard Intel components without Ion you won’t be able to do that,” said David Ragones, product line manager at Nvidia, disputing Intel’s claim that the Atom processor can do 720p video playback.

Between the new Broadcom and Nvidia chipsets, it looks like we can finally expect to see HD video playback arrive on many netbooks this coming year! Time to find that copy of Blade Runner in HD.

Here’s an video from Broadcom that shows how this new chip will impact how you watch videos on your netbook.

HD video coming to netbooks– thanks to Broadcomm and Nvidia is a post by Amy from Notebooks.com.

Foobar2000 has long been one of my favorite freeware audio players for Windows. Not only is it free; it’s also lightweight, customizable, able to rip CDs and supports numerous audio formats. These abilities have made it my go to audio program for use on a netbook, an audio player Swiss Army knife if you will that handles anything I can throw at it without slowing me down.

I was very excited to see that after years of releases Foobar2000 has finally released the v1.0 beta. This latest release contains improvements to the user interface and adds support for streaming Windows Media streams as well as other fixes and tweaks.

The best part about Foobar2000 is that it works perfect for listening to music. You don’t have to wait for things to happen, there’s no genius trying to figure out what to play next it’s just you and your tunes.

When it comes to customizing the player you can download add-ons and mods that transform the stock player into a still lightweight audio player that works great on your netbook. If you are running Windows 7 on your netbook you can also install an add-on that gives Foobar2000 Windows 7 Taskbar features to make it even easier to use.

Whether you want to rock the stock installation and just listen or start customizing Foobar2000 to match your Windows theme it’s a great free program for listening to music on your netbook.

You can download the latest V1.0 Beta from the Foobar2000 Web site with a torrent application like uTorrent or download it directly from MajorGeeks.

Via Download Squad

FooBar2000 v1.0 Beta released – Lightweight Audio Player for Your Netbook is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.