VIA Technologies has announced the VIA EPIA-P720 Pico-ITX board, which takes advantage of the latest VIA VX855 media system processor to deliver smooth playback of the latest HD video formats for nexgen digital interactive devices. With the VIA EPIA-P720, the VIA VX855 MSP takes the video decompression burden from the central processor, applying industry-leading hardware acceleration for the most compression-intensive codecs, including H.264, VC1, WMV9 and MPEG 2/4, at display resolutions up to 1080p. The VIA EPIA-P720 also offers several display connectivity options including native HDMI, VGA and LVDS support.

A highly integrated, all-in-one chipset, the VIA VX855 MSP is specially designed to provide flawless hardware acceleration for the latest HD video codecs and the VIA Chrome9™ HCM 3D integrated graphics core brings full DirectX 9.0 support and a 128-bit 2D engine with hardware rotation capability into the mix. The VIA EPIA-P720 uses a specially designed I/O add-on-board, the VIA P720-A, which complements the native HDMI port to add a VGA port, a Gigabit LAN port and two USB 2.0 ports. The VIA Vinyl HD audio codec provides 6 channel, DTS capable audio with S/PDIF support. Storage is provided in the shape of an onboard 44-pin IDE connector and one S-ATA port. On board pin headers provide support for an additional 4 x USB 2.0 ports, an LPC connector, SMBus connector, PS/2 support, audio jacks, LVDS, 4 pairs of DIO and two UART ports.