QNAP has announced a combination Media Player / NAS capable of full 1080p HD video playback.
The NMP-1000 stores media and data files on a single user-supplied 3.5" SATA drive and connects to networks via a single 10/100/1000 Ethernet port or select USB wireless adapters.
The hardware platform uses a Sigma Designs SMP8635 with 256 MB of DDRII RAM and 64 MB of flash. Storage can be expanded by adding external drives via two USB 2.0 ports. The NMP-1000 can also be used as a direct-attached external drive for Windows-based systems, connecting via USB 2.0 or eSATA.
A/V outputs include HDMI 1.3a, component, composite and S video, analog stereo and S/PDIF optical and coaxial digital audio.
The system supports MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, XVID, H.264, H.263, WMV9 and VC1 codecs and a wide variety of container formats including AVI, MPEG, VCD and DVD. Supported audio formats include FLAC, WAV, WMA, AAC, PCM, AC3, MPA, DTS and OGG and photos and still images in BMP, JPG and PNG can be viewed. Internet features include scheduled BitTorrent downloading and YouTube and flickr playback.
SMB/CIFS and NFS network file systems are supported for file sharing among Windows, Mac OS and Linux clients. Both HTTP (Web) and FTP file access is supported.
The NMP-1000 is available now at an MSRP of $399.