VIA has announced its latest addition to its mini-ITX product lineup—the EPIA EX-series. The new EPIA EX series is powered by VIA’s CX700M2 single-chip chipset. The CX700M2 is paired with a VIA C7 processor to deliver a low power and small x86 consumer electronics platform with average operating power consumption hovering around 13.6 watts.
Delivering support for HDTV is an integrated VIA UniChrome Pro II graphics core. The UniChrome Pro II graphics core features hardware decoding acceleration for MPEG-2/4 and WMV9 video formats. It appears to lack hardware acceleration support for H.264 and VC-1 though. Nevertheless, the UniChrome Pro II graphics core is paired with an HDTV encoder too. The HDTV encoder supports resolutions of 720p and 1080i.
VIA has packed the EPIA EX-series with plenty of video outputs as well. Video outputs include composite, S-Video, component and DVI video outputs. There’s also an additional LVDS header for greater video output capabilities. Audio capabilities are limited with the EPIA EX-series though. While it features the 8-channel capable VIA Vinyl VT1708 high definition audio codec, VIA limits audio output to a single set of stereo RCA output jacks. The EPIA EX-series features coaxial and optical S/PDIF outputs as well.
Other notable features of the EPIA EX-series include 1393a, two SATA 3.0Gbps ports and 10/100Mbps Ethernet with a Gigabit Ethernet option.
Expect the EPIA-EX series to arrive in two speed grades—1GHz and 1.5 GHz. The 1.0 GHz model will feature passive cooling while the 1.5 GHz model has an active cooling solution.
It is unknown when the EPIA EX-series will hit retail, though it will be on display at next year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada.