If you visited this blog before you might know that the Realtek RTD1195 platform was pretty much announced here.
Several months passed without any device actually being shipped, then I got an early build of EweatEW902 that I couldn’t actually review due to the board not being compatible with newer FW updates…
There were rumors about a Mede8er device with this CPU, but so far that device did not appear at all.

But enough history (and self-promotion:-) )

Today I learned that there’s a new RTD1195 device from the reputable french company Zappiti.
You might have heard about them before, they started with a pretty good media center software that scans your entire movie archive and then adds nicely formatted metadata for all your files.
Hardware-wise, they worked with Dune HD before and now they are launching a “Z”-branded device.

As usual with RTD1195 devices, this will have:
– dual core CPU
– dual-core GPU
– HDMI 1.4 (in and out)
– 1 x USB 3.0 and 2 x USB 2.0
– gigabit ethernet
– 2 x wi-fi antenna (802.11n only)
– internal 3.5” SATA, you can add a 6TB HDD (or smaller)
– included airmouse with qwerty keyboard (+ a standard IR remote)

But it does make quite a few interesting promises:
– 3D BD-ISO support,
– Pass through and stereo downmix (DTS, DTS-HD, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD)
– HEVC, H.265 (many others) – video bitrates supported up to 120Mbit/s

[Update]
– Dolby Atmos
– Ultra HD and 4K viles (DivX, UHD, HEVC) are also expected to run smoothly
– available in January (can be pre-orderered from http://store.zappiti.com/ )