Rugged little $249 D2Plug PC pushes HD video

May 17, 2011 by Dave Haynes

I wrote the other day about the dubious merits of PC companies trying to out-market each other with steadily smaller boxes for digital signage deployments. My argument is they’re pretty much already small enough.

However, going smaller on price is always in play, which is what got me interested in a little gadget called the D2Plug.

Made and marketed by Globalscale Technologies, which has an office in the US but likely a way bigger footprint in China, the rugged looking little thing has integrated 2D/3D graphics, hardware acceleration for video decoding and a bunch of connectors for networking and storage, and is billed as capable of pushing out 1080P video. It has an ARM 1ghz processor and runs Linux (and apparently Android OS).

Single unit cost – $249.

Interesting. There is even cheaper stuff out there, but this is actually designed and built for commercial applications – not the home R&D benches of propeller-heads. Globalscale lists potential uses like industrial controls, office automation AND digital signage.

I could imagine a role for these solid state puppies, assuming they are built to tick away for months and years, in rougher environments where devices with fans would beat risk of gumming up and failing. Elevators and subway cars come to mind.

They start shipping next month.