At an event in New York City last evening, HP unveiled the HP Passport 1912nm, its first commercial Internet monitor. The Passport 1912nm brings a brand new and easy way of accessing the Internet and personal multimedia content (videos, picture, and music) on devices found in public places such as airports, administrations, public places or hotels. The Passport 1912nm sports a large 18.5 inch display with built-in speakers, a full keyboard and mouse, and enough slots for plugging in your own SD cards or USB keys.

 

It might look like a regular 18.5-inch display to connect to your laptop, but the Passport 1912nm is so much more than that. How can it offer such great capabilities? Because it has an OMAP4430 processor inside!

 

The initial design idea from HP’s Display team looked simple at the surface, but was very intelligently implemented in conjunction with our TI folks. Taking a state-of-the-art display, they incorporated an add-on board with an OMAP4430 processor and necessary companion chips, and came out with a device that powers the best Web browsing experiences, rich multimedia content playback, and robust Internet connectivity. All these great features add true value to a regular display, at a minimal (and still affordable) cost for consumers as compared to traditional, non-interactive displays.

 

The Passport is further proof of the breadth of products that TI’s OMAP processors scale to address. Once traditionally found in smartphones and tablets, the OMAP4430 processor is meeting the demands of customers across all-new market spaces. In fact, the mobile-focused heritage of the OMAP 4 family is one reason why HP chose this particular processor to drive their Internet Monitor.  If you consider their product requirements to play back state-of-the-art 1080p HD video content, offer fluid Web browsing experiences – including access to popular Adobe Flash content – and remain within a strictly controlled power envelope, it makes total sense. The Passport 1912nm complies with the latest energy saving standards, and offers consumers the very best performance.

 

In terms of new use cases for the Passport 1912nm, I personally see great things on the horizon. Having kids at home that love spending time watching online videos, my family is a perfect candidate for this product. My kids would appreciate the simplicity of the UI, with few icons to directly access videos, pictures and music stored on attached devices, launch the Web browser. Of course, my techy self would appreciate the underlying technologies that fuel the Passport 1912nm’s applications, including OMAP4430 processor optimization for the embedded Adobe Flash Plugin. I would also rest assured that the lock-down, Linux-based OS prevents vulnerability to viruses, so my family’s content and information is protected at all times.

 

Beyond the home environment, I would also love to find a Passport 1912nm in a hotel room or airport waiting room, among other places. After a day of tourism, for example, I would be able to easily connect my digital camera to the Passport 1912nm to send pictures and news to friends and family. This can be extended to other occasions (administrations, public places) where many people in the world would love crossing paths with each other via the Passport 1912nm. The possibilities with this device are truly endless, and we are very excited to have worked with the HP team on such an outstanding product.

 

How would you use a Passport 1912nm? Let me know in the comment section here!

Anonymous
  • This is what I call a smart monitor. We can start testing the monitor as a stand alone device without any CPU towers. Attaching a webcam you can start video chatting both in office and home setup using any of the linux apps. HP can start creating apps to leverage their monitors further. Next stop is OMAP in TVs.