With Wi-Fi, a built-in speaker and microphone and powered by Intel’s Atom. That’s Asus prototype Eee Keyboard which actually could solve the age-old problem of getting your media from PC-land onto your shiny HD TV. You can display photos on your TV, as well as launch programs from hot keys. And, basically, it’s a self-contained PC. Wow.

The device’s pièce de résistance is its 5-inch touchscreen, which uses icons to launch apps such as an image viewer and calendar. We got hands on with it – well, as much as the Asus representative would allow – and had a fiddle with the screen and icons. The keyboard itself is clean brushed aluminum.

The idea is that the keyboard can connect to basically any device wirelessly, whether a monitor via a HD Display Wireless Connection or an HD TV. The slab also boasts Wireless HDMI over Ultra Wideband.

The Eee Keyboard was first designed as a light computing device (think netbook), but in a keyboard. Asus originally thought people would take use the keyboard around the house and use it for either video playback or working on, however it didn’t take into consideration that people often prefer bespoke devices for different applications – a laptop or PC for work and internet and a DVD player, HTPC or media streamer for watching movies on a TV. With that in mind the design focus for Eee Keyboard changed – it became a video playback device that offered more – essentially a gadget on steroids.

The surprisingly very impressive looking Eee Keyboard PC is essentially a netbook crammed into sleek Keyboard. The Eee PC Keyboard features a large 5-inch 800 x 400 touch screen / touch pad, and is powered by a choice of either the Atom N270 or the dual core Intel Atom N330 CPU.

Other features include a 16GB / 32GB SSD, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, Bluetooth and 802.11b WiFi, all crammed into the slim keyboard unit. There is also built in stereo speakers and a microphone.