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ASUS demos Xonar HDAV1.3 HDMI Deluxe sound card
One might assume that it'd be easy to forget a device that was introduced way back at the front end of this year, but for HTPC owners looking for a reliable way to bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio via HDMI, this one would be impossible to shake from the memory bank. Reportedly, the card went on sale (at least in some parts of the globe) this September, but early adopters were deeply saddened by the unit's inability to bitstream. Thankfully, ASUS has heard the weeping, and it has conjured up new drivers (and the Xonar HDAV1.3 HDMI Deluxe) in order to remedy the issue. The crew at TweakTown was able to video a live demonstration in Taiwan, and they came away emphatically impressed. Shoot on down to the read link for a look at what they found.
ASUS intros HDMI-equipped Xonar HDAV1.3 sound card
Worried about getting lossless digital audio from your BD-playin' HTPC via HDMI, are you? Fret no longer, as ASUS has just introduced your solution at Computex. Hailed as the "world's first HDMI 1.3a compliant audio / video enhancement combo card," the Xonar HDAV1.3 is both Protected Audio Playback Systems (PAPS) and Advanced Access Content System (AACS) certified, enabling it to pipe out bitstreamed multi-channel HD audio from Blu-ray Discs through a single cable. Yep, with some help of a special version of ArcSoft's TotalMedia Theater, it's also fully capable of decoding BD titles and taking full advantage of Dolby TrueHD / DTS-HD Master Audio -- not limited to 16bit like previous solutions -- and just so you know, the firm is also offering up a Xonar HDAV1.3 Deluxe (shown after the cut) which allows users to get 7.1-channels of audio the analog way. Pricing? Pssh -- this is ASUS we're talking about here.[Via DailyTech]
Montevina and Puma-based ASUS notebooks leak out
With Intel's Montevina platform (hopefully) on the way and AMD's claim that "over 100" laptops will launch with Puma, it's kind of surprising that we haven't seen even more pre-release info on machines due to ship with the new chips, but apparently ASUS is getting ready to hit us with some new gear at Computex. Based on the existing M51 and M70 lines, the M51VR will feature a 2.26GHz Penryn P8400 with 3MB of L2 cache on Montevina's 1.06GHz bus, while the M51VA and M70VM (pictured) will get 2.53GHz T9400s with 6MB of cache. ASUS should also be showing off the Puma-based F5Z and X50Z laptops with 1.9GHz AMD Athlon64 X2 QL-60 chips, 667MHz buses, ATI Mobility Radeon HD3200 graphics and 15.4-inch screens at Computex, so it'll be interesting to see how these bad boys do side-by-side.[Thanks, Sergio]Read - ASUS Montevina laptopsRead - ASUS Puma laptops
