ASUS, a leading producer of home theater PC (HTPC) solutions, today added a new member to its HDAV family: the ASUS Xonar HDAV1.3 Slim sound card. The CES-award winning Xonar HDAV1.3 Series of audio cards has been credited for revolutionizing the world of HTPC by offering the world's first and only solution to bitstream true Blu-ray audio on the PC platform, and this new offering is no different.

Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd has launched the PC-C39 multimedia chassis. This low profile HTPC case comes in two shades, namely silver and black to match in seamlessly with your current home theater décor. The elegant diamond cut sublimely carved into the front face gives the brushed all aluminum chassis a style of its own. The slim lined PC-C39 stands at 435mm x 97mm x 400mm (W, H, D) and weighs in at 3.65kgs. This stylish chassis combines the traditional class and finery of Lian Li with some outstanding innovations, such as the all new wireless remote controller and sensor. The chassis itself supports 2x 3.5"HDD's and 1x 5.25"ODD. The chassis has 4x low profile expansion slots.

MSI on Friday launched a total of five graphics cards that include native HDMI support. Among the new cards are the ATI Radeon HD 4670 and Radeon HD 4650 models: R4670-MD1G, R4670-512, R4650-MD1G, R4650-512, and R4650-MD512Z. For detailed information on each of the cards please click here.

Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd has launched the PC-C33 & PC-C34F HTPC chassis. Both have slender profile form factors to blend in with audio and DVD equipment but stand out because of their unique offerings like the 2.4G wireless remote sensor, innovative HDD access and options as well as supremely quiet cooling capabilities.

Nowadays, HTPC has become the multimedia center or furnishing in living room. As one leading brand in the industry, Thermaltake is releasing the upgraded model, DH202 today, offering stylish appearance to fulfill the home theater builders' demands in the HTPC market.

The DH202 is beautifully designed with high quality piano coating exterior, the surface of the aluminum front panel has also carefully applied with brush process. With such advance technology integrated, DH 202 will surely be the focus in the living room.

Lian Li Industrial Co. Ltd has launched the PC-V351 desktop HTPC Chassis. The all aluminum design features dual front mounted 120mm@1000RPM fans, with an additional rear mounted 80mm extraction fan@1200RPM. The front fans have special anti-vibration grommets to prevent noise. The sleek brushed aluminum chassis comes in three colors, namely black, silver and red according to your needs. The dimensions stand at 279mm x 262mm x 373mm (W,H,D). The chassis is imbued with all the functional and user friendly design aspects users have come to expect in a Lian Li case.

Thermaltake officially announced a new division of its company today called LUXA2. Along with this new brand, comes a new website featuring 6 new, previously unannounced HTPC enclosures, 4 laptop coolers, a laptop lift and a mobile holder. As can be seen by the plush website and the design of the new products, Thermaltake is no longer catering for just the enthusiast, they now want to get a piece of the "rapid growing luxury consumer market". You can find the new LUXA2 website here, the official Press Release from Thermaltake follows.

Thermaltake has just launched two new HTPC (Home theater PC) cases that may be of a great value for your multimedia PC station. I'm not really in a good mood to tell you how wonderful and perfect these cases are, because they are not. I think full specs and some pictures will be enough to give you the general idea and to let you know everything you need to. Read this information after the "Read full story" marker.

Thermalright, best known for its aluminum fin heatsinks devised the AXP-140 CPU heatsink for HTPCs, that is low-profile friendly with a height of 7 cm. VR-Zone unboxed the heatsink to take a few pictures.

The AXP-140 supports Intel processors on the LGA-775 socket. It consists of a thick nickel-plated copper CPU contact block from which six aluminum heatpipes convey heat to an aluminum fin array. Unlike conventional heatsinks from Thermalright, the array propagates horizontally along the plane of the motherboard. The dimensions of this heatsink are 145 x 147 x 70.2 mm (L x W x H). It weighs 900 g (1.98 lbs). Although this heatsink could cool some processors with low TDP passively for a silent operation, a 120mm fan can be attached to it for active air-cooling. The AXP-140 is expected to be priced at US $59 when it hits the stores.

The company slogan change, from "Smarter Choice" to "The future is fusion" marked a major shift in core-Strategy for AMD. The company now focuses on delivering solutions, more so than mere products, with a solution comprising of several products working together to let the PC serve a purpose. One such solution is the AMD Maui entertainment platform. Maui platform makes AMD hardware work with AMD's own Live! Media Center software to deliver a complete home-theater PC solution.

On the hardware front, Maui includes a qualifying AMD Athlon X2 or Phenom series processor, a motherboard based on the AMD 7-series chipset with integrated graphics. Video is handled by the 7-series IGP, while audio is handled by a special audio component-riser card that has pre-amp circuitry onboard, which enables users to connect speakers in the 5.1 channel configuration directly to the motherboard. Future models would bring in 7.1 channel support. The first motherboard to use this design, is the MSI Media Live DIVA 5.1 780M.

It's time for some non ATI news. Nexus has unveiled an external PCI cooling solution today, called WaveAir and designed to fit on most computer cases. The part attaches to a standard PCI slot and blows fresh cool air to the inside of the case. It may become very handy in solving temperature problems with various small form factor cases, such as many HTPC systems. The WaveAir measures 89.5 (L) x 89.5 (W) x 98 (H) mm, weights in 160 grams and features a 80mm Real Silent Nexus fan that spins at 1500 RPM and has a noise output of just 17.6dB. The WaveAir is expected to be introduced next month and come with a 3-year warranty.

As much as releasing hardware that brings in competition and products at great prices is essential for AMD, backing it up with software is equally important. Company slides that point to tentative time-scales that pertain to AMD's software releases have surfaced. Some of the important software products AMD releases are Catalyst driver suite for ATI products and OverDrive, a tool that provides features to tweak AMD processors and graphics cards, as well as several motherboard parameters for motherboards equipped with AMD chipsets.

The slides also provide a sneak-peak into what could be in store with those releases. VR-Zone has published slides, from which the first one points to release dates for the Catalyst driver suite with respect to release candidates and public releases. The second slide points to time-scales at which software with vital changes are released. We are already past August and AMD has rolled out the feature pertaining to that release, allowing Hybrid Crossfire of AMD chipsets with integrated graphics working in tandem with Radeon HD 3400 series graphics accelerators.

Turkish website DonanimHaber presented the first picture of Gigabyte's entry-level GeForce 9400 GT accelerator. From the specifications and hardware bundle, it is clear that this one is for your HTPC. It provides sufficient graphics processing power for HD Videos, high resolution imaging and Windows Aero acceleration. The card is made from high quality components brandished under "Ultra Durable 2" by Gigabyte. The card allows SPDIF digital audio pass and a HDMI dongle is provided.

The guys over at Hexus.net have got hold of a photo showing a passively cooled PowerColor Radeon HD 4850.

The card...utilizes 54 aluminium fins, an all-copper base and four heatpipes to help keep it cool. The high-rise design, however, rules out users with low-profile HTPC chassis.

Considering the temperatures the actively cooled HD 4850 reaches, I cannot imagine a passive cooler is wise. However, this cooler is considerably larger than the reference cooler and it will be interesting to see how it performs, if and when it is released.

Low-profile add-on cards are a boon for builders of PCs with slim form-factor, the kind which takes form of home-theater PC (HTPC) and slim business PCs. Targeting the HTPC consumer segment, Galaxy prepares a low-profile graphics card featuring the 55nm G94 graphics processor (GPU), the new GeForce 9600 GT.

From the picture it can be seen that the card comes with two connectors, the S-Video/composite and HDMI. There could be a HDMI-DVI dongle included for standard output, a digital audio input offers audio pass over HDMI for a single connection to the display making the card HDCP compliant. The GPU uses 650MHz/1625MHz/900MHz(Core/Shader/Memory) parameters. It features 512 MB memory, and a surprising 8-layer PCB to minimise electronic noise in dense environments such as compact HTPC chassis. It features an all solid-state capacitor design.

3 new models are going to extend CHIEFTEC's HTPC spectrum and add more variety and selection in order to meet the ascending demand for multimedia-based applications. "You name IT - CHIEFTEC got IT!"

CHIETEC's Hi-Fi series have clearly more to offer than the conventional HTPC chassis. 3 different stack types in combination with brushed and anodized aluminum in black or silver are provided in an exquisite packaging. Operating Timelessly and luxuriously with its already equipped components like a complete hi-fi system.

DFI has let loose details on its latest Intel and AMD motherboards, meant to fit in micro-ATX systems. LANParty JR P45-T2RS runs on Intel's last mainstream P45 chipset whereas LANParty JR 790GX-M2RS is powered from AMD's 790GX chipset and SB750 southbridge. Both mainboards pack a great number of extras, featuring dual x16 slots for SLI/CrossFire support depending on the platform, Digital PWM, all-solid capacitors (presented in LANParty JR P45-T2RS only), copper heatpipe chipset cooling and other neat stuff like 12 USB ports, 8 channel audio, Genie BIOS and CMOS Reload. With so much oumph, these two fellows will be greatly accepted in high-performance HTPC systems or in compact cases made for LanParty events. Pricing and availability of both motherboards are still kept in secret.

While not attempting to be a HTPC, the VidaBox PicoPC is a light-weight (quite literally) device that adds PC functionality to your HDTV. It features Windows XP Embedded OS on a ROM, it has security software embedded too. It features no moving parts, the software is on a ROM (hardwired, a-la the software that drives routers), you it ships with a Compact-Flash slot and a 2GB CF card, you can expand storage based on the capacity of the CF card. Optionally, the device can come with a 32GB SSD.

The device features two USB ports, an Ethernet port, a D-Sub for video output and line-in/out for audio. The unit is also available with 802.11b/g options. It comes with a multifunctional wireless keyboard. The device is so tiny that you could hide it behind the HDTV. For now, it's priced at a sore US$ 929 at the moment. For details, please visit the product page.

Just when you thought Mini-ITX would mean extremely compact system components for great HTPC builds, came in the limitations of integrated graphics and relatively weak processors. VIA for example, have had ITX boards for quite some time. Just that the features most essential for HTPC builds such as graphics capable of high-definition video output, processors capable of decoding them at acceptable rates lacked, and hence those older ITX solutions from VIA remained a niche solution for embedded computing or thin-clients.

Picture this: a Mini-ITX board, AM2+ socket, AMD 780G (one of the fastest integrated graphics embedded), four SATA II ports, video output as HDMI (with digital audio pass, HDCP compliant) DVI-D / D-Sub, 8-channel audio with SPDIF optical and co-axial pass, all rolled into one? Awesome, isn't it? Several sources point out that J&W Technology is planning the release of such a board next week, the MINIX-780G-SP128MB.

You may know Origen AE from their fine line of exclusive and uncompromising HTPC enclosures, but the company is not just focusing on that. Their S10V HTPC case was just released, which requires a low profile CPU cooler. The C10L heatsink & fan, features a 70 mm fan and direct touch heatpipes. It is intended for the S10V but can be used on any other case.

We also have an exclusive sneak at the upcoming T12, Origen AE's touch control panel. It can display 1080p on a 12 inch screen and utilizes a single cable to connect to your HTPC. So you can control the Media Center interface with the press of a finger. Both should be available next year.

Thermaltake has introduced the new digital Home Theater PC Chassis, the DH (Digital Home) series. Designed with the latest multimedia module and high quality piano mirror coating front panel, the new Digital Home series shines with elegance and charm!

There are total of four models to choose from the new Digital Home Series; DH101 was designed with the latest LCD Display that not only supports multiple languages, but also allows different display selections with its blue glowing background. DH 102 on the other hand, comes with the aluminum piano mirror coating and the hottest 7 inch Touch Screen front LCD display bringing all the media function controls easy and fast at user's fingertips.