techETA » home theater

The ASUS Xonar HDAV 1.3 Slim, Big Sound Small Profile

Rafael Hernandez — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:05:00 +0000

Home Theater PC owners are a picky bunch. They expect performance and rich feature sets out if increasingly smaller computer parts. Their graphics needs are being well served by integrated graphics chips on their motherboards of choice but the audio factor is still an issue.

The Asus Xonar HDAV 1.3 Slim Sound Card solves the space issue by cramming some mighty fine audio components into a half-height form factor. Benchmark Reviews has a look:

Most sound cards sold today are advertised as 7.1 sound cards but that doesn’t mean they can decode the Dolby Digital TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio surround sound formats. Due to the bandwidth limitations of Toslink and coaxial digital cables, these new formats cannot be carried across those mediums. Instead they’re transported on the HDMI cable to the home receiver where the sound is then directed to each speaker. This sound card does have a coaxial output jack but it can only be used for Dolby Digital 5.1 output. You have to use the HDMI outputs in order to experience the Dolby Digital TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio surround sound formats. This sound card is basically identical in features to it’s older and bigger brother, the ASUS HDAV 1.3 with the exception of it being a slim profile thus making it more compatible with smaller HTPC cases.

Decoding those audio tracks for your high end audio setup is obviously this card’s strong suit, if you’re looking for a gaming sound card you may want a different product all together.

ASRock's ION 330-BD, A Compact Tweaker's Home Theater Dream PC

Rafael Hernandez — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:56:00 +0000

The old concept behind a home theater PC was to create a system that would visually fit in with the other components which usually turns into a noisey mess because you’re cooling off some power hungry components.

ASRock’s ION 330-BD on the other hand uses an Intel Atom 330 dual core chip paired with Nvidia’s ION platform for some low-power and high-performance media playback. TweakTown has a look:

As far as noise goes, the system is super quiet at default settings at
around 25db. We used the ASRock EZ Overclocking feature in the BIOS to
overclock the Atom CPU from 1.6GHz to 2.1GHz and to be safe we
increased the fan speeds by using the “Overclocking” fan speed option.
This does increase the volume from the system, but it’s not that loud
and cannot even be noticed at all whilst playing a game or watching a
movie.

Overclocking, dual channel memory, well this is one of the most interesting nettop PCs since…ever.

Seagate FreeAgent Theater HD, Your Portable Harddrive Is Now A Media Serving Juggernaut

Rafael Hernandez — Mon, 25 May 2009 03:12:00 +0000

Dual use devices are wonderful things as they usually solve two problems at once but the idea of turning your portable hard drive into storage for your massive digital multimedia library is a somewhat strange turn of events.

Futurelooks delves into the Seagate FreeAgent Theater HD and its capability to accept any Seagate FreeAgent Go portable hard drive in order to play back media files on your home theater of choice. Here’s a peek:

Included in the box are a set of standard composite video cables, giving you a paltry 480i experience at best. In addition to the composite connection, the FreeAgent Theater also lets you do S-Video or component, but there is no DVI or HDMI option. I would have really liked HDMI output, since it’s just so much easier to connect to most contemporary HDTVs on the market.

Impressive setup if you’re invested in the FreeAgent Go lineup of hard drives.