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.

There’s nothing quite like seeing a product’s unveiling to verify that yes you too will be able to get your hands on the product. Nvidia’s Ion platform has had something of a whirlwind press blast givien its use of an Intel Atom CPU and the company’s GeForce 9400M chipset which combines for low-power yet very capable multimedia performance.

engadget has an unboxing of the Acer AspireRevo, one of the first nettop PCs to use the Ion platform. Here’s a snippet:

We just tore the packaging off of Acer’s new AspireRevo nettop and dove into its Ion-powered goodness. The computer is in many ways a product of NVIDIA’s designs, since the Ion-powered nettop reference platform has been a part of the Ion ecosystem for a while, and this Revo apple doesn’t fall from the NVIDIA tree.

A slick machine, and perhaps a boon to all of those wanting a slim home theater PC.