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.

The Xonar HDAV1.3 features Protected Audio Playback Systems (PAPS) and full Advanced Access Content System (AACS) certification. Without both certifications, typical PCs must down-sample Blu-ray audio into DVD quality (48K/16bit). Utilizing ArcSoft's Total Media Theater, the ASUS Xonar HDAV1.3 is capable of decoding Blu-ray movies and takes full advantage of lossless digital audio formats such as Dolby® TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio™ for professional, high-fidelity sound at 24bit, 96–192Khz. The PCI-based Xonar HDAV1.3 Slim is also designed from the ground up, and is built for next generation HTPCs. Equipped with the proprietary AV200 audio processor and certified HDMI1.3a connect, it is capable of delivering the highest quality 7.1 channel 192K linear pulse code modulation (LPCM) audio and high definition video through the HDMI port.

Transcend Information, Inc. (Transcend®), a worldwide leader in storage and multimedia products, today announced its alliance with Trend Micro, Inc., a global leader in Internet content security, to offer advanced Trend Micro USB Security software preloaded on its newest USB flash drive, the JetFlash® V15. With this powerful combination of Transcend hardware and industry-leading Trend Micro software, users can now share, store and manage valuable data more safely and securely than ever. 

To combat against a rise in Autorun malware that infect removable drives and then spread across corporate networks that Trend Micro threat researchers discovered last year, a unique software program called Trend Micro USB Security was developed specifically to protect against malicious content in files transferred to a USB flash drive. With its easy-to-use interface and simple one-step activation process, Trend Micro USB Security protects the JetFlash V15 from the first moment it is plugged in. If threats are discovered, users will be alerted and all infected files will be quarantined. 

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Verbatim is currently celebrating its 40th year in the data storage industry. The company recently sent over a stack of press materials covering its history as well as many of technological advancements its been responsible for. Verbatim also included a short Q and A with Verbatim's president, Randy Queen. If you've been wondering how Verbatim got where it is today or where its going in the future, you'll want to check it out.

NEC Electronics today introduced the world's first Universal Serial Bus (USB) host controller (part number µPD720200) for the new SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard. NEC Electronics expects rapid adoption of the device and standard as the need to transfer larger and larger amounts of information between PCs to external hard-drives, portable electronics devices, and flash-based thumb drives, continues to grow rapidly.

The µPD720200 device is a host controller for PCs and other digital devices, and is based on the new version of the SuperSpeed USB standard. Supporting the world's fastest USB transfer speeds of up to 5 gigabits per second (Gbps) of data, which is 10 times faster than previous USB 2.0 transfer speeds. The NEC Electronics device, as well as the standard, is fully backward compatible with the USB 2.0, 1.1 and 1.0 versions of the USB standard.

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