Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I just spent a weekend building a XP Media Center 2005 PC using this mini-ATX board. It has everything: HDMI output, optical digital audio output, and built-in ATI HD3200 video with Avivo.
Just run HDMI to your TV/monitor for video and the optical digital to your receiver for Dolby Digital...no need to buy an add-on sound or video card. If you want coaxial digital audio you can fabricate a RCA jack with two wires directly to the SPDIF jack on the board. An easier route is to buy a optical to coaxial digital converter from Radio Shack. That's what I did, works great.
HDMI tip: do not install a separate video card before first startup. Otherwise the Asus driver CD will not 'show' the ATI video drivers on the CD. If you pull the video board, the ATI and HDMI drivers magically appear on the CD as a choice to select. Puzzled me at first.
The only flaw I've seen is that it uses "auto-configure" rear panel jacks to sense what's connected. This means I have to have my plasma TV on and set to the HDMI input before I turn on the PC...otherwise the motherboard thinks the TV is off and disables its HDMI output. Kind if a pain as I then have to reboot the PC. Easy for me but not so easy for my wife and kids. Asus needs to allow this feature to be shut off in the bios.
**11/2009 update. I am using this with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit and Media Center works great with this board. I installed a AMD quad 620 processor along with the quietest power supply I could find, and the system is nearly silent and runs cooler than my AMD dual core. And yes audio does pass out of the HDMI jack, you just have to switch it from SPDIF to HDMI in the bios.
Click Here to see more reviews about: ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+ AMD 780G DDR2-1066 ATX Motherboard
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