looks like theres the reason for the open ended 4x slot.

the HDMI card ,,, look at it, it only has 4x slot worth of pins,, and the rest is missing the pins so you would need an open ended slot to make the card fit.

i think the size of the PCB is retarded but hell if they are willing to give you an HDMI adapter, more power to them, its just too bad the intel onboard video chipset is just absolutely worthless and even if you did use the HDMI adapter it still wouldnt be worth it.

i just highly doubt its capabilities for VC1 and x264 encoding/decoding and proper video out color, black levels, etc etc..

intel, king of the cpu market cant even make a decent video chipset. lol