The 13th International Symposium on Intelligent Signal Processing and Communication Systems was organized by the Department of Electronic Engineering of the University from 13th to 16th December 2005 at the Esther Lee Building. It was sponsored by United College and the IEEE Hong Kong Chapter of Signal Processing. The theme of the conference was 'Multimedia Information Systems for the Future' and was attended by more than 200 delegates from 23 countries. The chairman of the Chinese national audiovisual standard AVS, Prof. Gao Wen (photo) gave a keynote address on the latest development of the standard. The technical programme comprised three keynote addresses, three tutorials, and 36 technical sessions where 250 papers were presented. The conference highlighted the recent advances in the multimedia communications and its applications.