 Manufacturer : ASUS Computer International Direct Model : O!Play ASIN : B002MCZJ3C Price : 99.99$ Last Price : 265.81$(Discount -165.836583658366% See Special Offers   Product DescriptionThe Asus ASU-HDP-R1-3A O!Play Digital Media Player lets users plug in and enjoy the show.  260 of 274 people found the following review helpful: A truly impressive and versatile media player, with some flaws This review is from: ASUS O!Play - TV HD Media Player (Black) (Electronics) SETUP: With the new firmware, UPnP has been added, along with some slightly improved icons. With UPnP, the O!Play sees Chinese and Japanese filenames properly, but none of my MKV's showed up, a problem I had on all networked players I've tested. Only a fraction of my total library was listed. If you want to see your entire list, don't use UPnP. INTERFACE AND USABILITY: During video or image playback, the picture can be zoomed up to 8x. During video playback, the fast-forward/rewind can go up to 32x. The inclusion of volume control buttons is very thoughtful and useful. You can turn video preview on or off. Pausing over a file for a second will play it in a smaller window on the right (with audio). There is a slight delay of a second or two when reading the file's metadata off a drive or the network, during which time you can't push the play button. This can be a potential problem for people and gets annoying. For music, pausing over the file displays the ID3 info (song name, artist, album name, year, etc). One cool feature is the ability to adjust the device options while playing back a movie. The menu overlays on top of the movie and you can adjust your settings (Brightness, Contrast, Aspect Ratio, etc) and resume. There's also a Noise Reduction option, but I suggest turning this OFF. It caused strange and distracting frame shimmering in some movies. Lastly, O!Play also remembers where you left off on each movie and can resume the next time you play the file. FORMAT SUPPORT: This is where the O!Play really shines. It played all of the 100+ random files I threw at it, except for a few stray (and poor quality) .WMV files I got from the internet. MKV, AVI, MPG, DIVX, RM, TS all played flawlessly, both standard def and hi-def 720p/1080i/p content. It even plays Flash Video (FLV), a feature rarely encountered. DTS and Dolby multi-channel audio is downsampled to stereo, so there's no need for an audio receiver if you just want to output through the TV for convenience. The Asus also plays .IFO/VOB files with DVD chapters, menus, and all disc features as if it were the original DVD. That's great news for users looking to make a centralized DVD collection on a server or a big hard drive. The only problem is there doesn't seem to be a button to get back to the menu. You have to stop the movie and start it again. For photos, the ASUS has a problem displaying progressive JPEGs. Images will fit to screen and can zoom up to 8x, but there's no 1x view to see it at the original size. EXTERNAL SUBTITLES: I tested external .SRTs and internally embedded subtitles in .MKV's in a number of languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Russian, English, French, and others. All worked when saved as UTF-8. For multilingual families and fans of foreign film, this is great news. You can also set the interface to one of 10 major world languages. Subtitle files can be downloaded from sites like DivxStation. With firmware 1.11, external and internal subs are both recognized if both types co-exist for a movie. Previously, only embedded subs were seen when a movie had both types. Now, pushing the subtitle button pops up a submenu where you can select the subtitle, change its encoding, font size, position, color, and importantly, syncing (many downloaded subtitles are off by a few seconds). This is very useful! No more re-saving. Just cycle through the available encodings or adjust the timing until the sub looks right (but you should still re-save to avoid doing this every time). Where multiple external subs existed, the O!Play did not recognize their names, showing only a number (like "Subtitle: 2 (SRT)", even when named according to the movie's filename (e.g. "Batman.mkv" -> "Batman - English.srt"). Pushing the info button a second time shows extended info like codec, resolution, and bitrate. It is better to mux the subtitle into the file using something like mkvmerge GUI and metatag the language name onto it. Subtitle line-spacing is a bit of an issue (too much). You can change the font size and color, but not the gap. Lastly, I wish for a thick black outline around the text like the WDTV Live. Sometimes the subtitle blends into the movie, no matter what color you set it to. 10/100 NETWORK INTERFACE: This is a weak point for the device. With no gigabit Ethernet, it is less future-proof against monster 8GB+ .MKV files and other bandwidth intensive HD content. Also lack of wireless connectivity means I do not have freedom to locate this device wherever I want. FINAL THOUGHTS: The O!Play is truly a multimedia beast. It plays nearly everything under the sun and as a WDTV and WDTV live owner, I can safely say that Western Digital has some serious competition here. At $99, it is a very capable device at a fantastic value, and its homely interface is forgivable. It is, however, rather boxy and brick-like, taking up as much space as a 3.5" external hard drive or an average Bible. It's 2x the size of the WDTV. Lastly, WDTV Live has Flickr, YouTube, and Pandora streaming. O!Play has no internet playback capabilities as of the current firmware release, though that can quickly change. ASUS has already added substantial improvements like the subtitle fixes and UPnP. If wireless connectivity could be added with a firmware update, then this player will be all things to all people. (WDTV Live supports third party WiFi dongles). This is THE player to get if you want MKV, RMVB, and DVD .IFO support and don't care about wireless. Great value coupled with a great firmware support attitude makes this a highly recommended buy, and I hope ASUS surprises us with more software features down the road. UPDATE #1: Dec 10/09: Firmware 1.17 is now available, which adds BD .iso support and lets you jump forward by 5/10/15/30 mins. UPDATE #2: Feb 15/10: Firmware 1.21 has just been released. It adds MAJOR internet content connectivity as well as the option to wirelessly connect your R1! This is something users have been clamoring for since this product's release and a giant leap forward. With a compatible USB dongle, this thing does everything the Air does, except the media... 186 of 212 people found the following review helpful: awesome This review is from: ASUS O!Play - TV HD Media Player (Black) (Electronics) asus box Speaking as someone who really does own this device - this thing rules. It streams easily and quickly from my xp box in my basement over cat5 cable. (or the technologically inept may just hook a USB or esata hard drive direct) It plays everything so far including ISO (dvd image) files, video_ts rips from dvds (I know someone will ask these questions) but I did it already and it works great. Other files, MKV, xvid, divx, whatever. PERFECT. 1080P, blue ray quality files look perfect. No blockiness, no hesitation, no problems. And they start IMMEDIATELY. All you need do is create a share on the server pc, then create a shortcut to it on the asus. (EASY) And off you go. Some files will not easily fastforward/rewind, and that mostly relates to how well the original creator encoded the file. In other words, if they used lousy/cheap software to rip a file, it may not fastforward smoothly, but it will still play. The other con is no wireless networking. Now, I personally don't care about this because I have cat5 cable already and real wired networking is far more reliable. Also, it probably makes the product cheaper. If you have a habit of playing huge 1080p files and want to go wireless, you may have to go with 802.11N hardware if you encounter stuttering. If it stutters it's probably not the Asus's fault. As a sidenote, I have tried other methods of showing movies and such on TV's. Xbox360, PS3, PC. They all have huge disadvantages, mostly relating to codecs and incompatabilities and transcoding and such for the Xbox and PS3. It's just too much trouble. Seriously. I've become somewhat of an expert on the subject and I got really sick of saying "I downloaded this sick video, lets watch it" and then some error message comes on because of some obscure encoding quirk like wmv 8.2jafjSOB352. I wouldn't have bought either game console had I known what a pain it was. Especially the media sharing and transcoding, don't get me started. (I don't play games) The PC, well, still too darn much trouble - I have to give tech support to every tom, frank, and larry who just want to watch a movie. Log into the computer, start media center, navigate, navigate, navigate. Ugh. Have done XP media center, vista media center, windows 7 ultimate media center. Holy moley, just forget it - I don't want to train people. This Asus thing? Connect and go. No joke. I will not mention macs, because you know what? No matter which way you go with Apple, it's more than $99. (and I don't own one because I don't think different) I don't work for any of these companies, I'm just happy I can watch a movie. That's all I ever wanted. Oh, and full subtitles and multiple audiotracks, no problems at all. Oh, and I own a WD Media TV thing as well. No networking and audio troubles to boot. Blech. This review is from: ASUS O!Play - TV HD Media Player (Black) (Electronics) Update Nov/11/09: I installed the latest firmware and this solved several of the issues I had. I edited a few things I have previously written. I bought this box based on many positive reviews here. My experiences differ a little though. Yes this unit plays pretty much anything. That's a big plus. The interface and setup is also very simple and easy. You really don't need a manual for it. The image quality is great, both SD and HD movies look excellent. It even playes ISO files of DVDs or bluray disks! That's a very nice feature as you can dump the whole DVD to disk and get all menus and features. It does not play ISO files from the old HD-DVD disks. That's a bummer as this would give us access to very inexpensive HD movies. There is a fix provided you have a HD-DVD drive. A software called Clown_BD (google it) will create a .ts file from your HD-DVD disk in 20 min. These will play fine on the O!Play. Even though it's supposed to play ISO images from bluray disk, it still has some issues with that. Transformer 1 for example doesn't have sound (it says 'unsupported audio format'). I have a collection of 400+ movies on my server, in various formats. The O!Play plays them all. The slightly annoying thing is that as you scroll through a list of movie files it tries to instantly play a preview which causes a delay in scrolling through the list. This preview feature can now (new firmware) be turned off in the setup so the annoying delay can now be reduced but not entirely avoided. It still takes two or three seconds before it actually allows you to hit play (using a fast network). :-/ The bigger issue I found was that it stops to play back in the middle of a movie. It happened on every movie I tried it on so far, so it's not a random issue. The new firmware seems to have fixed this issue but I haven't had the time to test this with enough movies to be sure. I will update my review once I have had the chance to test more and confirm it's really fixed. The O!Play now supports media servers! The firmware that my box came with did not, so you have to upgrade the firmware. (It is very easy though!) The O!Play uses very little power which I think is a big plus! My PS3 needs 150-200 Watt, the O!Play only 10.  Films Works great even with the new 3Tb drives (with the upgrade from the web site) I have bought more for friends. So easy plug in hard drive plug into TV and watch! by Tandiwe ASUS O!Play - great I've had this unit for about a year and no problems only to upgrade the firmware. Great little media player that can play all video formats. I would recommend this unit. by CB Very poor customer service This bad thing does not have a button on it, so you have to use remote control. What if you lose your remote control or can not find it somewhere? by xnzhxnzh Great replacement of DVD player This plays a lot of formats and is a good replacement of a dvd player. You just need a hard disk and just need to plug it in. by Nayan Zaveri Just as I expected from Asus The Asus Media Player does its job. Mine came with firmware verison 1.33 and I had to upgrade to its latest firmware Version 1.35 + 1. by A. Yi A pain Wow this box sucks. My main interest was sharing files from my computer. It does that but you have to go through several screens to find your media and it is slow. by Kenneth R. Farley Doesn't play all formats it says it does My review is, basically, it's ok. I bought it to view AVI/WMV/MKV/MP4/FLV files. I had previously been converting these files to dvd, which can take hours per disc... by Disco Mystic Great Product! Very Happy with this player! It plays everything I throw at it. Including downloaded hulu videos, youtube, etc. by Hi-Tek-Red-Neck Awesome deal for great product Well I was looking for a good HD player which can play my vedios on my LCD, and what better player can I get than ASUS O Player. by Rishi wished i had looked closer at reviews so i bought it and found it did the avi files i had but none of the wmv files i had created from the 150 titles i had .......make sure you use something it likes like the avi files by Christopher Brown |
Friday, December 23, 2011
ASUS O!Play - TV HD Media Player (Black)
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