ASUS ships $100 O!Play HDP-R1 HD media streamer
By Darren Murph 
posted Oct 1st 2009 9:52AM
posted Oct 1st 2009 9:52AM
[Via Slashgear]
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Hmmm, looks interesting for half $$ what other players are.
Nice list. Thanks for posting.
But few important - to me - things are missing: Vorbis for audio and ASS for subs.
And brand is ASUS.
I'll pass.
Oops. By OGG they probably mean Vorbis. OGG is a container. Vorbis is a codec.
This looks like it might be the solution I'm looking for. The one feature all these devices are lacking though (that no one else seems to be missing as sorely as I am) is playlist support. Am I the only one who wants to be able to stream several episodes of a tv show to my television without having to navigate to each episode when the previous one ends?
Western digital box kinda lets you do that.
Put all your shows in the same folder, navigate to it and start playing (with play button, not select).
Or, once you've started playing, go to the onscreen options ans select continuous play.
Felix, THANK YOU! I had been annoyed that my WDTV couldn't do this easily, while the old ScreenPlay I used to use did it. I never thought to try using the Play button. Now I have an option to "Play All" or just one at a time depending on the button choice... I appreciate the post. (Yes I'm sure reading the manual would help, but who does that, really?)
BFD -- AppleTV minus the software. Crapgadget >>>> fail.
I think a majority of people (including apple fans) will tell you that Apple TV is a failure at this point
Sure. How about AppleTV + expandable eSata storage + 1080p support
apple is the new sony. they've sold their souls to hollywood.
Crap... I just bought a Western Digital HD Media Player two days ago.
Don't worry too much.
The W.D is still an excellent choice, dual USB slots and excellent playback of 1080P (until over 20GB i have heard). Finally the User Interface is brilliant and there is also a strong fanbase, there is a forum for this and there are many customizations you can do to it. Finally, i think the W.D must have more features for this to cost as much as the Light Edition W.D media player (but we shall see, perhaps it was just because W.D were in a sort of monopoly)
the wdtv is a good player, it plays most things you can throw at it, the wd firmware is not bad and fans have customised it to fill in the blanks, like usb to ethernet support.
avs forums dot com had a very good thread on such tweaks last time I visited and if I had a wdtv thats the place I would go.
The software is always what gets you on these...It makes or breaks the device, regardless of how many formats and resolutions it supports.
Exactly. I've already sent back one of these "too good too be true" players for the lack of networking support. The specs here don't say anything about what type of file can be used. The one I sent back only supported a Public folder share from a PC. No server support at all. No NFS.
This one doesn't say anything about shares. Will be interesting to see what it really supports. Then too, we don't know what the gen 2 WDTV with Ethernet is going to support either. Hopefully it will have similar capabilities to the current firmware mods.
it would be nice if i could stream iso's over it. its such a pain transcoding my dvds to any format. anyone know of a good hardware setup to stream iso files?
Cinematube plays ISO files like a champ (the reason I started using it over my WDTV). I haven't tried it streamed yet, only via USB because I haven't gotten around to running the ethernet yet....but I would assume that it would stream it just as well as it would play it from the USB.
http://www.brite-view.com/cinematube.php
wow, thanks a ton. this will be great!
uh, that thing isn't even released yet?
Popcorn hour.
so i found the cinematube for 90 bucks on amazon, no waiting for nothin. they are shipping it tomorrow morning. this is hopefully gona be great. i just freed up an old external and threw all my movies on there. ima use the built in networking when i get it set up later. thanks dude!!
maybe i will take her back home and how her my O! Play. O! O! O!
how = show , of course.
Hmm this looks good value. Sorta inavdes some of the SlimDevices space and adds 108P Video play as well. Next move back over to SD at Logitech? Also invades NeurosAudio space.
hi
stream netflix dang it
Get an Xbox 360... they are dirt cheap & great media extenders + u can stream netflix... even in HD..
I hope the name doesn´t create confusion with this http://www.durex.com/en-gb/playo product here in europe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Use9jdUJstI
It's a shame it doesn't come with WiFi support. That would have made it perfect for sitting under the TV. I can't see many wives being happy about having an additional cable being run from the router to this.
ha! You know?
My wife won't care since in our home the router is right next to the living TV.
I image others are not so lucky
i'd almost bit eon this.. but first i'd need to make sure that we can get boxee up and running on this puppy.
Does this stream Hulu/Boxee? I'd get it if it does. Of course the lack of wifi is annoying. I have Tivo HD with the wifi but I dont think that streams Hulu/Boxee. Anyone have any idea?
Any idea how this would compare to the WD HD 2 player?
@Gipionocheiyort
Wow thanks, that is what I have been looking for, I had been waiting for the new WDTV with network support, but Ive just been sick of waiting (That one also has an estimated price of over $100), I was on the verge of getting this ASUS one, until I saw your suggestion
@Acme:
300 units were released on sept 21st to the first set of preorders, they are doing another run of 100 pre orders with a release for Oct 5th. (Then the price goes up)
I can stream from my PC via Wifi media files (movies, music, youtube, netflix) on my LG BD-390 BluRay player. What would i get out of owning this device?
Can this record TV shows like a DVR?
It's nice to see cheaper units coming to market
I'm still looking for a good solution that includes an ATSC tuner that gives me PVR functions to save recordings to an internal hard drive I can install or to an external USB/eSata hard drive. Of course, the more formats it can decode, including ISO and MKV, the better.
Does anyone know of such a solution for the North American market.
I like the new Popcorn Hour model, but it does not have any PVR functions as far as I can tell.
Thanks,
TV
I say get the Acer Aspire Revo and run XBMC on it.
They're only running 200 @ newegg, but it'd be a better experience.
Wow, that's an insanely good price for this thing! But I do wonder if the ION LE w/ single core is going to be beefy enough to handle the animation heavy WMC (or XBMC) interface and 1080p video smoothly. Better to wait for the full ION? Still, wow.
Wait for full ION? Ion LE came out after the ION and the original Acer Aspire Revo was released before that. The only difference is lack of DX10 anyway, and do you really need it with only an atom processor?
This comment system is broken.. this is the third attempt to add a reply.
Acer Revo runs XBMC and full HD like a champ.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf5h6QxFleE
Boxee might be another alternative instead of xmbc.
That aspire looks pretty sweet... would it pair well with a happauge win hd tv pvr so I can record shows off of my tivo?
h0mi
With the Acer, you could use pyTivo to copy the shows from your TiVo to the HD, then use tivodecrypter so that any media player can read them.
@chris- I have some shows that can't be pulled off using pytivo (and I bought tivo desktop anyway) because of CCI bytes so I'd be using the hauppage device. I tried this on my laptop and had problems with playback so I'm trying to get upgraded hardware that would let me know if my software or hardware is fubared or not.
I just ordered one. should be here tomorrow. Will post results.
I ordered one this afternoon. Hopefully gets here this week. Will also post results :P
Anyone know of a player that can playback uncompressed MKV files? or even Bluray ISO with menu support? I'm not looking for streaming, but that wouldn't be bad either.
MKV is just a container, and do you really mean uncompressed? No-one (outside of maybe film and broadcast) uses lossless compression. let alone uncompressed digital video.
me too! and if it can pass through dts hd master and true hd audio? looking forward to a review!
I meant something that could play X.264 MKV or M2TS. Is that a correct way of putting it?
save in favorite, wait for detail review, then decide! But it looks good to me!
Does this thing pass-through the HD audio formats? If not, it's a FAIL in my opinion.
Its supposed to but its broken apparently according to the asus forums
If it's 'broken', then it may as well not be there. It's a big FAIL to me until it works. If not, I'm looking at other products.
Is this supposed to compete with the Roku box? Or is this more geared to do Flash, web browsing, etc? I'm just not sure where this thing fits in
That is an inexcusably horrible name. Yeah, I know, it would be the same little box no matter what the name - but nobody is going to want to actually say the name in a product review. This means nobody is going to want to review it or talk about it.
Why couldn't they have just come up with a better name? They're doomed with this name!
SWEET!!!!!!!!! Just ordered it on amazon can't wait till next week
devil is in the details more then the raw specs:
does it lag
do the menues lag on large collections of audio
thumbnail suppport?
play files over 4GBs?
can i save files to attached drives from a networked computer?
subtitle support? formats, inside, outside?
etc.
hmmm... this one may come down to the software/OSD.
I need something like this, but with the beauty of a customized MediaPortal interface... until then, full HTPC's are my only option. :(
I am continually disappointed when I see yet another dlna media streamer because they are so close to getting it right, yet miss the mark by depending on dlna instead of just using a network file share. I understand that they are easier to setup but as far as I can tell it causes them to miss two features that are important, and very important to me, both due to dlna compliant devices being read only.
Important: I would like my media player to update my files with fan art, lookup reviews and setup a nice gui surrounding my video files, something like XBMC would do. Technically this wouldn't require righting to the file share as a separate database could be maintained on the media player that synced up to the dlna served video files and held the metadata.
Very important: I want to be able to delete the files when I am done. I may be unique here, as I have never seen anyone else complain about this but to me it is huge. I like to watch a tv show or movie, then delete it. Even though I have plenty of storage space I rarely watch media twice, there is just too much new interesting content coming out. I would say I save maybe 1 out of every 10 files for later viewing. Music and photos of course are a different story, but with video, I tend to watch it and delete it. Say I'm watching something that is episodic in nature, like the latest tech podcast, I like to queue them up and watch a few at a time, then not come back to them for a month. If I am not able to delete them directly from my media player I have to remember to go to my computer and delete them manually later (not a huge chore, but far from ideal) or I leave them on the network and then a month later can't remember where I left off so I end up watching the first few minutes of a few different files until I figure out which one I watched last. Much easier to just watch it and delete it as I used to do in XBMC on my xbox before I made the jump to HD. Now my xbox collects dust as it just doesn't have the horsepower to handle my HD content.
Due to this I will probably be buying an Atom/ION type box soon as I prefer the lower power consumption to a full blown desktop PC based HTPC device, but any of these cheap popcorn hour/Asus/Western Digital type media players would work for me if only they would allow me to delete files once I had watched them.
Or am I missing something? Does anyone know of a way to enable file handling, not just viewing from these devices?
Popcorn Hour + Dynamic YAMJ. Put a season of shows in a folder, let it index. It grabs the DVD cover and fanart as well as info on cast, director and so on. You can even click on an actor and have it pull up anything that person is in within your index of media. I watch an episode, hit the Watched key and then it flips to the next episode. Now hit play. If you go into the show again the next day it automatically hops to the next unwatched episode. I can no longer imagine any other way to watch seasons of TV shows.
I have the same concern. XBMC spoiled me with my original Xbox. I miss not being able to delete files directly from the unit itself. This is also something that weighs HEAVILY in my decision to purchase one.
At that price point,this is the definitive WD TV killer.It looks good + eSATA + ethernet.
Win Win Win
Does it do MKV chapter points?
HTPC + XBMC. make the space you space challenged buffoons
Fry's has had it in store for like 3 weeks already $99.99
Not sure how to ask this, but with the knowledge on this thread I was wondering if you guys can help out.
Is there any type of media streamer that would connect to our Samsung LCD TV via HDMi that is capable of just showing/displaying(including sound) the content that would be on our computer (iMac with OS-x).
I'm not worried about menu's or control, just the ability to have what is being shown on our computer to be shown live on our TV, but over a wifi connection...
With the layout of our house and the location of the computer routing a cable is not possible...
Thanks...
Picked this up at a local Fry's last week. My HTPC is collecting dust and and thinking about geting another to replace a Popcorn A110.
Plays all video i threw at it, AND handles .idx/.sub. So happy I waffled on paying $350+ for the C-200!
My needs are simple though, want a living room box that plays all formats with .srt/.sub/.idx with QUICK network access, external drive a plus. Don't need blu-ray, internal drive, torrent, net streaming etc.
Only issues I have so far are stuttering when changing subs, cannot size .srt and there is no jump ahead fast forward or reverse
Sound nice, but if you have a Tivo, why bother with another box. You can copy your videos from your computer to a Tivo or Stream with software and its works pretty nice.
Leslie
I have an xtreamer and that is also missing these features, although to be fair as i understand it for both devices the reason its missing as the sdk for the chips its built on supposedly does not fully support it, I think beta releases of it now do so when the next fw releases come out it will be fixed without the need for asus or xtreamer to do any real work.
if you can afford a Dolby Master decoder and really have a 7.1 setup why would you opt for the most budget streamer?
that said and your point may have been that people need to realise HD is more than pixels on the screen and anyone who thinks HD is a 1080P tv playing the content via its built in stereo speakers is a couple of fries short of a happy meal ;) I for one am all up for HD audio, and only totally pissed my amp only accetps 7.1 LPCM :(
My O!Play arrived today! I plugged it into Ethernet, HDMI, and Power, and was streaming 720p MKV's over the network within a few minutes. I just had to enter my username and password to access my shares and voila.
I don't have any 1080p stuff to try (46" 720p Sony TV) but 720p plays great so far. My housemate wondered if it had any sort of visualizations for music but I couldn't find anything with a quick glance and much button pressing. I didn't buy it for music anyway so I don't care.