ASUS ships $100 O!Play HDP-R1 HD media streamer
By Darren Murph 
posted October 1st 2009 9:52AM
posted October 1st 2009 9:52AM
[Via Slashgear]
posted October 1st 2009 9:52AM
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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.