ASUS O!Play - TV HD Media Player (Black)

Ok - I just have to say that my review will pale in comparison to Buru buru piggu's review - he's the best reviewer out there. I just want to say that this thing rocks!!!!I should mention I don't use it over the network - I don't feel like I need to, I just plug a hard drive in. As such, I will not be talking about network functionality.I have a 1.5 year old Samsung 32-inch 720p HDTV, and I have to say - when I play the .mkv or .mp4 rips i have on this box, it looks like a real Blu-Ray or like seeing it on HDTV cable or something. It is unreal. I CAN'T GET OVER HOW AWESOME THIS IS! I am always turning to my wife and saying, "You see this quality? You see this quality? Do you? Look at this quality!" Though, admittedly, she is not as into stuff like that as I am. :)IMPORTANT NOTE: Make sure you update the firmware. It fixes a bunch of things. For me, it made the interface a bit better and loaded the hard drives faster, and added skip by different increments of minutes (because fast forwarding and rewinding is a bit weak), and it fixed a stuttering issue I had when trying to play Planet Earth 1080p files. But I did have that stuttering issue before I upgraded - good thing this update is out there....So please - it comes with 1.07 and you need to update to 1.17. To get it, go to the ASUS Website [...]and select Product - Multimedia, Series-Digital Media Player, and Models- O Play HDPR-1 from the drop down menus. Then, SELECT YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM AS LINUX - EVEN IF YOU USE WINDOWS. Go in the firmware section and get 1.17N (if you're using an American TV, which is usually NTSC). Unzip it and place it on a flash drive, plug in the flash drive, then find the system update button in your setting menu somewhere (the download comes with a PDF with detailed instructions, so use that for help). Now, you should be up and running real smooth.PROS: Just about everything! This thing rocks! I'm rockin' a 1.5TB Western Digital My Book, 3 other 500GB WD My Books, a 500GB Apricorn Aegis drive, and 250GB Apricorn Aegis - these drives are some FAT32 and some NTFS, and they all work like a charm. No complaints!CONS:1) Fast-forwarding and rewinding are weak, you should use one minute skip or something and then rw/ff to get to a specific place quicker. (Skip function is awesome when you can get to the middle of a movie in one-click if you're set to 30-minute skips, by the way.)2) Only one USB port. Not a major problem, but less convenient than the 2 that the WD Live has.3) For pictures - I love the way the pictures look on the TV, but I wish there was a slideshow or random function for pictures. if there is and i just don't know it, please let me know. I haven't tried out music yet, but I'm sure it's fine.All in all - BUY THIS PRODUCT. It is not very big (sits neatly on top of my XBOX 360). I would say it's a little smaller than my WD My Books. I don't care what it looks like. It's black, blends in nicely enough, and I really don't care what it looks like, as long as The Dark Knight looks frickin' fantastic on my TV, which it does!While I am not suggesting you go out and get yourselves some Blu-Ray Rip torrents, we all know why people are buying this box, and it's not for the pictures. All I can say is that my TV Shows in .mkv format look like they do if watched on Live HTDV (maybe almost better), and I don't own a Blu-Ray player but yet can still enjoy them... ;)On a more nostalgic note, I remember saying to myself when DVDs came out, "Wow...look at this quality! How can it get any better than this??" Well, ladies and gentlemen, it can and it did. Big time. I want to say it to myself again now, because how could quality get any better than super-crisp, right? But I know I'll just have to eat my words in 10 years again.... :)Bottome line: BUY THIS.UPDATE: ALSO - I bought a USB splitter and now I can easily have 4 hard drives plugged in to the unit and it shows them all there and I can easily navigate between all of them. So, that one USB port thing is now solved for me with a simple $10 purchase.

I bought the O!Play HDP-R1 to replace a lousy media player, the Iomega Screenplay HD Pro. The Screenplay unit could not play .mkv and other HD-format containers without transcoding files on a PC, which became impossible after I upgraded to Windows 7. Rather than releasing its long-promised firmware upgrade that permitted authentication between the Screenplay unit and Win7's new CIFS/SMB settings (even after paying for Win7 Professional to have access to my PC's local security policies), Iomega apparently opted to launch the new HD-capable Screenplay Director unit and leave the rest of us stranded.The O!Play's benefits out of the box for me include its SATA port for faster data-transmission, its bring-your-own-storage value proposition, and the $99 price tag. For me, the player's most remarkable features are the following:1. Native, on-board HD support: The O!Play plays back .mkv, .m2ts, .ogm, and other complex container formats on the first attempt in many cases.2. Reliable Fast-Ethernet port for LAN access to file sharing: The O!Play can access media from LAN-networked drives not attached to the player at transmission speeds that typically range from 20-45 Mbps. A 45 Mbps rate compares very favorably versus my older player, the Screenplay HD Pro, which averaged 15-22 Mbps in spite of my using a gigabit router with Cat-6 cables connecting to every LAN device. With the Screenplay's poor transmission speeds, transcoding a 6-8 GB HD film via a non-Win7 PC still tends to result in 10-second buffering every few minutes and frequent, abrupt ends to video playback. By contrast, the O!Play handles these files' compression, expansion, and LAN transfer with no buffering necessary, in my experience. As a result, I don't need to have any storage directly connected to the O!Play - I just access files via the LAN.3. UPnP support: In addition to file playback across the LAN, the O!Play can access media-scraper file information and multi-drive library information via XBMC or other content-management software, helping users select music and video files by genre, year, title, etc. I run XBMC on my PC in minimized mode (press the backslash button), and navigate to the XBMC 'server' from O!Play's UPnP option.In spite of these pluses, O!Play users may encounter a few snags after setup:1. File sharing login prompts: Reading content in folders shared over a LAN may be blocked by a user-name and password prompt, even after sharing permissions are established for those folders. One solution is to create a PC user with user name OPlayer and password OPlayer.2. Firmware update: Some O!Play functionality may be limited until users upgrade to the 1.17 firmware on Asus' site.3. System freezes: Before I created the OPlayer user credentials on my PC, my attempts to access shared folders across the LAN met with O!Player freezes. I just unplugged and restarted the player, but fortunately, creating the OPlayer user credentials on my PC seems to have solved the problem.After these improvements, there are a few limitations that a prospective O!Play buyer should consider:1. Lousy file-manipulation options: The O!Play's file-copy feature lets users copy-paste or cut-paste files between any storage attached to the O!Play, but to delete files, users may need to format drives to include a $Recyclebin folder, with which the cut-paste command effectively becomes a delete command. Also, I haven't been able to map the O!Play as a network drive via my PC, no matter how I assign IP addresses to the player.2. No DVR functionality: I may be mistaken, but I don't think the O!Play allows users to record TV programs using component cables.3. Simplistic user manual: Given all the manual tinkering that the O!Play may require, Asus would do well to give advanced users a better explanation of the player's features.After a weekend of tinkering, the O!Play works at a level up to my expectations. If I were more patient, I might have waited for the new Popcorn player's release, but the price and capabilities of the O!Play make it a solid purchase for users with home networks.

this product works great already have one. Was looking to have 2 for the other TV. This model no longer avalable so I ordered its replacement. I would never buy anything else but ASUS

Watch all your computer files on your TV. Enjoy great movies.The service was excellent. The plug in was Corian and had to be switched but they wre quick to help me.

Awesome

love this media player