Asus has launched an updated version of its O!Play media streaming device. You can hook the new O!Play HD2 up to your TV and plug in a USB flash drive, hard drive, or flash card to pump audio, video, or pictures out to your big screen. You can also connect to shared network drives over a home network.

What’s new is that the O!Play HD2 supports USB 3.0 as well as eSATA for super speedy connections.

We don’t have complete specs yet, so it’s not clear whether the O!Play HD2 supports wireless networking or if you’ll have to plug in an Ethernet cable to stream media over a home network.

via SlashGear

Microsoft’s Zune HD is a touchscreen portable media player that has a number of things going for it. It’s thin, light, and has a brilliant OLED display. It can play 720p WMV and H.264 videos, which means you may be able to copy movies from your collection without transcoding them first. But the device doesn’t actually have an HD display. Instead, it has a 480 x 272 pixel widescreen display that’s actually smaller than the iPod Touch screen, which may come as a surprise to anyone that assumes a devices with HD in its name would actually display HD video.

The Zune HD is also one of the first consumer electronics devices to use the new NVIDIA Tegra platform, which bundles an ARM-based processor with NVIDIA graphics. This is how the low-power media player can play high bitrate HD video flawlessly. The Tegra processor also enables 3D graphics effects which show up in menu animations and in some of the handful of applications currently available for the Zune HD.

The folks at NVIDIA sent me a Zune HD to review for a few weeks. I recently took it on vacation to put it through the paces. The model featured in this review has 16GB of storage. A 32GB version is also available. You can find the complete review at mobiputing.

Gizmodo

Ever since Asus sent me an O!Play HD media player to review, I’ve been meaning to gather a few more of these tiny media boxes and do a proper roundup. But Gizmodo has beat me to it. The tech blog put together a not-quite comprehensive roundup of media streaming devices from Western Digital, Seagate, Popcorn Hour, Patrio, and Netgear.

The Patriot box is actually quite similar to the Asus O!Play and has similar software and support for all the same audio and video codecs, which is to say, nearly all of them. But Gizmodo found that the video quality on the Patriot box was subpar. Gizmodo’s Wilson Rothman liked the Western Digital and Seagate devices best, but the truth is most of these little guys have clunky interfaces, lack support for online media, some video formats, or suffer from other problems.

In related news, Engadget reports that Asus has released an updated version of the O!Play in Spain. The O!Play HDP-R3 has integrated 802.11b/g/n WiFi and a flash card reader and sells for about $133.

But I’m starting to think the best low cost media player is really just a nettop with good graphics capabilities like the $330 Acer AspireRevo AR3610. Sure, it costs more than most of the other boxes, but not a lot more. And it’s a heck of a lot more versatile.

Of course, right now I’m just using my Nintendo Wii as a media center by using Orb to stream videos from the living room PC and PlayOn to stream videos from Hulu and other web sites.

Patriot is a company better known for producing RAM and flash cards than media streaming devices. but the company’s new Patriot Box Office is an HD media player that you can plug into an HDTV (or standard def set) to watch videos, listen to music or view images on your TV. You know, just like the Asus O!Play HD Media Player.

The Patriot Box Office is available for pre-order from Amazon for 30, and I noticed something funny when I was looking at the images: The user interface looks virtually identical to the O!Play UI. It’s likely that both boxes are actually using the same Linux-based software, although it’s not clear to me whether it was developed in-house by Asus or if both companies are licensing it from another party.

That said, the Patriot Box Office does have a few features that help justify the price, which is $30 higher than the asking price for the O!Play. First, while both devices can play media from USB hard drives or flash drives or from a shared network drive using an Ethernet connection, the Patriot Box Office also features an internal 2.5″ hard drive bay. The drive isn’t included, but you can slap a hard drive in there to store all the media you want.

There’s also an optional USB WiFi adapter and while the O!Play ships with composite AV cables, the Patriot Box Office ships with a set of composite cables plus an HDMI cable.

via Engadget

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Asus issued a minor firmware update for the O!Play HD Media Player today. Or rather, the  firmware update appeared on the Asus support page for a few hours and then disappeared. Update: It’s back online.

The good news is that it does offer a few more options for sorting your media, allowing you to sort audio files, for example, by date, folder, album, singer, genre, and recently played.

The bad news is that these options only work for physical media (hard drives, flash drives) plugged into the O!Play. There doesn’t appear to be an easy way to sort media stored on a shared network drive, which means you still have to browse for a folder and scroll through a list of files. Speaking of scrolling, there’s no speed adjustment yet, which means that if you have a few hundred files to scroll through, you’d best be prepared to sit there for a while.

You can read more about the update here.

If you’ve read my review of the Asus O!Play HD Media Player, you may be aware that I had a few issues with this little media device. While the hardware works pretty much as expected and allows you to stream audio and video from a shared network drive or USB drive to a TV, the software interface leaves quite a bit to be desired. It kind of feels like beta software, expect that it’s not. It’s the software that ships with the Asus O!Play which was released to the public this month.

Fortunately, it looks like Asus is aware of some of these issues, and I’m told that a firmware update should be available by the end of the week. You’ll be able to download the update from the Setup menu in the O!Play interface. The firmware coming this week will include adjustment to the font size and color, support for enhanced FLAC playback, and support for thumbnails.

But I’m more excited about some of the enhancements in the pipeline for future firmware updates, including:

• New search/scrolling features including search by date, size, file type and adjustable scrolling
• Ability to make time jumps in a video (instead of just fast forwarding and rewinding)
• Online content from Flickr, YouTube, and other sites
• USB hub and keyboard support

I also checked with Asus about my problems viewing high resolution images using the O!Play. We think the problem is that I was using the included composite cables to connect the box to my TV instead of an HDMI cable. Unfortunately, Asus doesn’t ship the O!Play with an HDMI cable and I don’t happen to have one lying around (I just got the HDTV last week and it’s spent most of its time plugged into a PC).

Update: Well, the first firmware update is available. I’m most interested in item #5 on the list of changes. I’ll download the new firmware and give it a try this weekend.

1. Improve the compatibility of HDMI cable
2. Add video/audio information when pressing “DISPLAY” button twice
3. Add thumbnail view for picture browsing
4. Add more setting choices of subtitle such as color, font size, and location etc.
5. Add sorting ways for easy file searching

Update 2: I took the firmware update for a spin, and the good news is that you can now sort audio files by date, folder, recently played, album, singer and genre. The bad news is these options aren’t available for files stored on a shared network drive. So if you have all of your media on a USB flash drive or hard drive, the firmware update should make it easier to find the files you’re looking for. If you plan to stream your media across a home network… not so much.

The update also doesn’t allow you to search for files by name, and scrolling is still set at one speed only: slow. So you no longer have to wait for-friggin-ever to scroll through your music folders from A to Z. Instead, you can scroll through genre, album name, etc while you wait for-friggin-ever to get from A to Z. It’s a baby step in the right direction, but it’s not quite there yet. Fortunately, this is just the first firmware update. Hopefully future updates will bring more functionality.

Update: I’ve been informed that Asus is working on a series of firmware updates that may address some of the issues highlighted in this review.

The Asus O!Play is a media player that you can use to stream digital media to your standard or high definition TV. Just plug the O!Play into your TV using the included composite cables or an HDMI cable (not included) and connect a USB flash drive or USB hard drive with pictures, music, or movies.

For about $100 (Amazon), if that’s all the O!Play did, it would be a halfway decent deal. The little box can handle a wide array of audio and video formats including MPEG1/2/3, DiVX, XViD, and H.264 and it can connect to USB and eSATA drives. But the O!Play also has an Ethernet port which lets you play media stored on a shared network drive. In other words, if you’ve got a computer running in your bedroom or office that has your music and video collections on it, you can use the O!Play to access that media in your living room without putting a PC by your television.

If you don’t want to run cables throughout your house you can always move the router into the living room or pick up a cheap Powerline adapter which makes your home electrical wiring function as an Ethernet extension cord. You can plug a Powerline adapter into your router and another into a wall socket near your TV and just run a short Ethernet cable from the adapter to the O!Play.

At $100, the O!Play is the cheapest device I’m aware of that lets you stream media from a shared network drive to a computer. Western Digital just released a similar box, but it runs $120. And the Netgear Digital entertainer Live EVA2000 supports similar features and then some, plus WiFi networking with an optional adapter, but has a list price of $180 without the WiFi adapter.

I was pretty excited when Asus sent me a demo unit to test, as I just finished setting up a new TV in the basement that I plan to use while exercising. I already have a PC plugged into the TV in the living room, and it has a digital TV tuner for recording over-the-air broadcasts. But I wanted an easy way to watch them on the basement TV, and the O!Play seemed like just the ticket. Plus it would let me access my music collection.

But after playing with the Asus O!Play for a while, I’m not that impressed with the software interface. Don’t get me wrong, in many ways, the O!Play works exactly as promised. It can stream audio and HD video smoothly over a home network. But the interface is clunky. It can take a long time to find the files you’re looking for, and the on-screen menus leave a bit to be desired.

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The Asus O!Play HDP-R1 Media Player is a device that turns your standard television into a media center. Here’s how it works. You plug this $99 box into your TV using the HDMI or composite A/V cables. Then you plug in a flash drive, hard drive, or other device using the USB or eSATA ports.The media player will detect any audio, video, or photos you have on the storage media and allow you to navigate through your files with an included remote control and a television set.

What I’m really excited about is the fact that the O!Play HDP-R1 also includes an Ethernet port, which means you should be able to access media stored on a shared network drive or network attached storage device.

Asus sent me an O!Play media player to test out and I’m planning to set it up so that I can stream TV programs recorded on the Home Theater PC in our living room to a television in another room in the house. In the meantime, you can check out my unboxing video after the break. I’m pretty impressed with the HDP-R1’s relatively small size and intuitive looking remote control. The recorder should be able to handle a huge array of media codecs including MPEG1/2/4, H.264, DivX, and XViD, but I’ll let you know more about that once I’ve had a chance to put it through the paces.

You can pick up an O!Play HDP-R1 for $99.99 from Amazon.

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The Asus O!Play is a small, low cost media streaming device. It’s not a full fledged computer, but here’s what it can do: You place it next to your TV and plug in a hard drive or flash card with media on it and you can watch video, listen to music, or view pictures on your TV. But there are two reasons that I’m particularly excited about this device:

1. It also features an Ethernet jack so you can connect it to your home network and stream content from your PC.
2. It costs just $100.

Sure, WiFi support would be nice. But if you don’t feel like stringing Ethernet cables throughout the house, you can always pick up a cheap Powerline Ethernet adapter from eBay which will let you turn your home’s electrical wiring into one big Ethernet network.

Asus has put together a little video showing the O!Play in action. You can check it out after the page break.

While the software interface is pretty basic looking, the device supports a wide range of formats including MPEG1/2/4, H.264, VC-1, MP4, MOV, WMV, XViD, VOB, and FLV. It doesn’t look like you’ll be able to watch web video on the device at this point, but thanks to that Ethernet jack, I wouldn’t be surprised if a future software updated added support for YouTube and other online video sites.

Of course, if you want a more full featured media player with support for online video you could pick up a Neuros Link, but that costs twice as much.

You can pick up an Asus O!Play HD Media Player from Amazon for $99.99.

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