ASUS ships $100 O!Play HDP-R1 HD media streamer

Hey, you -- yeah, you. Remember that O!Play HDP-R1 media player that ASUS teased us with back in June? Remember how you dedicated a calender to it so you could count down the days 'til its arrival? Time to stop all that madness, as said box is finally on sale and shipping right now within the US of A. For the surprisingly reasonable price of $99.99, users can utilize this very device to stream and play back an array of formats with 1080p resolution support. Heck, there's even an eSATA and Ethernet port there, just waiting for your love. So, will you show it? Or is life still worth living knowing what you've neglected?

[Via Slashgear]

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 1st 2009 10:34AM]

So will this play my BD rips from my hard drive?

[kcmurphy88 Posted Oct 1st 2009 11:09AM]

Sure would be great if someone did a review of the top 50 or so of these boxes. Because right now the claims and the reality of these things are widely separated, and there are so very many.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 1st 2009 12:28PM]

I've still not found a file that my PCH A-100 can't play. For my money, any of the PCH devices and the newly released (though not yet available anywhere) QNAP NMP-1000 seem to be the top choices.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 1st 2009 12:56PM]

Tweaktown.com has a nice video review of this unit; it seems to be well worth the $99.00 asking price. They state that it's one of the best media players they have reviewed. It played all of the files with ease that they tested and the interface seemed to be pretty user friendly. And yes, it does play ripped blu-ray files (.MT2S) I'll definitely be picking this one up because it seems to be a good value for the price. You can check out the review here: http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/2911/asus_o_play_hdp_r1_1080p_hd_media_player_video_review/index.html

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 2nd 2009 1:22AM]

I think I figured out the Achilles heel of this unit (at least for what I want to do): It doesn't support UPnP streaming. Only file-level network streaming. Which means you can only access your music in whatever way you have it organized on disk -- not by genre, album, artist, year, etc. (whatever way Twonky, Tversity, Windows Media, etc. is organizing your tunes for you). So I'm back to looking at the Xtreamer (or waiting for the WD TV Live, but who knows how much that will be).

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 2nd 2009 1:52AM]

Oh. Amazon has the WD TV Live listed for $119.99 (pre-order). I think that pretty much sinks the O!Play for me (especially since the WD TV Live has (in addition to UPnP streaming) Bonjour (iTunes) streaming, direct web access to YouTube, Flickr, Live 365, and Pandora, plus component outputs. If it only had eSATA it would be perfect (as long as the UI doesn't suck).

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 2nd 2009 8:33AM]

When you review this unit, after you get one in, can you let us know if the ability to delete files via the network is an option. It something I don't see much of and miss since XBMC.