The ASUS O!Play HDP-R1 is a tiny little Linux based HD Media Player, with both eSATA and USB as well as a network connection available for you to provide the media by.  Outputs include HDMI, composite AV and S/PDIF optical to give you a choice in how you connect the device into your AV setup.  The list of supported codecs is impressively long; InsideHW could not find anything it would not play.  Engadget found one for sale in Taiwan for $169, but is hard to guess what price we will see in the North American market.


“ASUS O!Play arrived in our test lab as first device of this kind made by ASUS and in area where WD TV is considered to be one of the best devices in Home Entertainment segment. Of course we were very interested to see how newcomer will prove himself. Our previous experience with similar devices shows that manufacturers often made mistakes that significantly diminished usability of their devices…”

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