ASUS O!Play – TV HD Media Player
Speaking as someone who really does own this device – this thing rules. It streams easily and quickly from my xp box in my basement over cat5 cable. (or the technologically inept may just hook a USB or esata hard drive direct)
It plays everything so far including ISO (dvd image) files, video_ts rips from dvds (I know someone will ask these questions) but I did it already and it works great.
Other files, MKV, xvid, divx, whatever. PERFECT. 1080P, blue ray quality files look perfect. No blockiness, no hesitation, no problems. And they start IMMEDIATELY.
All you need do is create a share on the server pc, then create a shortcut to it on the asus. (EASY) And off you go. Some files will not easily fastforward/rewind, and that mostly relates to how well the original creator encoded the file. In other words, if they used lousy/cheap software to rip a file, it may not fastforward smoothly, but it will still play.
The other con is no wireless networking. Now, I personally don’t care about this because I have cat5 cable already and real wired networking is far more reliable. Also, it probably makes the product cheaper.
If you have a habit of playing huge 1080p files and want to go wireless, you may have to go with 802.11N hardware if you encounter stuttering. If it stutters it’s probably not the Asus’s fault.
As a sidenote, I have tried other methods of showing movies and such on TV’s. Xbox360, PS3, PC. They all have huge disadvantages, mostly relating to codecs and incompatabilities and transcoding and such for the Xbox and PS3. It’s just too much trouble. Seriously. I’ve become somewhat of an expert on the subject and I got really sick of saying "I downloaded this sick video, lets watch it" and then some error message comes on because of some obscure encoding quirk like wmv 8.2jafjSOB352. I wouldn’t have bought either game console had I known what a pain it was. Especially the media sharing and transcoding, don’t get me started. (I don’t play games)
The PC, well, still too darn much trouble – I have to give tech support to every tom, frank, and larry who just want to watch a movie. Log into the computer, start media center, navigate, navigate, navigate. Ugh. Have done XP media center, vista media center, windows 7 ultimate media center. Holy moley, just forget it – I don’t want to train people. This Asus thing? Connect and go. No joke. I will not mention macs, because you know what? No matter which way you go with Apple, it’s more than $99. (and I don’t own one because I don’t think different)
I don’t work for any of these companies, I’m just happy I can watch a movie. That’s all I ever wanted.
Oh, and full subtitles and multiple audiotracks, no problems at all.