Why would you watch your favorite videos on your computer monitor when you can get a full 5.1 surround sound HDTV experience in your living room? This is partly why the whole idea of a media player has really caught on in recent years. Many folks don’t want to bother with the time, complexity and expense of a HTPC, but these little media-playing set top boxes are so convenient and inexpensive.
One of the latest to join the pack is the Asus O! Play HD2 HD media player. This is far from a virgin effort on the part of Asus to enter this market, so it comes with some definite improvements over its predecessors. Is this enough to warrant an upgrade?
Features at a Glance
Easily one of the most notable upgrades that the HD2 offers over the now dated Asus O! Play HD is that there is a dock on the inside for a 3.5-inch SATA hard drive. The drive isn’t included in the box, of course, but this means that you can go ahead and install just about any compatible platter of your wishing.
There is certainly no shortage of input and output options either, both of which we’ll discuss in further detail in just a moment. One slot that will definitely jump off the page for most folks is the inclusion of USB 3.0 on this device. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s not compatible with USB 3.0 flash drives or external drives; it can only be used for a direct connection with a computer.
Running through the rest of the specs, we find network connectivity, a plethora of format supports (for audio and video), subtitle support, and a super glossy case. Yes, it’s going to attract fingerprints.
Price wise, the new O! Play HD2 will be hitting the shelves at around $129 US. Currently, available is a little sketchy as we haven’t been able to find it on the Futurelooks Price Engine. Considering the predecessor is still $95.88US, the extra features on the HD2 seem to make it an event better value.
What’s in the Box?
Popping open the box, we don’t find much in terms of big surprises. There is the O! Play HD2 media player itself, the necessary hardware for mounting the aforementioned SATA hard drive, the necessary connection cables for the hard drive, a wireless remote, a couple of batteries, power cable and brick, composite (ew) A/V cables, quick start guide (in a huge number of languages), and a user guide CD.
As mentioned above, the internal hard drive is not included in the package. From what I hear, the latest firmware on this device will support capacities up to 2.0TB, so that gives you plenty of space for high-def videos and other multimedia content. As with other media players, it is a little sad that they’re only included composite A/V cables in the box. Who wants to downgrade their high-def content to play through that miserable connection? Please include something that shows off the box as it was meant to be seen.
A Bigger Remote with More Functions
Since the O! Play HD2 offers a few more functions than its predecessors, it’s understandable that the included remote comes with more than a few more buttons too. Whereas the old remote had more of a shapely contour to it, the newer version is fairly conventional in its bar-like approach. I do approach the softer “rubberized” buttons though.
The main playback buttons are found toward the top, a five-way navigator in the center, and some quick access buttons near the bottom. These quick access buttons are labelled much more clearly than the old version, giving you one-press access to movies, music, photos, and Internet. Just like the media player itself, the remote also comes with a fingerprint-attracting glossy sheen.
Installing the Internal Hard Drive
The idea of having a hard drive permanently attached to your media player is nothing new. The Seagate FreeAgent Theater HD did it, but it got you to dock a regular FreeAgent Go external drive. With the O! Play HD2, you can take just about any off-the-shelf 3.5-incher and have at ‘er.
The installation process is described on a single sheet of paper, but if you’re reasonably familiar with this kind of stuff, you don’t really need the instructions. The bare 3.5-inch drive gets mounted in the provided holder with a set of screws in the side. Then, you remove the plastic cover in the bottom of the media player to reveal the hard drive dock.
Plug in the cables, stuff the drive in its spot, and put the plastic cover back on. When you first turn the O! Play HD2 on with the hard drive inside, the on screen interface will ask you to format the drive. For this reason, you don’t want to “preload” the drive with any of your content. The formatting process takes just a minute which is pretty quick.
Inputs and Output Options
If there’s one thing you have to hand to Asus for this device, it’s that they didn’t skimp out on the input and output options. In the front of the device, you get CF card slot, SD/MMC card slot, MS/MS Duo slot, eSATA/USB port, and a USB port. I don’t think too many people are going to use the CF or MemoryStick slots, but I guess it’s a nice added bonus. It’s also good that these are in the front this time around, rather than on the side. Much more accessible.
Swinging around to the back, you’ll find just about everything that you need to connect the media player to your home theatre too. You can use the included composite A/V cables for some standard definition action, I suppose, but that’s really a last resort.
Beyond the composite video, you get component video and HDMI. On the audio front, you are offered coaxial, optical, and RCA stereo options. Rounding out the ports are a LAN port for network connectivity, another USB port, and a USB 3.0 PC link port. It’s really too bad that the USB 3.0 is only for PC linkage and not for external drives.
It should also be noted that, like so many of these media players, the HD2 lacks in the Wi-Fi department. I wouldn’t think that including a Wi-Fi module would be terribly expensive or complicated, but it seems that no one is doing it. So, you’re left relying on a hardwired connection. It’s a shame seeing as ASUS also has a box called the O!Play Air which cuts the cables well.
A Carousel-Style User Interface
The on-screen user interface on this will feel familiar to anyone who has used previous Asus media players. Your various options are shown in a 3D-like carousel and you shift between them by pressing the left and right buttons on the screen.
Whereas previous versions had such options as movie and music, this one adds in the Internet and NAS features. The user interface isn’t exactly the fastest thing in the world, but it does get the job done. The menus can be multi-tiered in many areas too, which can get frustrating at times.
For example, let’s say that you have your videos organized in a hierarchical folder structure on a USB flash drive. You’d have to go into the movie mode, select external storage, pick the appropriate drive, and then dig through your folders until you finally get to the file. There appears to be a “search” function, but it doesn’t work terribly well.
Watching Regular Old Video Files
One of the complaints about early media players was that file format support was lacking. That’s not the case anymore. Whether you go with Western Digital, Seagate, Asus, or any number of other competitors, there’s a good chance that most devices will play most formats. With the HD2, you’ll run the gamut from RMVB to MKV, ISO to AVI, MP4 to FLV, VOB to M4V.
The available options while playing a video are pretty handy too. You can adjust the aspect ratio on the fly, activate and deactivate subtitles, zoom in and out, adjust the volume and so forth. As shown above, one of the newer features is called “GOTO” and it doesn’t exactly what you think it does. Instead of doing the old-fashioned “fast forward,” you can skip to a precise title, chapter, and time in your video file.
I tested a series of high-def videos that I had and they all played smoothly and without trouble. No complaints in that regard and there was nothing that I procured from the Interwebz that it couldn’t handle.
The Network-Connected Functionality
We start running into a little bit of trouble when we try out the features that are supposed to provide added value to the Asus O! Play HD2. If you go to the Internet section, you are afforded the ability to listen to Internet radio, check the weather, check stock quotes, browse Picasa, and view Flickr images.
Unfortunately, none of these functions are particularly robust. The weather service adds some nice detail, but the Flickr “app” is essentially the same as the one found on the Seagate FreeAgent Theater HD+. That is to say that it’s rubbish. You can’t seem to look up specific photostreams, you can’t comment on pictures, and so on. It’s not all there.
For some strange reason, Asus decided not to include YouTube in here either. We already see it in devices like the WDTV Live from Western Digital, as well as several Internet-connected Samsung TVs. You also won’t find any support for Hulu or Netflix.
In ASUS’ defense, the O! Play HD2’s firmware is a bit of a preview or a work in progress so hopefully as new firmware revisions roll out, we’ll be able to see these gaps filled in once a lot more of these players hit the market.
So Much for Multi-Tasking
Beyond the Internet stuff, the O! Play HD2 also offers four flavors of NAS action: Samba server, FTP server, iTunes server, and BT engine. Since you’re going to install an internal hard drive in there, you might as well take advantage of these options, right? Well, there’s some good news and some bad news.
Let’s start with the good news. Unlike the Patriot Box Office, you don’t need to install any software on your computer to use the BitTorrent engine. You just dial into the IP address of the O! Play HD2 in a web browser on the same network.
From there, you provide the torrent file and away it goes, storing the download on the O! Play’s freshly installed hard drive. This can be quite convenient, since you can then turn off your computer and be on your way. The bad news is that while you can queue up several torrents, it will only download one at a time. Worse yet, when it’s done downloading, it’ll just start seeding rather than move on to the second download.
This lack of multi-tasking extends to all the network-connected functions. If you’re in the middle of downloading something through the BitTorrent and you choose to browse through Flickr with the box, the BT download will stop. I understand that Asus is trying to provide the smoothest user experience, but they have to allow for multiple simultaneous downloads at least.
Closing Thoughts
I wanted to like the Asus O! Play HD2 HD media player. I really did. I liked the original version, but that was a given due to the context of the original version. Back then, I was mostly interested in connection options and codec support. That was good, but those characteristics are expected these days in ALL players.
With the HD2, we’re supposed to step up to another level with an internal hard drive, direct BitTorrent downloads, and Internet streaming access. In that regard, Asus falls well short of what this device could have been. With no simultaneous downloads, no YouTube streaming, a nearly useless Flickr app, and an inability to initiate torrents from the device itself, the HD2 is anything but perfect.
The good news is that the hardware is all there and if it can be made to do the things we need the $129 US price tag is a steal. If Asus is able to push out a reasonable firmware update quickly to address these concerns, you could have yourself a winner. But for now, the O!Play HD2 is merely mediocre with its currently hobbled firmware.
Pros
- Internal 3.5-inch SATA hard drive dock
- Browser-based BT engine management
- Plenty of input and output options
- Robust file format and codec support
Cons
- No multitasking with network-based functions
- No device-initiated BT downloads
- No YouTube, Netflix, or Hulu
- No integrated Wi-Fi connectivity
Overall Rating: 7.5 / 10.0
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