Asus O!Play HDP-R1 review

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Verdict:

Not our outright favourite media player, but its support of DVD menus in ISO files makes it a decent choice for some.

Review Date: 5 Jan 2010

Price when reviewed: £90

Supplier: http://www.play.com

Reviewed By: Seth Barton

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Once you find a folder of images you want view, you can display 15 photo thumbnails at once, plus there are lots of slideshow options. You can choose to activate the 'Ken Burns Effect': you've probably seen this in TV documentaries, when the camera pans across a still image to make it more interesting. Music support is disappointing and you can only browse it by artist, genre or album, but there's no support for playlists and no album art either.

Playback of Blu-ray quality video wasn't a problem and all the file formats and subtitle support you'd expect are present. Fast forward and rewind are limited to 32x speed, though there's resume play for files you've started watching before. Best of all is the support for menus on DVD ISO files, something that the WD TV Live lacks. The HDP-R1 even supports Blu-ray ISO files, but with these it simply plays the video tracks in order, rather than rendering the full menu systems.

It's a very similar device to the WD TV Live, but the menu system makes it harder to quickly find what you want and veers between the garish and the functional in appearance. There's no support for online services either, and the hardware is chunkier but no more functional. On the other hand its support of DVD menus will be a boon to some and it’s a little cheaper too, and so wins our Budget Buy award.

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