May 31st, 2009
Asus will launch budget O!Play media streamer at Computex
Asus revolutionized the laptop industry with the launch of its Eee PC netbooks roughly a year ago, and now it’s hoping to strike gold twice with a new low-priced media streamer that will be introduced at the massive Computex show this week. According to Hardware.info, Asus will debut the unfortunately named O!Play device (a.k.a. the HDP-R1) at the Taiwanese event, and it could stand out among the crowd by using a new chip that the news site says is quicker and better at video postprocessing than the competing units.
The O!Play appears to support a wide variety of video and audio formats, including MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, Dolby Digital, and DTS. Connectivity includes HDMI, composite video, optical digital audio, and even an eSATA port for external hard drives full of media files. Hardware.info doesn’t specify that the O!Play possesses built-in Wi-Fi, so the network connection is presumably an Ethernet jack.
Asus looks to beat many of the other media streamers out there on price, as the O!Play is supposedly going to cost 119 euros when it comes out in Europe several weeks from now. No word on price or availability in the U.S. yet, but I’ll try to track down some more information tomorrow.
Sean Portnoy spent several years as an editor at Computer Shopper magazine, most recently serving as online executive editor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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