Suggest a HD Media Player with BT..

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Playon Mini is a silent baby. No noise at all. Not sure of the higher version which has space for internal HDD

But, u wanted a mini, right? go ahead. U wont regret!
 
@swordfish123

Thanks for updating.. Do you mind trying mOservices for R1 ?

@Ripper,

Mini wont do torrent right ?
 
I will update the Firmware to the one in moServices and check when i get my O Play. The damn seller in ebay hasn't yet shipped mine. It will most likely be shipped today Will post my views once i get it.
 
I really doubt torrenting on these media players would be as smooth as running it on PC..
I've POHD with the internal hdd, but frankly it sucks (for BT, amazing for media play actually)..I tried my hand on pkg with rtorrents..got it started and could control it via windows, but if and when it hung the partial download got fraiked on rehashing. Transmission wouldn't start downloading.
Maybe its because of the ext3 formatting or partition issue or the hdd getting hot...

Anyway, i gave up and since then have been using my laptop for BT.. Maybe later, i'll go for an Atom htpc+downloading unit.
 
Got my ASUS O!Play HDP-R1. Updated to moServices firmware. Plays 1080p, 720p and SD flawlessly. Tried most of the formats(mpeg-1, mpeg-2, mpeg-4, h264). Audio was also working on all the movies i had. Subtitles works great.Haven't tried torrent downloading. Will try it out later. My only requirement was to play any format i throw at it. Its doing quite a good job at it. Happy with my purchase.
 
@amul_capri

Main idea why I am looking for Player with BT is to save on power. Its of no use running PC/Laptop for whole night for downloading.

Wear & tear increases a lot when u run them in log term. People have been telling POHD has one of the best BT download. You can try checking on NTFS.

@swordfish123

Thanks a ton for feedback. How much did u pay & source of purchase ?

Does it play HD Rips of 1080p/720p mkv/mp4 format & Does it encode dolby digital properly ?

Please do check moServices as it has inbuilt transmission torrent. Will really wait for this feedback & then go with purchase.
 
Here you go Praks.

Movie Playback

I tried playing the normal 700mb rips, x264 720p and 1080p rips, the less bitrate x264 rips(those 300-400mb movies). All play without any issues. There is some discussion of a particular mkv header giving some problems. I have quite a lot of mkv content from various groups and all worked fine. Haven't tried rmvb and flv as i do not have any. Audio and video is perfect. Not a audiophile. I have connected my headphone to my TV using a 3.5mm extension cable. So no clue about Dolby, spdif etc, etc. Try and figure it out from somewhere else. Subtitles also works good. Has a menu to choose language, color and position of subtitle.

Controls while playing movies

Fast forward works in 2x-32x or you can configure to skip some minutes by pressing forward. Sometimes rewind gets stuck and takes little more time to go back. Doesn't happen always. Not sure what the problem is. Remote is quite crap. It doesn't respond very well. Sometimes you have to press more than once to play/pause and few times it registers as 2 clicks. Menu for browsing your external drive content is ok. Again the media player gets unresponsive sometimes when you press up/down on remote.

Firmware

Did not spend much time on the default firmware. Updated to moServices firmware. You would have done some research on what services it has. Tried youtube and transmission. Youtube works ok. Didnt find any option to switch to HD. There are some other services which i did not try. Upgrading firmware and enabling the services are super easy.

Transmission

First problem is that there is no wireless. You have to get it near your router and connect it with lan cable which in my case is near my PC. I had to switch the display from PC to the media player to set up everything. But i guess you will require to do this only once. Setting up was easy. Was able to access the Media player and the Ext HDD from Win 7.

Transmission client is like Utorrent but with less features. Tried 3 torrents. 11gb, 4gb, and 80mb torrents. Couldnt find any option on max torrents allowed. Not sure how many u can download simultaneously. Initially it worked fine but after some time the client lost the connection. The download continued on the media player but the connection b/w my PC and media player was lost. GUI doesn't show anything. Had to restart the media player to connect again. And the 4gb torrent stopped for some reason. Could not start it again. Had to restart it from beginning. Connection to seeds/peers and speeds are good, just like what i get in utorrent.

My primary requirement was for it to play all formats, which it does flawlessly. I never intended to use it for 24/7 torrent downloads and i just spent 30 mins trying to download torrents. Maybe there are some fixes and other settings available in moServices forum to make BT downloading better. But from what i tested, considering that BT is one of your main requirement i wouldn't really recommend this player to you.

Pros:

Movie playback is great.

Reasonably priced.(Got mine for 5k shipped from ebay)

Media player is pretty compact and looks sleek

Doesn't get heated up and is very quiet.

e-sata

Active support on moServices forum

Cons:

BT downloading is not stable (from my limited testing)

Remote is ugly, and is unresponsive

No HDMI, Lan cable in package

Only 1 USB port

No wifi

From your list of features

Here are few of the requirements.

MUST Support BT Downloads with GOOD client - Inbuilt/mod (Already using Download master of Asus on Router & Fed up of it) - Sort of

External DVD Drive Support - Has a usb. So should support it. Not sure about blue ray disc playback

Optical Out - Yes - if it is spdif you are referring to

HDMI Out - Yes

Normal TV Out (To connect to 29 inch CRT) - Yes

NOT Necessary Features

Internal HDD Support - No

NAS etc. - Yes. But not tested

WiFi - No

Let me know if there is anything you want to know.

Its not like you are marrying your media player. Make up your mind and get one soon :). If you ask me a PC is best for 24/7 torrent downloading.
 
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@swordfish123

Thanks a ton. Repped you :)

Would suggest you making a new thread & posting this review so many people can take benefit from your review.

Movie Playback - I am more then happy as long as it play mkv & mp4 1080p rips. it has spdif so i hope my HT would be able to get 5.1 using optical. It supports Dolby Digital AC3, Dolby Digital Plus & DTS Dolby Digital & DTS pass through.,

Great you tried moServices firmware, transmission is what i wanted. moServices has so many services like online radio, RSS etc, Try installing Asus O!Play moServices Manager for a nice simple GUI.

On Cons:

I am sure I should be able to make it work as you tried only for sometime to download torrents. Remote looks almost same as WDTV, I am fine with it :)

No problems with HDMI & LAN cables.

Only problem I see is even if you connect WiFi Dongle to make it wireless there is no space to connect HDD as it has only 1 USB :(
 
bought Asus O Play from ebay.in for 5k. Plays everything HD/SD perfectly. Only issue I had was there is no 5.1 optical(SPDIF) out from the player. Plays only dual channel and RAW(which doesn't work on most files) audio. @swordfish123 i got HDMI cable with the box. Its mentioned in the package itself. Does moservices has 5.1 multichannel SPDIF output?
 
@cool

Bro, Asus has S/PDIF Out port. Do you mean sound is not coming ? then you may need to use Optical cable & give input to your receiver/HT.
 
You sure you got hdp-r1? I checked my box. There is no mention of HDMI cable. Only composite av cable. Maybe you got a different batch which includes hdmi cable. Not a major issue though. I have a few hdmi cables lying around

Sent from Spica on Tapatalk. Ignore any typo :-)
 
@swordfish123 ...yes i got hdp-r1 for 5k...maybe I got a new batch since a sticker was placed on top of the box saying free HDMI cable inside.

@Praks...I connected it with optical cable to my Logitech z5500. The Asus player has no option of outputting 5.1 SPDIF...It has only 2 options "Dual Channel" and "Raw" whiel the HDMi has 3 "Dual Channel" , "Raw" and "Multi Channel" and "Raw"
 
@cool, I still dont have player in hand so not sure of options.

Ask swordfish, He already has player & can guide you on 5.1 out.
 
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