ASUS has been somewhat of a dark horse in the consumer electronics market. It consistently makes great products like the popular ASUS EEE PC series. But the company is constantly being overshadowed be bigger companies with better brand recognition. Hopefully, this is the Filipino company’s year to raise it’s profile exponentially. Which brings us to ASUS’ latest gadget, the O!Play HDP-R1 HD Media Player. At 181.0mm x 125.3mm x 47.7mm, this little baby lets home theater fanatics to stream beautiful high definition content on their flat screens.

The O! Play is a long line of firsts for ASUS. The first in the new series of O! Play media players, the HDP-R1 is also the first high def media player to support a wide variety of file formats including MPEG1/2/4, H.264, VC-1, RM/RMVB, .mp4, and .mov (full listing of supportted formats below). The device is also the first in its class to offer one-button music shuffle option via remote control. User also have the ability to share videos and photos directly from their PCs . The shared files will be shown in enhanced clarity and high def. This feature can be very useful for sharing that mind blowing  presentation in a business meeting setting or cuing up home movies with family and friends.

In order for any device to stream all those quality videos and images, there needs to be some serious bandwith under the hood. The HDP-R1 HD comes with exclusive eSATA interface. The eSATA interface means that the media player is fast — up to six times faster than USB 2.0 depending on the file size.

Keeping with the theme of versatility that ASUS is known for, the O!Play HDP-R1 HD Media Player can function in both business and pleasure settings.  If given a choice however, I’d rather have it hooked up in my living room playing my favorite movies and videos.

Stay tuned for pricing and availability.

• Video formats:     MPEG1/2/4, H.264, VC-1, RM/RMVB
• Video file extensions:     .mp4, .mov, .xvid., .avi., .dvix., .asf, .wmv, .mkv, .rm, .rmvb, .flv, .ts, .m2ts, .dat, .mpg, .vob
• Audio formats:     MP3, WAV, AAC, OGG, WAV, FLAC, AIFF
• Image formats:    JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF
• Subtitle formats     SRT, SUB, SMI, SSA3