Customer Reviews

ASUS O!Play - TV HD Media Player (Black)

5 star:		(92)
4 star:		(55)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

It's not much to look at coming out of the box, but boy, does the O!Play pack a wallop! It's an outstanding first effort from Taiwan-based Asus, a company known more for Eee Netbook and notebook computers than home entertainment devices. With Asus being a newcomer to the media player field and my having tested so many bad players, I was a bit hesitant to order the O!Play, but now I'm a believer. With its exhaustive list of supported video codecs and network connectivity, it is nearly the perfect player, capable of playing everything from VCD to DVD to Blu-ray/HD DVD rips. Most notably, it supports RMVB, an important feature to fans of Asian shows and one that most of the major-brand players lack, including the otherwise superb WD TV HD Media Player and WD TV Live Network-ready HD Media Player. ASUS seems to be very actively developing firmwares and I'm impressed by their diligence.

SETUP:
Setup is easy and literally takes 30 seconds. On the side is 1 USB port and 1 eSATA port to connect local hard drives should you need them. HDMI and optical cable (S/PDIF) are not included, so you'll need your own. I really appreciate Asus using a 2-prong power cord instead of a wall-wart that blocks neighboring outlets. True to Asus's PC pedigree, the AC adapter looks like a PC laptop's AC adapter. It's very small (about the size of a Hostess Twinkie) and has a pleasant (and VERY BRIGHT) blue LED. Upon boot-up, the device asks you to configure it with TV settings, network settings, time and date, etc. After plugging in the LAN cable, it found my NAS units (D-Link DNS321 Gigabit Network Storage Enclosure and D-Link DNS323) right away. The O!Play did have a problem interpreting non-Roman characters on my NAS, so folder names and files got garbled. Some files did not show up on the O!Play until I removed the offending non-Western characters (Chinese and Japanese).

With the new firmware, UPnP has been added, along with some slightly improved icons. With UPnP, the O!Play sees Chinese and Japanese filenames properly, but none of my MKV's showed up, a problem I had on all networked players I've tested. Only a fraction of my total library was listed. If you want to see your entire list, don't use UPnP.

INTERFACE AND USABILITY:
From a total off and unplugged state, the O!Play takes 10 seconds to boot to the home screen, compared to as many as 40 seconds for the Iomega ScreenPlay Plus HD Multimedia Player 1 TB. The home screen is bright and attractive, but the folder navigation scheme leaves a bit to be desired. It's spartan, white text on black, and not nearly as attractive as the WDTV or WDTV Live, but it gets the job done. The remote control is big and solid, though the buttons seem to be bizarrely grouped and scattered about, forcing me to look down each time to make sure I'm pushing the right button. The bottom group of buttons is arranged in a circle around the music button for example, mixing different functionality into one area: volume controls (+/-) with subtitle (Aa), audio track (head icon), repeat mode (circular arrows), picture zoom (magnifying glass), file display mode (Mode), and device setup options (Setup). "Mode" is a file listing filter, toggling between Movies, Music, and Pictures. With it, you never need to go back to the home screen. Unfortunately, there's no "Show All" mode which lists every file together at the same time. To PageUp or PageDown long directories, use the |< and >| buttons.


During video or image playback, the picture can be zoomed up to 8x. During video playback, the fast-forward/rewind can go up to 32x. The inclusion of volume control buttons is very thoughtful and useful. You can turn video preview on or off. Pausing over a file for a second will play it in a smaller window on the right (with audio). There is a slight delay of a second or two when reading the file's metadata off a drive or the network, during which time you can't push the play button. This can be a potential problem for people and gets annoying. For music, pausing over the file displays the ID3 info (song name, artist, album name, year, etc).

One cool feature is the ability to adjust the device options while playing back a movie. The menu overlays on top of the movie and you can adjust your settings (Brightness, Contrast, Aspect Ratio, etc) and resume. There's also a Noise Reduction option, but I suggest turning this OFF. It caused strange and distracting frame shimmering in some movies. Lastly, O!Play also remembers where you left off on each movie and can resume the next time you play the file.


FORMAT SUPPORT:
This is where the O!Play really shines. It played all of the 100+ random files I threw at it, except for a few stray (and poor quality) .WMV files I got from the internet. MKV, AVI, MPG, DIVX, RM, TS all played flawlessly, both standard def and hi-def 720p/1080i/p content. It even plays Flash Video (FLV), a feature rarely encountered. DTS and Dolby multi-channel audio is downsampled to stereo, so there's no need for an audio receiver if you just want to output through the TV for convenience.

The Asus also plays .IFO/VOB files with DVD chapters, menus, and all disc features as if it were the original DVD. That's great news for users looking to make a centralized DVD collection on a server or a big hard drive. The only problem is there doesn't seem to be a button to get back to the menu. You have to stop the movie and start it again.

For photos, the ASUS has a problem displaying progressive JPEGs. Images will fit to screen and can zoom up to 8x, but there's no 1x view to see it at the original size.

EXTERNAL SUBTITLES:
I tested external .SRTs and internally embedded subtitles in .MKV's in a number of languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Russian, English, French, and others. All worked when saved as UTF-8. For multilingual families and fans of foreign film, this is great news. You can also set the interface to one of 10 major world languages. Subtitle files can be downloaded from sites like DivxStation.

With firmware 1.11, external and internal subs are both recognized if both types co-exist for a movie. Previously, only embedded subs were seen when a movie had both types. Now, pushing the subtitle button pops up a submenu where you can select the subtitle, change its encoding, font size, position, color, and importantly, syncing (many downloaded subtitles are off by a few seconds). This is very useful! No more re-saving. Just cycle through the available encodings or adjust the timing until the sub looks right (but you should still re-save to avoid doing this every time). Where multiple external subs existed, the O!Play did not recognize their names, showing only a number (like "Subtitle: 2 (SRT)", even when named according to the movie's filename (e.g. "Batman.mkv" -> "Batman - English.srt"). Pushing the info button a second time shows extended info like codec, resolution, and bitrate. It is better to mux the subtitle into the file using something like mkvmerge GUI and metatag the language name onto it. Subtitle line-spacing is a bit of an issue (too much). You can change the font size and color, but not the gap. Lastly, I wish for a thick black outline around the text like the WDTV Live. Sometimes the subtitle blends into the movie, no matter what color you set it to.

10/100 NETWORK INTERFACE:
This is a weak point for the device. With no gigabit Ethernet, it is less future-proof against monster 8GB+ .MKV files and other bandwidth intensive HD content. Also lack of wireless connectivity means I do not have freedom to locate this device wherever I want.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
The O!Play is truly a multimedia beast. It plays nearly everything under the sun and as a WDTV and WDTV live owner, I can safely say that Western Digital has some serious competition here. At $99, it is a very capable device at a fantastic value, and its homely interface is forgivable. It is, however, rather boxy and brick-like, taking up as much space as a 3.5" external hard drive or an average Bible. It's 2x the size of the WDTV. Lastly, WDTV Live has Flickr, YouTube, and Pandora streaming. O!Play has no internet playback capabilities as of the current firmware release, though that can quickly change. ASUS has already added substantial improvements like the subtitle fixes and UPnP.

If wireless connectivity could be added with a firmware update, then this player will be all things to all people. (WDTV Live supports third party WiFi dongles). This is THE player to get if you want MKV, RMVB, and DVD .IFO support and don't care about wireless. Great value coupled with a great firmware support attitude makes this a highly recommended buy, and I hope ASUS surprises us with more software features down the road.


UPDATE #1: Dec 10/09: Firmware 1.17 is now available, which adds BD .iso support and lets you jump forward by 5/10/15/30 mins.

UPDATE #2: Feb 15/10: Firmware 1.21 has just been released. It adds MAJOR internet content connectivity as well as the option to wirelessly connect your R1! This is something users have been clamoring for since this product's release and a giant leap forward. With a compatible USB dongle, this thing does everything the Air does, except the media reader capabilities (which you can add that with an external USB reader). I am upgrading my rating to 5 stars as a result of the obvious effort ASUS put out to make this player what users want. It's still rough around the edges and the interface still needs polish, but this update adds major value to the player-- a truly excellent buy at $99. I can now watch TV streams from all over the world, including my favorite, NHK (Japan). WDTV Live, the gauntlet has officially been thrown down.

UPDATE #3: Jul 1/10: A user notified me that he could find no mention of the WIFI upgrade. I checked on ASUS's site and do not see any mention of it. Sadly, ASUS seems to have removed external dongle WIFI support from the firmware, probably to avoid competing with the Air.

UPDATE #4: Sep 20/10: A recent firmware added external DVD support. I bought a Samsung USB 2.0 8x DVD Writer External Optical Drive to test and have mixed results. The DVD I tested (Feeling Minnesota) did not play, giving a "cannot decode encryption" error, so there are some DVD playback codecs missing from the release. An MKV file burned onto a DVD+R DL worked fine however.

asus box
Speaking as someone who really does own this device - this thing rules. It streams easily and quickly from my xp box in my basement over cat5 cable. (or the technologically inept may just hook a USB or esata hard drive direct)

It plays everything so far including ISO (dvd image) files, video_ts rips from dvds (I know someone will ask these questions) but I did it already and it works great.

Other files, MKV, xvid, divx, whatever. PERFECT. 1080P, blue ray quality files look perfect. No blockiness, no hesitation, no problems. And they start IMMEDIATELY.

All you need do is create a share on the server pc, then create a shortcut to it on the asus. (EASY) And off you go. Some files will not easily fastforward/rewind, and that mostly relates to how well the original creator encoded the file. In other words, if they used lousy/cheap software to rip a file, it may not fastforward smoothly, but it will still play.

The other con is no wireless networking. Now, I personally don't care about this because I have cat5 cable already and real wired networking is far more reliable. Also, it probably makes the product cheaper.

If you have a habit of playing huge 1080p files and want to go wireless, you may have to go with 802.11N hardware if you encounter stuttering. If it stutters it's probably not the Asus's fault.

As a sidenote, I have tried other methods of showing movies and such on TV's. Xbox360, PS3, PC. They all have huge disadvantages, mostly relating to codecs and incompatabilities and transcoding and such for the Xbox and PS3. It's just too much trouble. Seriously. I've become somewhat of an expert on the subject and I got really sick of saying "I downloaded this sick video, lets watch it" and then some error message comes on because of some obscure encoding quirk like wmv 8.2jafjSOB352. I wouldn't have bought either game console had I known what a pain it was. Especially the media sharing and transcoding, don't get me started. (I don't play games)

The PC, well, still too darn much trouble - I have to give tech support to every tom, frank, and larry who just want to watch a movie. Log into the computer, start media center, navigate, navigate, navigate. Ugh. Have done XP media center, vista media center, windows 7 ultimate media center. Holy moley, just forget it - I don't want to train people. This Asus thing? Connect and go. No joke. I will not mention macs, because you know what? No matter which way you go with Apple, it's more than $99. (and I don't own one because I don't think different)
I don't work for any of these companies, I'm just happy I can watch a movie. That's all I ever wanted.

Oh, and full subtitles and multiple audiotracks, no problems at all.

Oh, and I own a WD Media TV thing as well. No networking and audio troubles to boot. Blech.

Update Nov/11/09: I installed the latest firmware and this solved several of the issues I had. I edited a few things I have previously written.

I bought this box based on many positive reviews here. My experiences differ a little though.

Yes this unit plays pretty much anything. That's a big plus. The interface and setup is also very simple and easy. You really don't need a manual for it. The image quality is great, both SD and HD movies look excellent. It even playes ISO files of DVDs or bluray disks! That's a very nice feature as you can dump the whole DVD to disk and get all menus and features. It does not play ISO files from the old HD-DVD disks. That's a bummer as this would give us access to very inexpensive HD movies. There is a fix provided you have a HD-DVD drive. A software called Clown_BD (google it) will create a .ts file from your HD-DVD disk in 20 min. These will play fine on the O!Play.

Even though it's supposed to play ISO images from bluray disk, it still has some issues with that. Transformer 1 for example doesn't have sound (it says 'unsupported audio format').

I have a collection of 400+ movies on my server, in various formats. The O!Play plays them all. The slightly annoying thing is that as you scroll through a list of movie files it tries to instantly play a preview which causes a delay in scrolling through the list. This preview feature can now (new firmware) be turned off in the setup so the annoying delay can now be reduced but not entirely avoided. It still takes two or three seconds before it actually allows you to hit play (using a fast network). :-/

The bigger issue I found was that it stops to play back in the middle of a movie. It happened on every movie I tried it on so far, so it's not a random issue. The new firmware seems to have fixed this issue but I haven't had the time to test this with enough movies to be sure. I will update my review once I have had the chance to test more and confirm it's really fixed.

The O!Play now supports media servers! The firmware that my box came with did not, so you have to upgrade the firmware. (It is very easy though!)

The O!Play uses very little power which I think is a big plus! My PS3 needs 150-200 Watt, the O!Play only 10.

I have been waiting for a media player like this for a long time and this one does not disappoint at all. I was thinking of building my own HTPC; but I am glad I held off and waited. This little box does everything you could hope for and it costs less than one hundred dollars. Here is what is awesome about it:

- I had it out of the box and set up in 5 minutes. I networked it to my Windows XP computer (plugged it into my router). There was not one single issue in getting it set up. It works perfectly and it is easy to get going right out of the box. Just pick the right video and audio setting during the setup and off you go (I used HDMI raw).

- It plays every single file format you could want. I was using my Xbox 360 but I got tired of only being able to play .avi files at low resolutions. Now I can play high def .mkv blueray and .iso files and everything else imaginable.

- The video and sound quality if superb. I have played 13 GB Bluray files without so much as a stutter. I have tried to play the bluray files on my computer (on board graphics only) and it grinds to a halt. But the little O!Play doesn't even break a sweat playing them on my TV. And the digital DTS audio sounds great on my surround sound system.

- No fan noise whatsoever. This thing is silent and it does not get hot at all. Not heat build up.

- Menu is simple and easy to navigate. Not flashy but it works. No complaints here.

- It was easy to program into my logitech remote control. I have set it up already so feel free to go ahead and download it now. Or use the remote that comes with it. It fits in your and nicely and is easy to use.

- I like the option of being able to travel with it and have video content on my flash drive or bring a hard drive (eSATA or USB). Then I could watch my videos anywhere I go. Obviously networking is the way to go at home though, but I really like the versatility. And who knows, maybe someday I will prefer to be able to watch video on my TV without having to boot up my computer.

- Even my wife can figure this thing out and watch content.

- Price is fantastic. It is much cheaper than other players with networking capability. And the Western Digital player cannot be networked so why would you want it -- yet their player costs about the same as the O!Play.

- HDMI output on the O!Play works great.

- I am going to dump my cable subscription now and just pick up the free over the air signal for local channels. I can get whatever I else want to watch on the internet and view it through my O!Play.

If you have been looking for a media player, you have just found it. Don't wait! This thing does everything it promises at an amazing price. And I have had other Asus products and I have come to really like their quality. The only reason to hold off on this (for now) is if you are running Windows 7 as they have not come out with the firmware yet. They will soon enough though.

Seriously, why haven't you ordered this yet? By they way, I don't work for Asus or have any financial interest in the company. I just love this product.

There are a few differences between the ASUS O!play and the WD TV player which set the benchmark for HD players.


First you Have to download and install the 1.11 firmware version, it will solve alot of issues like HDMI compatibility and the subtitle options, plus it will add the UPNP server option.

The O!play has network capability which the WD hasn't.(they are both priced at $99)
The O!play supports more formats than the WD does.
With the O!play audio is played through the HDMI so you dont need additional audio cables like the WD TV does (big advantage if your not using a sound system), you can choose 2 channel or RAW that plays the audio the way it was created, plus with the WD you need the fiber optics cable for some of the digital audio tracks, the O!play played them all.
The remote is much more responsive than the WD.
The O!play doesn't have the picture preview of the files like the WD, instead it plays a preview of the file.(this option can be disabled).
Subtitle codes are the same as the WD but it has 6 colors to choose from instead of two and the size range is much larger.
Resume play is perfect with the O!play whereas the WD sometimes it doesn't work.
Even after the firmware update the O!play still has HDMI compatibility issues, basically you CAN'T choose the 1080p option with some TVs,(Doesn't work on a PHILIPS LCD but works perfectly with a SAMSUNG PLASMA!),Check out the ASUS forums, the WD worked on all the TVs I plugged it to.
The O!play is ALMOST double the size of the WD (check the picture I posted), it's remote is too.
The O!play has one USB and an esata/USB port whereas the WD has two USB ports.
When using an external hard drive it turns off when you turn the O!play off, with the WD it doesn't.
Fastforwarding with the O!play is 32x, the WD 16x.
The O!play stays clean and doesn't attract fingerprints or scratches, the WD .. OMG!
For 720p and 1080p MKV and MP4 files both players are perfect.

Conclusion..
I really can't decide which one is better, they both have thier pros and cons, my guess is that it will be decided with upcoming firmware updates.

UPDATE OCT 30th
Version 11.3 is out and from what I've noticed there is an addition of LPCM HDMI Multichannel in audio, and a 16:10 aspect ratio in video, more additions were made to the pic's modes as well.

I owned this device for a few weeks and then did a little roundup [...] of this and the Seagate Free Agent and WD TD Live. The Asus "works" but is it nice to use? Nope. The interface is unattractive and the response from the device is more sluggish than the other two. I was looking for a device that would rid me of having to use plex on my osx laptop. Plex is a beautiful interface based on XBMC. Asus (and really all these players) should learn a little from plex and XBMC. The Asus had a really ridiculously stupid habit of telling me the connection speed to the media in the top of the interface when I selected a title to view in the list. I don't want to or need to know this information. There were no visible ways to turn this off or to be able to deal with thumbnails of media in a reasonable way.

The remote on the device was the nicest of the ones I tested but it makes no difference to me due to the fact I will be using my Harmony to control everything.

The build quality was reasonable but nothing with a "wow" factor on it.

The WD TV Live has the option for pandora and live365 music streams, which is a huge plus and doesn't do the Asus any favors, since it's $20 more.

Asus gets props for playing every format I could throw at it. Of course none of the players I tested had issues with the media files I tasked them with so it's a level playing field in this area.

I stuck with the WD device in the end. It's the smallest and the nicest looking interface of the 3 players I tried.

I've had the WDTV (1st gen) and the WDTV Live and was pretty happy with both. However, the things that made me move over to this ASUS were:
- Support for USB hub. Your storage needs will only grow and instead of replacing smaller but otherwise perfectly fine hard drive units, this one will let you ADD more than one hard drive per USB port. I currently am using a Belkin 4-port hub (non-powered) and it works perfectly.
- Navigates DVD ISO images for menus. For 95% of my rips I watch just the movie. But there are a few discs like my Rick Steves collection that are divided into several indexed segments where if you were to just play the ISO on the WDTV you would only see the first segment. This box almost allows me to get rid of my DVD player.
- Reads pgs (Blu-ray) subtitles for movies like Gandhi, Crouching Tiger, Kill Bill, etc. The subs (at least for Blu-ray) look VERY clean. The letters are sharp/ high-res, a good size, and not too bright or obnoxious.

Other differences between the ASUS and WDTV:
- ASUS interface is a bit more like Windows browsing which I like. Think of the WDTV GUI as more like a Mac. And although I'm a big fan of OS X, I like how the ASUS navigates. While not quite as smooth and quick as the WDTV the ASUS interface is still plenty fast.
- ASUS unit is bigger and heavier. I actually like this because the unit has less of a tendency to move around from the weight or strain of the USB and HDMI cables. The ASUS is still small by component standards.

Minor gripes:
- If I connect the ASUS to a switched outlet, when the unit turns on there is no video going to my Toshiba TV. I have to turn the unit off via the remote and back on and then I will get video. I think this is an HDMI sync/ handshake issue. No biggie for me though- I just leave the unit plugged in and use the remote for power on/ off.
- The eSATA/ USB port is a bit odd. I read somewhere that somebody thought there was only one USB port on this unit. The combo eSATA/ USB port is a bit strange. Plugging in a USB cable is kind of difficult and it's easy to see why one might think that this is not a USB port. The good news is that you will probably only have to do this once and the cable stays in really well.
- The IR remote for my Comcast HD box shares at least one code with the ASUS. I noticed every once in a while that the ASUS would be on and I swear I didn't turn it on. I finally figured out that every time I hit the 'Guide' button on my Comcast (Motorola) HD box, the ASUS would turn on! And no- hitting the 'Guide' button again does NOT turn the ASUS back off. I plan on getting a TiVo next week anyway, so this is not a big issue for me.

Overall, I liked the ASUS so much that I replaced my other WDTV Live with one. The ability to use a USB hub is big, even though I eventually connected these players to a NAS- which by the way was too easy. The UPNP was able to pick up my files right away and so was the network map. Also, I'm a bit disappointed that Western Digital is not able to do DVD menus (or Blu-ray subs) at this point, as it seems like most other media boxes do. For the record the HDs I used before switching over to the NAS were: WD 500MB MyBook (about 4 yrs old), Hitachi 1TB 7200 in a Diablotek SATA cradle, and an Iomega 320MB eGo Portable. Now I have the boxes connected to a D-Link DNS-321 via a Linksys WRT54g. 1080p streams through 50ft Cat6 works fine even while writing to the D-Link.

This is actually my first review on amazon, however I been buying from amazon for years. This product was not getting its credit, so I just had to write up a review after I received it a couple of days ago. Ive been researching all these media boxes out there from WD's to popcorn hours, and decided to get this one mainly because of WD having MKV playing/ stuttering problems.

Right out of the box, the asus O play was brilliantly packaged and setup was a breeze with the HDMI cable straight into my Sony 7.1 channel Receiver. I tried already 6 different super hight quality blu ray rips in mkv format each file about 10 Gigs each and the asus plays it "PERFECTLY" no stutter, no hesitation, no nothing. Maneuvering through the interface is a breeze and quite fast which surprised me very much. If you love MKVS this is the player to get, but also keep in mind I tried about 10 other DIVX files and other files and it played it flawlessly not 1 single hitch EVER "yet" (jinx!)

Only minor minor problem that maybe addressed in a later firmware (asus came with the latest firmware already installed 1.07) is that if you connect the asus to a sound receiver and attempt to play a file like the blu ray rips with 6.1 channel sound, the sound will not be outputted until you change the sound setting MANUALLY in the setting menu to HDMI RAW. I heard they are working on a firmware to automatically detect the sound and change it on the fly. Minor problem. Overall this is "IT" this is the player right out of the box that plays everything I throw at it flawlessly so far, no reencoding, or remuxing nothing. GET IT. Matter a fact, I brought 2 more. :)

I have the following setup:
* Windows 7 Home
* iTunes to manage my music
* Picasa 3 to manage my photos
* VLC to play my videos
* All media is viewable via Windows Media Center

All my media is on the local hard drive in my Windows 7 computer. My DVDs are saved as ISO files and .dvr-ms files. Music is M4A and MP3, photos are JPG.
If you have Windows 7 and want to keep your media on the Windows 7 machine, I do not recommend the O!play due to its setup complexity. I think one would be better off with a Media Center Extender. Extenders easily connect to Windows 7 and can see all the media that Media Center has automatically indexed.

If you are determined to use the O!play with Windows 7, you must follow the following steps:
1. Download the lasted firmware upgrade from ASUS support site and install it. This is very important, as the O!play will not work with Windows 7 without it. This is a bit confusing as you need to select "Linux" in the drop-down on the ASUS site to get the firmware: [...]
2. Share out your media folders by creating a new share on your user account in C:\Users
3. If you do not use a password on your Windows 7 machine, "Turn off password protected sharing" in the Windows 7 network & sharing center control panel -> Advanced sharing settings
4. Set the "Everyone" user to have "Read", "List folder contents" and "Read and execute permissions" to your 3 media folders
5. Try connecting from your O!play to the Windows 7 machine.

Also, O!play does not play dvr-ms video files.

Lastly, O!play does not have a way to view online video from Hulu, YouTube, Amazon or Netflix. It is not a web-based streamer.

The good news is, if you want to play ISO DVDs, the O!Play video quality is very good. But, I think I am going to return it and get a "net top" PC and run iTunes & XBMC on it.

Saw this in a previous review: "It even plays Flash Video (FLV), a feature rarely encountered"

Well, it is a "feature" only if it works ;-).

As a professional streamer, FLV files are the biggie - still king over WMV and h.264. And I have not found a single one in our archive that plays. Just "Invalid File" in the thumbnail screen. FLVs encoded for old Flash 6+ Spark codec and newer On2VP6 codec. And these are just regular 480 resolution files that stream fine with Wowza and FMS and that play just fine locally in the Adobe player (custom Flash and the end-user Adobe Media Player app)... FLV is a no go even with with firmware release "N".

Also... our common storage for raw video files is DV AVI... this VERY common format is also a no-play.

Unfortunately, while we doubted the claim of FLV (Adobe does not like folks being able to play those files without paying for the ability) and could live without it, we never dreamed that DV-AVI would be unsupported, it is such a widely used common denominator type. It was only after buying and seeing all of the "Invalid File" lines for every file that we dug into it and found the one-liner ASUS admission that DV is not and Will Not Be supported.

Ah well... for less than a hundred bucks it's a fine enough little guy to play your divx/xvid/wmv9 and semi-legal rips from a portable drive or over your network but for us isn't a great way to check our FLV (old or new) or uncompressed dv files quickly on a tv screen.

just my 2 pennies, as a person who wanted it to live up to its much-copied-in-reviews hype of "plays everything" ... probably going to return it. Hope you fare better.