WD TV Live HD Media Player vs ASUS HDP-R1 O!Play - TV HD Media Player

Product Features: WD TV Live HD Media Player

• Play Full HD 1080p video, music and photos on your HD TV
• Supports widest variety of file formats and devices
• Network capable for easy access to the newest content from PCs, network drives, internet favorites
• Play network and internet content

Product Features : ASUS HDP-R1 O!Play - TV HD Media Player

• Play the latest video and audio formats on the PC (including Real Media)
• Experience HD 1080p output
• Multiple input sources through eSATA, USB, LAN. Stream your content from an external HDD, PC, or NAS device.
• Highly compatible device that supports HDMI and composite inputs.
• Media Browsing - Simple yet powerful interface to allow you to sort and search for your media files. Also allow music shuffling as well as quick movie preview to enhance user experience.

Formats supported: WD TV Live HD Media Player

• Video: AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, VOB, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS, WMV9
• Audio: MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS
• Photo: JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG
• Playlist: PLS, M3U, WPL
• Subtitles: SRT, ASS, SSA, SUB, SMI

Formats supported: ASUS HDP-R1 O!Play - TV HD Media Player

• Video:
  Containers: avi, mpeg, mov, wmv, mkv, ts, m2ts, mp4
  flv, rm/rmvb.
  Video Codecs: MPEG1/2/4, H.264, VC-1, RM/RMVB
• Audio: MP3, WAV, AAC, OGG, WAV, FLAC, AIFF
• Image Format: JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF
• Subtitles: SRT, SAA, SMI, SUB

Alternatives:

• HTPC with XBMC or other software
• Seagate FreeAgent Theater+
• PopcornTV
• Apple TV (Only if you will watch videos and listen to music from iTunes, including rental videos)

My Review:

Both players support 1080p HD videos, both can play video over LAN, both can play video from USB flash disks, USB hard drives, both can play images of DVD-Video and Blu-Ray discs.

ASUS HDP-R3 O!Play and WD TV Live support wireless connection (with a separately purchased Wi-Fi adapter), but ASUS HDP-R1 O!Play doesn't support this.

Advantages of ASUS O!Play R1:
- FLV support
- better remote control

Advantages of WD TV Live:
- Pandora streaming music (and hopefully more streaming media services in the future)
- Dolby Digital and DTS support
- DLNA


Disadvantages of ASUS O!Play:
- Problems with Qpel & GMC Warp point 3
- Doesn't support ID3 tags for music files except for MP3 songs
- DTS HD and DD TrueHD not supported
- Problems with MKV container
- Wi-Fi not supported
- Streaming internet services not supported

Disadvantages of WD TV Live:
- Some users have network connection problems
- Cooling
- Remote control could be better

ASUS O!Play can transfer 30-40 Mbps over LAN, this is not enough to play Blu-Ray remuxes over LAN. Not sure that WD TV Live is any better in this sense. You can still use a US hard drive to play such videos.

The biggest disappointment about both WD TV Live and ASUS O!Play is that they don't support Hulu. HTPC with XBMC is a more flexible solution, although the one supporting 1080p MPEG-4 AVC videos will cost much more than network media players mentioned above.

Also I would like to mention that some newer TVs are DLNA certified, so that can play content from your network. This requires you to have a DLNA server software on your computer, but there are several free options available for Linux, Mac OS and Windows.

Although WD TV Live is not ideal, I prefer it to Asus O!Play.

What network media player do you prefer and why?