Asus O!Play HD2

The king of connectivity, the Asus O!Play HD 2 is the first media centre to include a USB 3.0 connector. But this isn't all. You also get eSATA, SDHC / CompactFlash / MS Duo card readers and of course great multimedia compatibility. Let's see if it really stands out from the rest in practice.

Design and build: more cosmetic than visual reworking

The shape of this media centre is a little different to what you generally get. It's a shame however that the manufacturer went for a glossy casing that picks up dust and finger marks all too easily. What's even more of a shame is that the fan is not necessarily very quiet. During playback, it's fine, but it is annoying when you're viewing photos.


The remote differs from the ones on previous Asus media centres. Large, it sits well in the hand. The buttons are however quite hard and make quite a loud clicking sound. For the browser interface, Asus has gone for an in-house system.


While we do like the fact that they're offering something different to the competition, the differences are only visual. At the end of the day, there are hardly any more options than with other media centres.

Music: neither audio track information nor album covers are displayed.
Photos: the centre's strong hand, with mosaic display (12 thumbnails per page).
Video: nothing special here, no video jukebox.

Compatibility: very good overall

The O!Play HD 2 has no major problems with compatibility. All current files work no problem, including heavy HD video (H.264/MKV up to 60 Mbps). Decoding of various DTS and Dolby Digital formats is supported. Bitstream is available for SD audio formats only.

No surprises when it comes to DVD and Blu-ray backups. For DVDs, no problems with menus, multiple audio tracks and subtitling. For Blu-rays, you'll have to do without the menus, but the rest is available.

In the playback options, there's no way to readjust your audio synching. You can however move subtitling around along the timeline, change the text size and positioning.

Connectivity: SDHC reader, USB 3.0 and network

The connectivity of the device is very thorough. First of all, you get all the standard HDMI, composite, component, optical and coaxial outs. Networking is handled by an Ethernet 100 Mbps socket and gives a pretty average 6 MB/s for file transfer. Note that while you can send files to the media centre from a computer, you can't send them the other way.

There are three USB Host 2.0 ports - two on the side - and this allows you to read and/or copy the contents of USB keys or external hard drives. The interface is quite fast (16.3 MB/s) and HD video playback is no problem (50 Mbps max).

The joy continues with three memory card readers. You can connect SDHC, CompactFlash and MS/MS Duo. Lastly, an eSATA port allows you to make rapid copies of external hard drives which use the standard.