If you live in a country with DVB-T terrestrial digital TV, then Asus' new O!Play Media Pro set-top box might be of interest to you, as beyond being a DVB-T tuner with EPG support, it's also a media player that supports just about every format you can throw at it. On top of that, it will also stream video from a wide range of online services.
We're not sure what chipset Asus is using in the O!Play Media Pro, but previous models have relied on Realtek chipsets as far as we're aware. That said, it sports a Gigabit Ethernet port, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi – sadly no 5GHz support – a pair of USB 2.0 ports, an SD/MMC card slot, a mini HDMI port – this seems to be a space limitation – an optical S/PDIF out, a 3.5mm jack for analogue video out and a mini RF antenna connector with a supplied adapter. You also get a rather good looking remote which for once isn't one of those terribly fiddly things to use if the picture is anything to go by.
The O!Play Media Pro supports all standard video formats such as MPEG1/2/4, H.264, VC-1 and RM/RMVB. It handles all standard video containers such as MP4, MOV, WMV, FLV, MKV, TS, MTS, MT2S, MPG, VOB and even ISO files. Throw in audio support for AC3, DTS, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, AAC, HE-AAC, PCM, FLAC, MP3, OGG, WAV, RA and a few others and you've got most common formats and then some supported. It also displays all standard image formats and handles most common subtitles formats.
When it comes to internet streaming, the O!Play Media Pro supports YouTube Leanback/XL, Muzee, Acetrax and Dailymotion, but you can also access Facebook and Picasa as well as listen to internet radio. Apparently other services are also supported, but Asus didn't specify which ones. Sadly we don't know when the O!Play Media Pro will be available or how much it'll retail for. One other downside is that many countries are already moving to DVB-T2 which the O!Play Media Pro doesn't seem to support and as such this product might already be out-dated by the time it launches, but hopefully it supports both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 DVB-T broadcasts. Also keep in mind that it only supports so called free-to-air channels, so if you live in a country with no free channels, this product is sadly not for you.

Read more: Asus launches the O!Play Media Pro set-top box by VR-Zone.com