We had a sneak peek at ASUS' BR-HD3 just a week few back, and rather than holding out on us any longer, it looks as if the company has come forward to make things official. The O!Play Air HDP-R3 isn't a tremendous update from the previous edition, though the addition of 802.11n WiFi and a multimedia card reader are certainly appreciated. Reportedly, the media player packs an HDMI 1.3 socket, support for just about every file format known to man and a respectable price tag of around €90 ($133). Too bad the Yanks in attendance are left in the lurch.

[Via Engadget Spanish]

ASUS has been toying around with wireless transmissions to displays for a hot minute now, and it sure looks as if the outfit is fixing to pick up where the Belkin FlyWire left off by introducing the BR-HD3. Currently in testing, the wireless HDMI streamer is said to pass along 1080p content "with no lag," though there's currently no official range to speak of. The real kicker, however, is the price. The aforesaid FlyWire -- which worked amazingly in the trade show demos that we saw -- was priced at $1,499, which is obviously far too much for most consumers. This box? £399 ($654), and it could be out as early as next month. Unfortunately, the device only supports a single HDMI input (so you can forget about connecting your Blu-ray player and Xbox 360 at the same time), but ASUS is planning to introduce a three-port version in June 2010 as well as a niche spinoff in Q1 that'll wirelessly stream one source to three HDTVs.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

Hey, you -- yeah, you. Remember that O!Play HDP-R1 media player that ASUS teased us with back in June? Remember how you dedicated a calender to it so you could count down the days 'til its arrival? Time to stop all that madness, as said box is finally on sale and shipping right now within the US of A. For the surprisingly reasonable price of $99.99, users can utilize this very device to stream and play back an array of formats with 1080p resolution support. Heck, there's even an eSATA and Ethernet port there, just waiting for your love. So, will you show it? Or is life still worth living knowing what you've neglected?

[Via Slashgear]

Looks like our dreams of a discrete, low cost home theater PC are about to be realized. ASUS has a new EeeBox PC EB1012 touting a dual-core Atom N330 (just as rumored), NVIDIA MCP7A ION graphics, a 250GB SATA hard disk, 2GB of DDR2-800 memory expandable to 4GB, gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n WiFi, S/PDIF 5.1 audio jack, and HDMI out. As such, this little 222 x 178 x 26.9mm box should handle your hardware accelerated 1080p content just as readily as it does full-screen Flash video from Hulu and beyond -- a place where single-core Atom-based Ion nettops fail. It also features an eSATA jack, 4x USB ports, and an SDHC card reader for plugging in more media. No word on price or ship date but we'll keep an eye out.

[Via eHomeUpgrade]

It's not that ASUS hasn't dipped its toes in HDTV waters before (by the way, whatever happened to that altogether enticing Eee TV?), but we dare say that the TV Monitor T1 is a fresh, if not unsurprising new direction for the company. Arriving in 22- (22T1E), 24- (24T1E) and 27-inch (27T1E) sizes, this trio of sets features a Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) panel, a 20,000:1 contrast ratio, 300 nits of brightness, five millisecond response time, built-in TV tuners (for the UK market) and a pair of seven-watt speakers. As for sockets, you'll find VGA, HDMI (x2), component, composite, S-Video and even a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack. Per usual, ASUS is refusing to dole out pricing and release date information, but hopefully it won't be long before Britons can indulge (and North Americans are notified of an NTSC-capable version).

We knew it was coming, now the ASUS O!Play is official. The HDP-R1 HD Media Player supports HD video playback in a variety of codecs including MPEG1/2/4, H.264, VC-1, and RM/RMVB in a multitude of packages including .mp4, .mov, .avi, .divx, and .mkv just to name a few. FLAC and OGG audio? Yup, no problem. The box connects to your display over HDMI or composite A/V with an option for optical digital audio for multi-channel setups. Media can be slung off a single USB 2.0/eSATA combo port, second vanilla USB 2.0 jack, or streamed over fixed Ethernet if you prefer to keep your content on the other side of the house. Sorry, no 802.11n because, you know, everyone's home is wired with Cat 5 (riiiight). No price or release date given; but it would have to be cheap and soon for us to be even remotely interested.

Wait, what's this? ASUS diving head first into the HD media streamer game? Based on images and details acquired by Hardware, we'd say chances are looking pretty good. Reportedly, the aforementioned outfit will showcase its very own media player at Computex next week in Taiwan, and our expectations are already fairly lofty. The O!Play (codename HDP-R1) is said to be a fair bit quicker than competing models, and the file compatibility list is also worthy of laud. Port wise, this one's packing eSATA, USB, HDMI, stereo audio jacks, optical digital audio, Ethernet and an AC port. If all goes well, we could see this little bugger in European stores by July, with a price tag pegged at €119 ($168). Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as if that price nets you an internal HDD, but we'll find out for sure soon enough.

[Via The Inquirer]

Despite earlier claims to the contrary, it looks like the new ASUS Eee Box, the B206, isn't quite the high-def powerhouse it was intended to be. According to Register Hardware's review, the poor little thing had a real hard time playing even 720p video, only managing to render every frame when video was played back in DirectX Video Acceleration-capable players. That rules out many popular choices like QuickTime and VLC, and you can forget about 1080p entirely. Benchmark scores were low, as you'd expect given the standard 1.6GHz Atom N270 internals and 1GB of memory, leaving it best suited for casual web surfing and SD video playback -- and making it seem like not much of an upgrade over its predecessor.

We can't say that the market has been calling out for a USB stick that combines both a tuner and a flash drive into one tidy package, but that's just what ASUS has delivered with its new Express TV Stick. Aimed at markets outside the US, the Express TV Stick makes good use of the storage by packing all the software necessary to run the hybrid DVB-T / analog tuner right on the device itself. Plug into a USB 2.0 port, install a driver, and away you go. If you can record right to the flash drive -- and we don't see why you shouldn't be able to -- we think TV junkies who need a DVR with truly grab-and-go portability might find room for this among their gear.

We've seen (and heard) ASUS's Xonar HDAV1.3 HDMI card that is able to pass along lossless digital Blu-ray audio up close and personal, so it was only a matter of time before the hardware found its way into a custom-install HTPC. In this case, the first to market might just be S1Digital's P500 Media Center HTPC. As we said after our demo at CES, the ArcSoft + Xonar setup is a little involved, so it's probably a good fit for the custom-install world where integration legwork carries a high premium. S1Digital's free Windows 7 upgrade offer will remove the "instantly obsolete" barrier to entry, so really the only one remaining is that pesky $6,000 entry price. Any other OEMs are welcome to jump in and try to beat S1Digital to market, but we wouldn't count on a much cheaper option just yet.

One might assume that it'd be easy to forget a device that was introduced way back at the front end of this year, but for HTPC owners looking for a reliable way to bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio via HDMI, this one would be impossible to shake from the memory bank. Reportedly, the card went on sale (at least in some parts of the globe) this September, but early adopters were deeply saddened by the unit's inability to bitstream. Thankfully, ASUS has heard the weeping, and it has conjured up new drivers (and the Xonar HDAV1.3 HDMI Deluxe) in order to remedy the issue. The crew at TweakTown was able to video a live demonstration in Taiwan, and they came away emphatically impressed. Shoot on down to the read link for a look at what they found.

Man, talk about maturing early. ASUS' Eee Box just hit the shelves here in America a few months back, and now the company is already pushing out a pair of successors. Both the Eee Box B204 and B206 retain the same overall design and processor (1.6GHz Intel Atom N270), but you will find a 256MB ATI Radeon HD 3400 GPU to complement the 1GB of RAM, 160GB SATA II hard drive, multicard reader, 802.11n WiFi, Windows XP Home, 10GB of online Eee Storage, gigabit Ethernet, four USB 2.0 ports, DVI connector and the freshly added HDMI socket. The B204 trumps the B206 (weird, right?) with the inclusion of Bluetooth and a built-in battery that acts as a UPS in case of power failure. We've already seen just how decently the B202 could handle 1080p playback; it's just that much easier with a dedicated HDMI port. As is par for the course with ASUS, there's nary a mention of price / availability.

You're going to have to sit this one out, Americans -- unless you own a vacation cottage in Europe, that is. ASUS' latest PCIe TV tuner is aimed squarely at those in DVB-T territories, as the My Cinema-PE6300 hybrid card tunes both digital (DVB-T, obviously) and analog (PAL / NTSC) signals. There's also a hardware MPEG2 encoder to take some of the strain away from your CPU, not to mention an IR sensor input and FM radio tuner. In typical ASUS fashion, it's not even trying to dish out a price or release date, so our best advice is to simply keep an eye out if this is the card for you.

As ASUS continues to rapidly dilute its Eee brand like it's going out of style, we still find the 42-inch Eee TV somewhat intriguing. It seems that the set was bolted up with a PlayStation 3 'round back, which was obviously used to pipe the Blu-ray version of Cars on-screen for onlookers to fawn over. Check out a few more snaps of the sides at Engadget Chinese.