Media centers are going to be a big gift item this holiday season so we decided to put together a quick comparison of the three we like the best. Western Digitals HD TV Live, O!Play by Asus and Patriot Medias new offering. Each has it’s own core competency.
The Wester Digitals is the streaming of YouTube, Flickr and Live365 and more to come, The O!Play is that is can connect to eSata dries for faster transfer and the Patriot Media server can host an internal hard drive in addition to external drives on 3 USB ports. Each of these media servers is a great deal to manage your growing media library in a portable media device.
| Media Player | WD HD TV Live | O!Play | Patriot Media |
| Drives | Not included | Not Included | Not Included |
| Resolution | 1080p | 1080p | 1080p |
| USB 2.0 | Yes/2 | Yes | Yes/3 |
| eSata | No | Yes | No |
| Wired Lan | Wired/Wireless | Wired | Wired |
| Dolby Digital | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Connection | HDMI 1.3/ Composite | HDMI/Composite | HDMI 1.3/ Composite |
| Features | Streams YouTube, Flickr, Live365 | - | - |
| Formats | See Notes | See Notes | See Notes |
| amazon Rating | 4 Stars | 4 Stars | Not Rated Yet |
| Pro | Does Streaming | eSata port | Internal Drive & 3/USB |
| Con | No internal drive | No internal drive | No Streaming |
Western Digital WD TV Live Network-ready HD Media Player WDBAAN0000NBK-NESN
ASUS O!Play – TV HD Media Player (Black)
Patriot Box Office 1080P High Definition Media Player PCMPBO25 (Black)
[2] 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 Photo: JPEG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, PNG Audio: MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS Playlist: PLS, M3U, WPL Subtitle: SRT, ASS, SSA, SUB, SMI
[3] Video Compression: MPEG1/2/4, RM/RMVB, VC-1, H.264 Video File Extension: .MP4, .MOV, .XVID, .AVI, .DIVX, .ASF, .WMV, .MKV, .RM, .RMVB, .FLV, .TS, .M2TS, .DAT, .MPG, .VOB Audio: MP3, WAV, AAC, OGG, FLAC, AIFF Image: JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF Subtitle: SRT, SUB, SMI, SSA
[4] Music – WMA, MP3, Real Audio (RA) Graphics – JPEG, BMP, PNG Video – [MPEG-1] MPG/MPEG/DAT, [MPEG-2] MPG/MPEG/VOB/ISO/TS/TP/M2TS, [MPEG-4] MP4/AVI/MOV, WMV9, FLA, [H.264/AVC] MKV/T