Just a brief review as requested by another user, nothing fancy. For something more in depth have a look
here.
The unit:
http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/components/componentview.asp?partid=11903Basically the AC Ryan Playon! HD (POHD) is a network media player similar to the ASUS O!Play (what is it with media players and strange locations of exclamation marks?), in that it can play any file shared over a home network and is a heck of a lot cheaper than a HTPC. The one major difference is that the POHD can house a 3.5" internal hard drive, and once installed the player can both play files stored on the HDD but also act as a basic NAS device and stream files over the network.
I ordered my POHD about a week ago from CL along with a 1.5TB Samsung F2 ecogreen HDD, and have been loving it ever since it arrived. The bundle is very generous, a high quality HDMI cable is included, along with everything else needed to get you started. Setup was an absolute breeze, the manual was a little sparse on some details but the support website is excellent and it is clear that AC Ryan staff are all too keen to answer questions and provide how-to guides. The community is also very active, and there are projects here and there to "hack" the firmware to enable YouTube support etc. After updating the firmware, I moved on to installing the hard drive, a process which takes all of 3 minutes. An excellent instructional video has been posted on YouTube by staff. The hard drive does need to be formatted by the player before use so you can't install a disk which has been pre-loaded with media. Once the HDD is installed you can either transfer files over the network or via the included USB cable (probably faster, considering the player unfortunately does not support gigabit ethernet).
Playback over both network and from the HDD is fantastic. The player can output up to 1080P over HDMI and plays just about every file format imaginable (see the review link I posted at the top to see a robust test list). Picture is smooth and crisp.
The interface is simple but does the job. When scrolling through video files a preview plays on the side, which is nice but can slow down browsing. There is an option to switch this feature off, though. The remote has kind of a strange layout which takes some getting used to, but is much more robust than most other media player remotes out there. The other slightly annoying thing is the startup time after the HDD is installed, which goes from about 5 seconds to about 30.
As mentioned before, the player can also act as a basic NAS device, and also has an optional BitTorrent client which I am yet to use. Network sharing is enabled by a linux application called Samba, look it up on wikipedia if you're interested in knowing the technical details. Suffice to say it works like a charm, within seconds of switching it on I was able to stream video to both my windows 7 PC and XP laptop. It is only a basic device, however, as files have to be updated/backed up manually. Still, for the price, I'm not complaining.
All in all it has been a pleasure to use the AC Ryan Playon! HD so far, and I consider it by far one of the best purchases I have made in recent times. 9/10 from me
Main system: CL built Core i7-860 | Gigabyte UD3 | Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Rev. 2 | 4GB Supertalent Gold 1600 CL9 | Seagate 7200.12 1TB | Sapphire HD5850 | CM Storm Scout | Corsair HX620 | Gigabyte GM-M8000 mouse | Razer ExactMat Speed
AC Ryan Playon! HD with 1.5TB Samsung F2 in the lounge
