AC Ryan Playon DVR HD

AC Ryan Playon! DVR HD review

As the AC Ryan Playon! DVR HD hybrid PVR media server has been designed to satisfy most European territories (AC Ryan is Dutch), its twin DTT tuners predictably don't cater for Freeview HD reception.It's fairly nondescript to look at (like an off -the-shelf media centre PC, which in some ways is what it is), but it runs quietly and its black casing should be a match for most people's living rooms. A large blue LED readout sits atop a row of operating buttons on the fascia. It's sold with a choice of internal 3.5-inch SATA hard discs – either 500GB, 1TB, 1.5 and 2TB, or can take drives attached by eSATA or USB (there are two ports on the right and one on the rear). Alternatively, you can stream from networked drives (DLNA/uPnP and Samba are supported), though wireless functionality requires adding a dongle. Other connections (for which a generous amount of cabling is provided) on the rear include HDMI, component, optical and coaxial S/PDIFs, a multi-format memory card slot and composite and phono inputs for external capture. The remote is cheap but effectively signposts most key features, though it's strange that there's no dedicated button for 'jumping' to TV and easy to get the start and end buttons confused with fast-forward and rewind.