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We have collected 3 reviews of the AC Ryan Playon HD ACR-PV73100. Experts rate AC Ryan Playon HD ACR-PV73100 8/10. Reviewsor.com helps you find reviews, best prices, user reviews of the AC Ryan Playon HD ACR-PV73100 and AC Ryan Multimedia hard drive.
This big, noisy streamer leaves no stone unturned, with hard disks available in various sizes (500GB to 2TB, or add your own). AC Ryan has also put a good quality braided 1.8m HDMI cable – along with many others – in the box. Our 1TB review sample didn't come with built-in Wi-Fi, but an 802.11n USB dongle is available for a further £30. That seems Scrooge-like at this price point, though it's not that unusual in this market. The same goes for the cheap remote, although on aesthetic terms its black, green and blue video navigation buttons lift it slightly above 'afterthought' status. Luckily, things improve when we get to features. The device's heavy-duty feel carries continues in the performance, where the PlayOn HD boasts exhaustive media compatibility – card slots are dotted around its bulk, along with three USB ports. Other rarities lie within; the PlayOn acts not only as a NAS drive if networked, but also as a direct download BitTorrent client for acquiring files. Legally, of course. The UI compares reasonably well to its rivals', with a basic presentation of file lists for USB sticks and UPnP sources jazzed up by a large preview screen that comes to life if you roll the cursor over a video file.
In the world of digital media, some things are guaranteed winners. When it comes to media players, however, the particular prescription for success is still very much an enigma, leading to a glut of players on the market that - let's face it - all largely do the same thing, and mostly the same way. I guess that's why we're paid the big-bucks (Right, Rob? Errr, Rob? Where are you going?!) - to help you figure out exactly where on the spectrum each one of these fairly identical products lies. Today's look is at AC Ryan's Playon!HD media player, which has been out since a little after the start of the year. The Playon!HD is a full 1080p media player designed to take square aim and center stage against such products as the WD TV. Of course, it's a little harder to source than some of its competition, due to the company's supply lines - those of us in the US need to do a bit of searching since it's not available on the likes of Newegg or in Best Buy. When you do find it, it retails between $139.99 and $159.99. The device also very happily provides all of these to you through A/V outs of your choosing, including HDMI, Composite, and Y/Pb/Pr Component. For audio, it supports the additional SPDIF coax or Optical TOSLink, which is a nice bonus.
A larger version of the , the AC Ryan Playon !HD (without the mini) is a very complete media centre: it can house a 3.5" hard drive, play HD video, display a video jukebox and even has an SDHC card reader. Really worth its salt? Let's see. Given its similarity with the "mini" version, we're not going to cover everything that we have already covered for that model but rather concentrate on the differences. We'll also sum up its strong and weak points. The major difference is that you can insert a 3.5" SATA internal hard drive. There's also an SDHC reader on the side of the device, beside two USB sockets. The finish is fine and only the remote is slightly disappointing. Multimedia compatibility is identical to the mini version. Note that a BitTorrent client and a feature for access via the network are available. The big plus on this model is of course its compabibility with the YAMJ video jukebox system. For those who don't know this tool, it allows you to scan your video library (films and series) and look for relevant information (poster, synopsis, actors and so on) and to create files for each title.