AC Ryan Playon!HD Mini 2 Review

[Rob Williams]

A lot has happened with AC Ryan's Playon! line-up since I took a look at the original mini last fall, with a GUI overhaul being the most noticeable and important change. There are a ton of new Internet features packed in as well, and thanks to the addition of a 1Gbit/s LAN port, your high bitrate content will have more room to breathe.

Read through our full look at AC Ryan's Playon!HD mini 2 and then discuss it here!

 

[Kayden]

Great review Rob. Since I have a MCE-PC and if I wanted to setup on in another room I would have to use another PC or a 360, this however looks like it can handle what I want in another room with out a problem or at least the problems I do see can be fixed like you said in the review, either by 3rd party solutions or firmware updates.

I can at last feel confident about seriously considering this box (or future one from AC Ryan) like this for when I need to setup another room, not to mention the price point in the short and long term.

 

[marfig]

Excellent review. Thanks. The most complete I've seen.

Still not my type of device. I prefer the "old fashioned" way of building my own HTPC. But the fact you have a picture of Reservoir Dogs has earned you a review of the month award

EDIT:
I really, really, appreciate the fact you guys take your sweet time testing and using your stuff before producing the final test of the review. One month testing this is the type of care and dedication to your "job" I so much appreciate and won't ever tire of being thankful for. And its much more than I can ever hope of more popular media outlets out there, which, because of that, not always reach the depth of some of you guys reviews.

 

[Optix]

Your review sucks!

Sorry...I didn't want the praise to go to your head.

Gotta get me one of these puppies or something that will make cable obsolete!

 

[toddos]

I currently have a WDTV Live and had a similar issue to what you said about your PC not being discovered. In my case, my wifi router went rogue and elected itself Master Browser on my network. The only problem with that is that "router" is acting as a dumb AP and isn't set up with DNS or other functionality to see SMB shares on my network and as a result I was only able to see that router's file share and nothing else. In my case, I have a linux box on my network (the real router) and could add "os level = 255" and "preferred master = yes" entries to smb.conf in order to make it always win elections. Once the linux box took over as browse master all of my shares showed up on the WDTV correctly.

If you only have Windows machines on your network and no OS X or Linux or other Samba-running machines that allow you to explicitly set os level, you can do some registry hacking and hope your Windows box gets lucky and wins the election. I don't know any other way to force it.

 

[Rob Williams]

If you only have Windows machines on your network and no OS X or Linux or other Samba-running machines that allow you to explicitly set os level, you can do some registry hacking and hope your Windows box gets lucky and wins the election. I don't know any other way to force it.

Thanks a ton for the tips! I admit I have fiddled in the router quite a bit in month's past, so it could be that -something- is preventing the PC from being discovered on the network. I'll reset it in the coming days and see what happens. The thing that frustrates me though, is that my SAMBA share under Linux was discovered just fine with this media player (and other PCs). It's just my Windows install that refuses to be seen from any PC/device.

 

[Rob Williams]

I can at last feel confident about seriously considering this box (or future one from AC Ryan) like this for when I need to setup another room, not to mention the price point in the short and long term.

The frustrating thing is that this is the best media player out there, but it's near-impossible for Americans or Canadians to acquire. I really hope more retailers on these shores pick up on these things, because they're definitely worthy of attention.

Still not my type of device. I prefer the "old fashioned" way of building my own HTPC. But the fact you have a picture of Reservoir Dogs has earned you a review of the month award

I am pretty much the same way. I haven't done it yet, but I keep having the idea pop into my head to build an HTPC/server based on Linux that has XBMC as a front-end. This way I can keep HDDs in the PC for local storage and still be able to access my NAS for even more. I could also use it as a backup server and for other things, since nowadays it's very affordable to build a very powerful multi-purpose server - and one that's small at that (I keep looking at this GIGABYTE ITX board on my shelf... tempting the heck out of me).

Reservoir Dogs

Hah! Whenever I decide to take a shot like that, I go to the shelf and try to pick a film that's going to cause someone to say something. Kudos for making it happen (Classic movie, to be sure, amazing cast).

I really, really, appreciate the fact you guys take your sweet time testing and using your stuff before producing the final test of the review. One month testing this is the type of care and dedication to your "job" I so much appreciate and won't ever tire of being thankful for. And its much more than I can ever hope of more popular media outlets out there, which, because of that, not always reach the depth of some of you guys reviews.

Whenever we're able to do that, we do, and I couldn't agree with you more. Some companies are a little more impatient than others, but AC Ryan is the saint of all companies in that regard, so I thank them for that.

Your review sucks!

Can't I have anything?!?!

 

[toddos]

Thanks a ton for the tips! I admit I have fiddled in the router quite a bit in month's past, so it could be that -something- is preventing the PC from being discovered on the network. I'll reset it in the coming days and see what happens. The thing that frustrates me though, is that my SAMBA share under Linux was discovered just fine with this media player (and other PCs). It's just my Windows install that refuses to be seen from any PC/device.

I mispoke before -- when my wifi AP went rogue, it picked up itself and my linux Samba shares and that's it, though I assumed that's because the linux box is also the network gateway and so it's the only other PC the wifi AP knew about.

Still, check your network to figure out what server is the browse master for smb sharing and if necessary force the linux box to always win elections.