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In the past year we have looked at a number of products from AC Ryan’s PlayOn! range which have all impressed us, earning some of our most prestigious awards over the last year. So when AC Ryan offered us their latest product for testing, we couldn't refuse!
Today we are going to look at one of the more budget friendly products from AC Ryan the PlayOn! HD Mini 2. This replaces the original HD Mini that we reviewed a while back, bringing a number of updates which should improve the user experience.
These include YouTube playback and access to other social media platforms such as Facebook and Picasa.
Features
- More format support
- NAS Functionality
- Silent Cooling
- Unique User Interface
- Engage Social Media
- Smart Content Management
- Gigabit Wired Networking
Specification
| A/V Out | HDMI 1.3 interface up to 1080p Composite Audio / Video Y/Pb/Pr Video SPDIF Optical TOSLink (digital audio) |
| Storage Supported | USB HDD, USB sticks and other USB Mass Storage Devices File Systems: FAT, FAT32, NTFS, EXT3 Network drives: USB2.0 PORTS: 2 x USB 2.0 (USB-A) |
| USB Supported | Add ports with USB hubs, USB card readers 2x USB 2.0 (USB-A) |
| Network – Wired | Gigabit |
| Network – Wireless (Optional) |
Wireless WLAN 802.11b/g/n 300Mbps via USB WLAN adaptor (optional, not incl.) Supports WLAN security WEP, WPA Supports WLAN Peer-to-Peer (connects wireless without router) |
| Network – Wireless Built-In (Selected models only) |
Wireless-N via a PCI-e port with dual antenna |
| Video Formats Supported | AVI / MKV / TS / TP / TRP / M2TS / MPG / MP4 / MOV / M4V / VOB / ISO / DVD-ISO / IFO / DAT / WMV / ASF / RM / RMVB / FLV resolution up to 720p / 1080i / 1080p / BD-ISO |
| Video Codecs Supported | MPEG-1 / MPEG-2 / MPEG-4 SP/ASP/AVC (H.264 | x264) / XviD / DivX / WMV9 (VC-1) / RealVideo 8/9/10 (up to 720P) |
| Video Output Supported | PAL / NTSC / 480p / 576p / 720p / 1080i 50Hz / 1080i 60Hz / 1080p 50Hz / 1080p 60Hz / 1080p 24FPS |
| Audio Formats Supported | MP3 / MP2 / WMA / AAC / FLAC / WAV / OGG Vorbis / PCM / LPCM / MS-ADPCM / LC-AAC / HE-AAC / COOK / RA-Lossless |
| Audio Output Supported | Stereo
Dolby Digital AC3 5.1 (passthrough & downmix to stereo) Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 (passthrough) Dolby TrueHD 7.1 (passthrough & downmix to stereo) DTS Digital Surround 5.1 (passthrough & downmix to stereo) AAC 7.1 (passthrough & downmix to stereo) FLAC |
| Image Formats Supported | JPEG, HD JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIF, PNG |
| Subtitles Format Supported | SRT, SMI, SSA, IDX/SUB, SUB |
| Network – Wirless Built-In (Needed for subtitles) |
Unicode (UTF8), BIG5 (Traditional Chinese), Western, Turkish, Central European, Greek, Cyrillic, SE European, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Thai |
| Power | DC-IN 5V Standby: 0,3 W / Active: 8,2 W |
| Cooling | No Fan (Advanced Fanless Cooling for processor) |
Nice products, I like the interface.
I bought this a few weeks ago and its great, I find however sometimes it ‘hard locks’ when im moving between menus across the network. Any ideas?
These are great for a living room or for lying in bed, but im still not sold on replacing a proper media center, even in those situations. AC Ryan are a good company, they seem to support their customers well, looking at their forums anyway
Excellent. should be popular
DO hard core enthusiast users really buy these and not make a cool custom media center?
I think these are cool devices, but I dont think id buy one, mainly because I like more control having a full media center. The IQ always concerns me as you have no play with it really. ATI and NVidia offer a lot in their panels.
They need to start offering a lot more options IMO before id even be remotely interested.
They are ideal for low power drain users who want a tiny box in a cabinet under the TV. I think there is a place for them. Not for me either im afraid
My friend has another one of these media players, cant remember the name of the company, but it looks very like this. The networking speeds are terrible. streaming is a disaster. I would be surprised if this could handle a high bitrate 1080p file probably ober a network.
So many of these for sale now, what do AC ryan do differently from the others on scans store?
bought their last generation player and I dont see any need to change tbh. good products, people are being a bit hard,. they arent meant to replace a media center, more to suit people who cant be bothered with windows and want an easy to use remote.
Hi just look at the comments on amazon about this product
a night mare.
As a satisfied user of the old AC Ryan Playon! HD MINI1 “I wanted to buy new equipment because the gigabit data stream over my gigabit network, and thus the ‘heavy’ files to my TV set could stream without faltering.
But what happens is that a downgrade rather than purchasing an upgrade.
The menu where you must scroll through file consists of large icons, which only 8 fit on your screen.
So, if you have many files in a folder, it may leave you a long scroll until you have found the correct file.
(There is a ‘list’ button on the remote, but this is a detour, and not at all practical)
Also it goes very wrong with the subtitles of mkv video files.
The unit takes the first .srt-file from the folder, regardless of the video file. So you should always manually add your subtitle manually via the configuration sub-menu. (The name of video and subtitle are always identical, with no spaces or dots)
The previous ‘Playon! HD MINI1 “I had it two years in my possession, I’ve never had this problem.
Also the sound goes mute, and you can hit a few times forward and backward, to get the sound back.
At first I thought it were beginners flaws of a new device, but these problems have existed since February 2010, and AC Ryan has still not be able to correct these problems through firmware updates.
I’m looking for another media-player, because this unit is a bad buy overall. This unit has won prizes, but many buyers experiencing the same problems as me.