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Today's marketplace is literally saturated with standalone media players and A.C. Ryan have delivered several products which really do work extremely well in a variety of situations.
The interface, while slightly unattractive is very workmanlike and offers a huge array of options for streaming, copying and moving media across your network, either to the internal drive for viewing later, or just for moving files between a NAS and the PlayON! unit.
Sadly, without a gigabit port, this process is painful, particularly if you are used to 1GB files being copied in a manner of seconds rather than minutes. It seems a rather unusual omission, because gigabit networks are now becoming much more popular.
Media support is better than we expected and there was not a file in our vast collection that this device didn't play directly or stream across the network. This is the biggest selling point because many of these devices fall at the starting block.
Support from A.C Ryan is said to be top drawer with a 2 year warranty as well as proactive forum staff who interact with the public answering questions and even offering advice. This earns them bonus points as we hate to see a company selling products then leaving their user base twisting in the wind.
Another strong point are the firmware updates, we have had these units now for many weeks and have been using them regularly at night to give them a lot of real world testing. The interface has changed slightly several times and they add features and fix bugs on a fairly regular basis. Again, another massive selling point for the enthusiast user base who want one of these devices but don't want to end up with something useless and outdated within a few months.
The Mini might be a better option for many people who already have a NAS system because you will be saving money and still have access to the same interface and the excellent streaming capabilities.
Overall we have been impressed with these products from A.C. Ryan and the only things we would change would be to add a gigabit wired port, change the 40mm fan to a larger, quieter unit and perhaps work on hiring a design team to enhance the appearance of the (rather ugly) user interface. Under the hood however (where it is most important) these products really deliver the goods.
Pricing right now is very competitive. The 1TB unit has dropped in price from just under £200 recently to £173.77 inc vat. It is worth pointing out that if you have a hard drive then you can pick the core unit up for around £130 inc vat. If you want a smaller size they also sell a 500GB unit for £152 inc vat – half a terrabyte for £22 seems pretty good value. All of these prices have dropped considerably since they were first released and I have raised my scores accordingly. The Mini is £90 inc vat in the UK and is a particularly strong buy for a living room, we love this little unit. The A.C. Ryan Wireless Adapter is selling for £20 inc vat and will prove a good purchase for either of these media players if you don't want to deal with cables.
KitGuru says: If you love media and want something compact, high quality and user friendly for your living room or bedroom then these units make a great purchase.
Wow those are lovely looking units, i just bought one on Scan. the 1TB unit, shall get it Monday. great review thanks.
Shame about the 40mm fan, but I doubt its that intrusive when watching movies 🙂 I just ordered the Mini also.
I already have the mini after reading a review on a few other sites. Its a great product and I have no need for the hard drive,. its only £90 in the Uk too, thats a bargain, as I hate having a PC on at night time just to watch TV shows.
Zardon would you say the noise would put you off buying the full sized unit yourself?
Not at all, but I like to try and cover the issue of noise as I know some people have really sensitive hearing. I would say ive good hearing myself but noise within limits is fine in certain situations. As Eric said above however when watching movies or TV shows, the fan noise will not annoy, but for those people in a bedroom who want to leave it on all the time, it would be noticeable.
Well I feel rather stupid cause id never heard of AC RYAN, sounds like the guy from Bioshock ! Its a terrible product name, sounds like a far east product brought over to the UK. surprised a european company didnt come up with something more attractive than PLAYON! However, side issue of crap naming aside, the products seem well made.
Scan will be getting some sales today from KG, just ordered the mini unit 🙂
The interface is absolutely awful looking to be fair – but I hear they change it regularly so its hard to nail it down to a specific look and feel. At least it works which is important, some of those media players have dreadful support for codecs.
They make very good products, I have one of their older media players which is pretty good, but I think its time for an upgrade, nice review thank you.
The pricing is really rather great ! didnt know abou this company, but I will be getting one of these at some stage. just funds are tight right now.
The 500GB version suits me, seems £22 is a good deal for 500gb of storage. and id like the option of being able to move files over to this device in case my network over wireless cant handle streaming for playback.
The REaltek chip is very good for a product like this, and I really rate these products, my friend has the mini version and I was always looking at getting the 1TB version as I only have a 500GB nas which I use for downloads, but im running low. Spending 300 quid on a NAS system seems pointless when this would work just as well, for 175 and treble my storage capacity while able to be used in my living room as a media player. my wife wont have ANY pc in this room so its the best I can do 🙂
1TB looks the best deal, I would never need more than than. and it seems more than enough for this device.
AC Ryan are brilliant, I love them, I already have the mini but I was going to sell it to my friend last week to buy the 1TB unit as I want the storage now. This has just reminded me I need to sell mine and buy the bigger one!
I wish to god I had seen this review before I bought the ASUS unit I have, bought it 9 months ago and it wont play about 1/3 of the files I download. Seems its time for some ebaying now.
I need to get one of these. I have a great gaming pc, but its quite loud and its annoying at night, id love one of these for watching media so I could turn the PC off.
I love these units. they look stunning in design and the interface while a little chunky offers a lot of functionality. I NEED to get one of these soon. probably the bigger model without a drive in it. (as I just bought a 2TB drive!)
I have one already, but I would buy another, they are that good 🙂
Never heard of this company but loved the review KitGuru, these are really good products and I like the idea of being able to turn off the hot running PC when I want to casually watch my media files 🙂
Found this review on Google, cant believe ive never been here before, spent the last hour reading other reviews. brilliant site.
Great of review of what appears to be a great product!
However, I read this near the bottom of page 4:
>> ….. the unit cannot play regular DVD discs from an external optical drive due to CSS protection ….. <<
So, if an external optical drive (like a USB DVDRW drive) was plugged in, the ACRyan unit will not play store-bought movies? What if the movie was in the PC DVD drive, would it stream the movie over the network and play it?
Hey everyone,
I’m glad you seem to like our product.
To dlb: You cannot play DVD or Bluray’s over network attached players or PC. You would have to rip your dics to a network or local storage in order for our player to play them.
If you got any other questions I’m glad to answer them.
Br,
A.C Ryan Mikael
Mikael, I bought one last week and it arrived, it really is a brilliant player, I cant believe how many formats it supports,. even ISO’s and Bluray folders (well some of them).
What a great product.
It supports ISO files? holy crap, thats wicked. I loved this review, I think ill get one when im paid, probably with the 500GB hd.
Yes, the players support ISO files and Bluray ‘light menu’. That means you can’t have the java menus that Bluray’s normally have, since we currently don’t have java support. But you will be able to play the folders with a ‘light’ version of the original menu for now.
We do put a lot of effort into developing new firmware to open new functions, but also to maintain the current ones. I’m not sure if or when java support could be possible on our players, but we have a ‘features and future request’ section in our forums if you would like to see something in particular in our future firmware release you can always give your input to us.
What a great review and what a fanastic product, I went and ordered the 1TB version after reading this. Love the site too. nice to see a company with active support forums.
Mikael, you sold me, going to order one. might even go for the 1TB version as I only have a small nas
Fantastic to see AC RYAN staff over here, this seems to be one of the most exciting companies on the market. I have never seen any other company offer ISO support. I wasnt expecting t his.
I am really tempted myself to get one now after reading all this, my media PC is a mess and its noisy. this is ideal. now to work out how to get the money !
I stumbled upon this after searching on google for a media player. I am stunned I have never heard of this company and did some research. followed up over on their site and asked some questions which got answered within a couple of hours.
I am voting with my wallet. these people need to do well in the market, with such a focused grasp of what WE want. Shall order one when I get paid.
Great review thanks for explaining it all well. ordered one yesterday
We’re looking at getting one of these, full version, 1 or 2 TB, but I just saw a comment by ACRyan above stating that media streamers do not play commercial DVD’s/bluray disks. Does that mean that I cannot stream something running from my laptop to the streamer then? What if I want to watch something online such as on 4OD (channel 4’s on demand site) or if I run a DVD on my laptop – I cannot stream these to the tv or would I then just have t plug the TV into my laptop & bypass the streamer? Sorry I’ve got no experience with these things as yet!
Looks like the Playon is by far the best media streamer around though.
Sorry if this is a really stupid question, but can a further external HDD be added via the USB port? And if I had 2+ of these machines, would it be possible to stream to them wirelessly (with the optional adaptor) from my router’s HDD port? Many thanks.
Ah well, didn’t get a reply but bought one anyway. First to answer my own questions – yes, external HDD works well, no, unless wireless is v. fast streaming directly isn’t going to work. Now my impressions; overall am very pleased with it, the interface is distinctly ‘clunky’ and not something I’d recommend to someone with no computer expertise at all (not at the iPod/iTunes stage yet. The player locks up sometimes, or crashes, and it’s a shame there’s no reset/reboot button. I installed a 2Tb WD Green drive, works very well and formatted without problem. Now about to look at options to install media jukebox.