Home / Tech News / Featured Announcement / AC Ryan Playon! HD 2 Network Media Player review

AC Ryan Playon! HD 2 Network Media Player review

Even though there is no need to open up the unit anymore to get access to the hard drive, we wanted to focus on the new hardware inside.

The new Realtek processor (RTD1185DD) is 25% faster than the old model and there is a Nanya NT5TU64M16GG-AC DDR2 memory module also installed. The Hynix NAND Flash chip (HY27UF084G2B) stores the graphical user interface for the product. There is also a JMS551 USB 3.0 to Sata bridge controller chip installed on the PCB.

Above you will notice a mini PCI Slot for an optional WiFi card.

A small daughtercard resides at the rear of the unit which controls the IR. There is also a small 40mm fan which rests to the side of the PCB to aid with internal ambient cooling.

Become a Patron!

Check Also

Mortal Shell Epic

Mortal Shell is free on the Epic Games Store

Every week, the Epic Games Store gives away a title or two for free to all those with an EGS account. Available to claim right now, Epic is offering the action Souls-like Mortal Shell alongside bonus content for World of Warships.

8 comments

  1. Excellent range of products these guys put out every year.

  2. I love the piano finish. Interesting idea to add USB 3.0, cant see myself using that much as i would leave this in a network position all the time, not next to a PC? more next to a TV. Dissappointing about the gigabit lan performance, I was expecting much faster times to internal drive over network.

  3. Looks great. The pricing is hard to beat. USB 3.0 option would actually be useful for me to transfer a lot of content over, as I dont really have a good home network.

  4. I wish one of these could act as a 24/7 nas with good speeds. no one makes one yet. 🙁 means you could download on the PC< move it to the NAS connected to the TV and watch the stuff later. they are all far too slow.

  5. They do the styling well, reminds me of my pioneer limited edition amplifier with piano finish. I think I spent more time polishing it than using it.

  6. korn, why not just copy them to a NAS, and then stream them to the media player later?

  7. I keep meaning to buy a media player like this, just havent gotten around to it. ive a ton of spare HDs. the bare one would make more sense for me.

  8. AC Ryan told us “The processor is unable to handle large data packets via the same Gigabit Ethernet port. For a standalone NAS system, the chipset used is better meant to handle data transfer, and Gigabit Ethernet improves this by providing a larger bandwidth.

    This is not an uncommon problem with media players, with the current Sigma processor also handling high bitrate streaming via their Gigabit port, but data transfer is relatively the same as our players on Realtek. At the moment Realtek is tweaking the data packets configuration to improve in this area, but it will not achieve the intended data transfer rates due to the processor limitation.”

We've noticed that you are using an ad blocker.

Thank you for visiting KitGuru. Our news and reviews teams work hard to bring you the latest stories and finest, in-depth analysis.

We want to be as informative as possible – and to help our readers make the best buying decisions. The mechanism we use to run our business and pay some of the best journalists in the world, is advertising.

If you want to support KitGuru, then please add www.kitguru.net to your ad blocking whitelist or disable your adblocking software. It really makes a difference and allows us to continue creating the kind of content you really want to read.

It is important you know that we don’t run pop ups, pop unders, audio ads, code tracking ads or anything else that would interfere with the KitGuru experience. Adblockers can actually block some of our free content, such as galleries!