acryan playon essential full hd media player

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killadoob

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Who has this player i see it is 550 at esquire, i am thinking i should buy one.

Any reason i should avoid it?
 
Absolutely no reason why you should avoid this, I have six at home and took another one yesterday
For the price and features it is steal, btw the pricing in back up @R599.00 excl vat
 
I bought one as a gift, it did not detect the hard drive, took it back to Esquire which was a pain, I was the only one there but still waited almost an hour for them to replace it.

A while later it was damaged due to lightening so I went and bought them another one, had the same issue again.

Might just be my bad luck.

Once it works then it is not a bad player for the price, menus are a bit slow but otherwise a good buy.
 
Had one and sold it, hated the interface / menu, its ugly. Interface slow, firmware updates major issues with the old AC Ryan. Have the HP Server, a far better media player.
 
Nivec said:
I bought one as a gift, it did not detect the hard drive, took it back to Esquire which was a pain, I was the only one there but still waited almost an hour for them to replace it.

A while later it was damaged due to lightening so I went and bought them another one, had the same issue again.

Might just be my bad luck.

Once it works then it is not a bad player for the price, menus are a bit slow but otherwise a good buy.
Click to expand...

Erm.. I have bought about 10 of these for friends and every one had the same problem you do. If you just stick a formatted drive into the unit 90% of the time it will not pick it up. You need to format the drive in the unit to be able to see it. This has resolved the issue every time I have had it.

I have 3 different flavours of the AC Ryan stuff and its getting a little better with every update. There is a bit of a lag when reading a new folder especially over a network and my unit freezes up once or twice a year (had it for 3 years now). The last update on the firmware really was a massive improvement on the menu system. I have promised to buy myself the Mede8er 2 when this one dies but its still going strong. In fact it looks like my Mede8er is going to die first. It is a year older than the Playon tho.

The Mede8er is still my favorite, but for that price you cant go wrong with the PlayonHD.
 
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If this is the 1st time you buying a media player, you might like it ..... it will basically play anything you throw at it.
BUT if you've worked with other players before, especially the mede8er, you will get :sick: with the performance of the essential.
 
Picked one up on the weekend for the folks. Good bang for buck.
 
Just bought the Xtreamer Sidewinder 2 - absolutely love this player, plays everything and the specs are great - paid R1,100
 
Madman88 said:
Erm.. I have bought about 10 of these for friends and every one had the same problem you do. If you just stick a formatted drive into the unit 90% of the time it will not pick it up. You need to format the drive in the unit to be able to see it. This has resolved the issue every time I have had it.
Click to expand...

Would have tried formatting the hard drive if the player could detect it. As I mentioned, the hard drive was not detected, so when going to the format section, the hard drive was not available to format. Tried various hard drives as well.
 
aedro said:
Had one and sold it, hated the interface / menu, its ugly. Interface slow, firmware updates major issues with the old AC Ryan. Have the HP Server, a far better media player.
Click to expand...

Had the same experience. Tried to replace my HTPC with this. Hated everything about it. Lost everything on a 2TB drive because it wasn't formatted on the device itself. The UI is pathetic and slow and the support on the device sucks. Sorry, the support doesn't suck, because there is no support. Just head over to the official forums and see how people are bitching about the device...
 
Okie dokie thanx guys, think i will just buy a cheap pc rather. Perhaps that amd thing with mobo and cpu plus memory. Will that work i forget it's name. APU or arm something like that.
 
iv seen the iSonic IS-A3HD 2.5" Full HD SATA Multimedia Player for around 450 ...is it worth the buy cos all i need is for it to play my movies and series off my hdd ....and you can add a 2.5" drive to it ...

has anyone purchased any of this or would it be better to just add the little money and buy the ac ryan one
 
It's cheap & nasty IMO.

Plays everything I throw at it but it has firmware bugs that haven't been fixed yet.
Main gripes are ..
- it doesn't display folder.jpg in thumbnail view and 0001.jpg in preview mode like the other models, but always the first image in a folder which looks sheite when changing modes.
- no folders under the movie & music menus, i.e. all 1000+ movies in one endless list forcing you to use the file system mode all the time.

Also there's very little update love from AC Ryan for this model (last firmware was 22/02 iirc.)
But yeah it is cheap .. and it plays everything.
 
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I have the Playon!HD2. Using Firmware_Playon!HD2_PV73700_v9.5.3.r5311 and no rebooting issues like the latest one. There is a fix but haven't gotten around to playing with it.

The developers say within 3 Months another update will be out so time will tell if the issues experienced by other users will be resolved.

It is only 3 weeks or so old and it works well. Handles all the lossless audio very well and with high bitrate 40MB/s videos no slowdowns or issues to report :)

Haven't got YAMJ working yet but from pictures posted on the forum, it looks nice.

If you not going to use an INT hdd get the Mini HD2 and use the firmware above.

@Killa yes it will play your HD collection very nicely :D ;)
 
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Yuu said:
I have the Playon!HD2. Using Firmware_Playon!HD2_PV73700_v9.5.3.r5311 and no rebooting issues like the latest one. There is a fix but haven't gotten around to playing with it.

The developers say within 3 Months another update will be out so time will tell if the issues experienced by other users will be resolved.

It is only 3 weeks or so old and it works well. Handles all the lossless audio very well and with high bitrate 40MB/s videos no slowdowns or issues to report :)

Haven't got YAMJ working yet but from pictures posted on the forum, it looks nice.

If you not going to use an INT hdd get the Mini HD2 and use the firmware above.

@Killa yes it will play your HD collection very nicely :D ;)
Click to expand...

i like the new interface but its almost impossible to see the titles on my CRT screen :/ Might have to go back to the older firmware
 
Can't see this post anymore but asked if this was Beta firmware and the answer is no :).

Strange :wtf:
 
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