Friday, July 31, 2009

Playon!HD Wireless-N 300mbps USB Adaptor – Order starts now

ACR-PV73100-wirelessn

It's finally ready. We've finally completed testing Wireless-N 300mbps with Playon!HD. We are starting the process to produce them and so everything is finalised and confirmed, expected shipping is early September.

From today, the Wireless-N 300mbps is up on the Buy Now page on PlayonHD.com for orders, at €29,- for Europe (for other regions/currencies please check the website – please remember to choose your region : Europe / USA & Canada / Russia / Singapore / Asia / International

==========
Playon!HD Owners
We know from your emails, there's plenty of Playon!HD users waiting for this  You would have / will be receiving an email offering you FREE SHIPPING. If you have not received the email, worry not. All you have to do is order your Wireless-N USB Adaptor on PlayonHD.com Buy Now and type in your Playon!HD Serial Number in the Promotion Code. You can find the Serial Number of your Playon!HD at the back of your player.

The FREE SHIPPING ships everywhere, to every country.

While this FREE SHIPPING offer is valid on our website, feel free to check with your reseller. Resellers are expected to have the Playon!HD Wireless-N 300mbps option too and each reseller may have a different offer.

==========
Playon!HD Soon-to-be Owners
You've placed an order with us, waiting for available Playon!HD to ship. As Playon!HD "soon-to-be" user, you can add the Wireless-N 300mbps USB Adaptor. Simply place an order for the Wireless-N 300mbps on our PlayonHD.com website and type in your Playon!HD Order Reference Number as the Promotion Code. The Order form will automatically calculate FREE SHIPPING. You can proceed to make payment. Whether the player and the Wireless-N 300mbps ships together or ships separately - you do not have to worry, there are no extra shipping charges. You can find the your Playon!HD Order Reference Number in the email you received from us confirming your Playon!HD order (the number starts with "074").

If you have ordered with our resellers, check with them for the Playon!HD Wireless-N 300mbps USB Adaptor.In any case, you can ask your questions here too - we are here to help.

==========
New Orders
We’ve received emails from some of you guys, waiting for our Wireless-N 300mbps to be ready to order your Playon!HD… well, go right ahead. While the est. shipping date of the Wireless-N 300mbps is expected to be early September, if your Playon!HD is ready for you before that, we’ll ship your Playon!HD first and the Wireless-N 300mbps in early Sept, with no extra cost at all. Whether the player and the Wireless-N 300mbps ships together or ships separately - you do not have to worry, there are no extra shipping charges.

==========
When ordering the Wireless-N 300mbps USB Adaptor, you can also add Diskje 4GB / 8GB / 16GB and still enjoy free shipping. I'm "pimping" the Diskje because I personally like it very much for its supersmall / superthin size convenience, also worry-free with shockproof and waterproof. I'm listening to music in my car and at home with it (beats a CD anyday), carrying videos with it too. Ok, enough pimping...

back to Wireless-N 300mbps USB Adaptor...

Wireless-N 300mbps USB Adaptor (Optional)

Stream wireless between your network and Playon!HD with the latest and fastest Wireless-N - convenience of network without wires, and yet with fast transmission! That's Wireless-N 300mbps!

    Plug-n-Play with Playon!HD
    802.11n/b/g
    Receive up to 300Mbps (from Network to Playon!HD)
    Transmit up to 150mbps (from Playon!HD to Network)
    Security keys supported :
    WEP (64/128-bit), WPA/WPA2, WPA/WPA2-TKIP (with IEEE 802.1xx), WPA/WPA2-AES (with IEEE 802.1xx)
    Supports WPS (WiFi Protected Setup) for easy wireless security setup
    Supports WMM (WiFi MulitMedia)
    Supports Infrastructure mode (connect to Routers)
    Supports Ad-hoc mode (connect peer-to-peer with PC)
    USB2.0 / 1.1
    Can also be used as Wireless-N 300mbps USB Adaptor for your PC/Notebook

Buy Now Links:

* please remember to choose your region Europe / USA & Canada / Russia / Singapore / Asia / International

If you have any questions,

MPCClub review says “Buy it!”

ACR-PV73100-mpcclubreview MPCClub – those who have been following mediplayers would have read an MPCClub review at one time or another. The granddaddy of mediaplayer reviews, MPCClub has been reviewing mediaplayer before mediaplayers started finding a place in homes. Many, many players have come and gone through their reviewer’s hands. So, are we thrilled with what the MPCClub review said about Playon!HD ?… two words : “You bet!” :)

“As for the PlayON! HD player itself, I liked it. It is a good player with a lot going for it. If you are looking for a straight up Movie player that will play most formats thrown at it, then look no further the PlayOn! HD can certainly do that. I was impressed by the smoothness of the playback and the colour reproduction, the contrast was spot on and negated any adjustments to my panel settings, which is a sign of a good player… So back to my first Conclusion paragraph, how do I sum the player up in a number of paragraphs, I don’t. I sum it up in two words:“Buy it!””

Read the extensive full review here: http://www.mpcclub.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=799

Techzine.nl says “very good network mediaplayer”

ACR-PV73100-techzinereview Techzine.nl, the Dutch internet and technology news portal, checks out Playon!HD. Here’s what they’ve got to say about it.

English Translation - “The Playon!HD is in many aspects a very good network mediaplayer. Support for formats and codecs is excellent, the interface excels in simplicity and everything is packaged in a casing with very clean and elegant form, that certainly feels right at home next to your HDTV set ... what AC Ryan PlayOn! have done is to put a very competitive HD network media player on the market with a good price / quality ratio. The PlayOn! HD is currently available for an amount of 149 euro and that is a bargain if you look at what this device offers.

Oiginal Dutch text - “De PlayOn!HD is in veel opzichten een zeer goede netwerkmediaspeler. De ondersteuning voor formaten en codecs is uitstekend, de interface blinkt uit in eenvoud en dit alles is verpakt in een zeer strakke behuizing die niet misstaat naast je HDTV…Desondanks zet AC Ryan met de PlayOn!HD een zeer concurrende netwerkmediaspeler op de markt met een degelijke prijs/kwaliteitverhouding. De PlayOn!HD is op het moment verkrijgbaar voor een bedrag van 149 euro en dat is een koopje als je kijkt naar wat dit apparaat biedt.”

Read the full article here:
Original article in Dutch: http://www.techzine.nl/reviews/652/1 
Google Translation in English : http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http://www.techzine.nl/reviews/652/1&sl=nl&tl=en&history_state0=

Friday, July 24, 2009

Playon! is going online and needs your help!

ACR-PV73100-online Help us with your favorite sites – fill up our survey form. We are conducting a survey to collect a huge list of favorite sites from all over the world, and users of different age sex and age group. From this, we can check out the cool sites you want to see on the Playon! - Video sites, Photo sites, Internet Radio, Podcast, News Portals, Torrent sites, RSS Feeds and more! Please do make it a point to fill in your Age group, Sex and country. Because every country has its favorite radio stations, every age group has its favorite music sites and every sex has its favorite websites, we would like to make sure we’ve got sites for everyone.

So if you want to see your favorite Dutch video portal, French news sites or your Russian internet radio in the Playon! … what are you waiting for? Fill in the survey form, tell us! We are listening,

TIP: Tell your friends to come fill in the survey too!!

Tell us now! http://www.acryan.com/playononline

Playon! is going online and needs your help!

ACR-PV73100-online Help us with your favorite sites – fill up our survey form. We are conducting a survey to collect a huge list of favorite sites from all over the world, and users of different age sex and age group. From this, we can check out the cool sites you want to see on the Playon! Please do make it a point to fill in your Age group, Sex and country. Because every country has its favorite radio stations, every age group has its favorite music sites and every sex has its favorite websites, we would like to make sure we’ve got sites for everyone.

So if you want to see your favorite Dutch video portal, French news sites or your Russian internet radio in the Playon! … what are you waiting for? Fill in the survey form, tell us! We are listening,

TIP: Tell your friends to come fill in the survey too!!

Tell us now! http://www.acryan.com/playononline

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Video : Installing 3.5” HDD in Playon!HD

It’s easy to install a 3.5” Harddisk in your Playon!HD and turn it into a “tera” media library! The Playon!HD takes any SATA/SATA2 harddisks, and we’ve tested and confirmed harddisks up to 2TB! Perfect for all the space-hungry Full HD videos. While the Playon!HD can play files literally “anywhere”, from internal harddisk, from external harddisk, from usbdisk / usbsticks, from mediacards, from wired network, from wireless network, from internet (new feature coming soon)… the importance of the internal 3.5” harddisk is sometimes overlooked. Why have we designed Playon!HD with an internal 3.5” harddisk? Because fundamentally, the best way to play and enjoy Full HD Videos with HD Audio is to play it from the internal harddisk. 3.5” harddisks simply gives you the most storage capacity (and of course the best per gig cost). And as the world and you move further and further into Full HD, we’re sure you’ll appreciate even more that you’ve chosen for Playon!HD’s ability to install a 3.5” Harddisk. Mind you, 2TB is not the limit. It’s just the biggest capacity harddisk available now for us to test. And as you can see from the video, when it’s time to upgrade the harddisk to say 4TB, it’s as easy as a loosening and tightening a few screws. Long live Playon!HD and 3.5” HDD ;)

Monday, July 20, 2009

New Flash on Playon!HD website

ACR-PV73100-NewFlash

In the weekend, we’ve added a new flash to the Playon!HD website. The new flash with 5 animated scenes presents the Playon!HD’s key features and uses. It autoplays, and you can click on the flash tabs to move between the scenes. We hope this new Flash gives you a good overview of the Playon!HD. Do you like it? Tell us in our forums in this thread – Do you like the new flash on PlayonHD.com

Playon!HD The Price is Right Contest 3 Winners

ACR-PV73100-ThePriceIsRight-WinnersAnnounceHere’s the final confirmation. The 3 lucky winners of Playon!HD are:

1. H. Flipsen from The Netherlands 
2. M.P. from USA
3. T.Y. Wong from Singapore

They will each receive their own Playon!HD in August when it ships with DTS Downmix. Don’t worry if you did not win, we’ll be running more contest – it’s fun for us too. In fact, The Price is Right has been so popular that we’re thinking of running it again in country specific versions. Is that a good idea? Talk with us, tell us in our forums in this thread – Is it a good idea to run The Price is Right Contest again?

Friday, July 17, 2009

Playon!HD Contest – Winners Notified

ACR-PV73100-ThePriceIsRight-Winners

Quick, check your email inbox!! (and your spam box too, in case it landed there)… why? We have sent out emails to inform The Price Is Right Contest Winners by email. You should look for an email from rotterdam@acryan.com with the Subject “Playon!HD Winner (real, not spam)” ;)

Did I just say Winnersssss? Yes! Originally planned with 1 Playon!HD prize, we’ve gotten such great response from y’all that we’ve upped the prize to 3 winners. We’ll post the winner names next week, once we have their permission to do so. The Price is Right entries came from more than 50 countries! nice, we like!

If you did not win, thanks for supporting AC Ryan Contest. Hope you had fun with the contest and fret not… there’s more contests coming up to win more Playon!HD – stay tuned!

Test your file on Playon!HD

ACR-PV73100-ThePriceIsRight We’ve heard a lot of feedback from users “my old player does not play this / that, can you check if it plays on Playon!HD”, or new Playon!HD owners exclaiming “wow I threw a bunch of files at it and it plays them all”… well, we are proud that Playon!HD plays it “all” … why “all” in inverted commas, it plays all files for most users. And only a small percentage of exotic, extreme files does not play – and those will not play in any other mediaplayers too and will only play in a computer with the fastest processor. In short, we are very proud that Playon!HD plays MORE files than any other mediaplayers before it.

So if you are thinking of a new mediaplayer, why not test your files with us. We’ve run this testfile service in our Rotterdam showroom and in Singapore exhibitions – it’s been very very popular and we have happy users! So we are extending the “Test your File on Playon!HD”.

  • Online - Forums
    Come on in to our ACRyan.com Forums. You can post a link or upload a file. And if you prefer it not to be public, you can pm us the link or attach a file too. We accept files up to 100MB, good size for samples. Here is the forum thread
    http://www.acryan.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=910
  • Online - Email
    Sure, we accept “Test your File on Playon!HD” by email too
    Email us at rotterdam@acryan.com with link or attachment (yes we are set up to receive huge emails)
  • In Real Life – Rotterdam Showroom
    Our Rotterdam showroom is open Mon-Fri 9am to 5pm, you can come by with your HDD / USBdisk / DVD-R / any media, with or without appointment
  • In Real Life – Singapore Exhibitions
    Our Singapore office is very active with exhibitions. At every exhibition, you’ll find our friendly staff helping you with “Test your File on Playon!HD”
  • More exhibitions / events / locations
    We’re planning more exhibitions and events and will include the “Test your Files on Playon!HD”. Watch out for more news,

Send your files in!

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

5 star Award from Test by HDLand Blog

ACR-PV73100-HDLandBlog-Test

HDLand Blog, the French experts on all things HD, checks out the Playon!HD with some screenshots. They are impressed with Playon!HD’s excellent video image quality, fast boot-time, and gives the Playon!HD an excellent 5 star Award. http://www.hdlandblog.com/2009/06/acryan-mediaplayer-playonhd-le-test.html

Last Call : Play n Win – The Price is Right

ACR-PV73100-ThePriceIsRightLast call for the Playon!HD – The Price Is Right Contest. The contest ends tomorrow 15 July 2009 (Wednesday). A winner will be randomly picked and notified by email. Already entered the contest, cool! soon you might be the winner of the hot new Playon!HD.

Not yet entered the contest? What are you waiting for? Takes less than 30 seconds! Choose the currency of your choice (there’s 5 versions available – EURO, US$, SEK Swedish Krona, S$ Singapore Dollars, AU$ Australian Dollars), spin those numbers and guess the correct price! Get the right price and you’ll be able to enter the contest. C’mon take a break – it costs nothing, you might actually win! :) http://www.playonhd.com/en/#win

Friday, July 10, 2009

Playon!HD wins Hardware.info Magazine Award in 17 player test

ACR-PV73100-HWI-032009-articlesample-screenshot

Hardware.info Magazine, well-known Dutch technology magazine tested and compared a total of 17 Mediaplayers! Wow. No stranger to the mediaplayer scene, they’ve tested and reviewed all kinds of mediaplayers in the past years as the mediplayers grew as a product type, so it’s no surprise that they have very high standards. Only 2 bronze awards are given, only 2 awards in a field of 17! :) – WDTV and Playon!HD. We are very proud that Playon!HD has received this award. In an earlier first look preview, Playon!HD already impressed the Hardware.info editors with the extensive media file types that they threw at Playon!HD and it played. Now this award confirms Playon!HD is ahead.

Which Playon! Tshirt?

Playon-tshirt_which

So you know we like Tshirts, and we know you like Tshirts too, who doesn’t!?! It should come as no surprise that we want a Playon! Tshirt, and there will be one – yay!!! We do need your help though, to decide which Tshirt cos it’s as much our Tshirt, as it is your Tshirt!

We’ve put up a poll in our ACRyan.com/Forums C’mon in and vote your Tshirt.

New look PlayonHD.com website

ACR-PV73100-newsite-screenshot

Playon!HD is gearing up for official launch, getting ready with the opening of the new look Playon!HD.com site. With this new layout, you can easily bookmark with your favorite digg, twit, del.ic.ous etc. Also gets the site ready for more products for the Playon! family using tabs on top. Subscribe to newsletter and change language (currently English and Dutch), all clearly located at the top section. The Playon!HD news feed runs on the front page so you are always updated. The Buy Now page now supports offers to specific countries / areas. Same too with Contest, we are now able to run different Contests for different areas of the world – truly international! And best of all, check out the Where To Buy, we’ve hooked up with our trusted partners to bring the whole Playon!HD experience closer to you. We will be welcoming even more partners in the coming weeks. The good news is that the coming July launch/shipment will see the Playon!HD shipping to our partners. The slightly not so good news is that – uhm omg we hear from our partners that many of the Playon!HD’s going to them have already been pre-reserved / pre-sold. Well actually good news from our sales perspective, and actually also good news for Playon!HD users too… the more Playon!HD out there, the stronger the community is, the more we can have fun and a big future with! Cheers! Play-on!

Monday, July 6, 2009

Playon!HD wins Gadget3’s SPECTACULAR Award & Testwinner

ACR-PV73100-Gadget3-Spectacular-Award AC Ryan Playon!HD has been awarded with Gadget3 Spectacular award in Gadget3 Lifestyle Magazine July 2009 issue. To top off the award, Playon!HD is also named Testwinner in their test of 8 Full HD Mediaplayers.

"The ACR-PV73100 gets the glory because of its package of affordability, userfriendliness and convenience. These are complemented with efficient media playback capabilities that introduce music in vibrancy, movies in distinctive quality, together with eye-catching aesthetics. It’s uncluttered, simple and comprehensible selections speed up navigation, and leaves the other players biting its dust.”

Read the review here: Gadget3 Spectacular Award – AC Ryan Playon!HD

ps. Gadget3 magazine’s review is the first published print review, more print magazine and online reviews coming (some have completed testing and waiting to be published, some are still testing them). Online site previews are here : Hardware.info takes a First Look hands-on with Playon!HD and here : StorVision.nl’s first look at the Playon!HD.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Video : Playon!HD intro movie playback and viewing photos

Finally, a video showing a brief introduction to the Playon!HD. After a quick intro, the video goes on to show the Playon!HD in use. A handy File Copy that copies/moves file from anywhere to anywhere (USB, Mediacard, HDD, Network). Next comes the Browser with a preview window, a few HD movies are played. You can see the resume play (from where it was last stopped), fast forward (did you notice the mkv file being fast forwarded at 32x speed?) and file information turned on/off. The video wraps up with Photos – rotate, zoom, slide show. Well, go watch the video if you have not. ;p

Wanna see more videos? Have a particular feature / thing you wanna see? We are taking requests …

Video : Playon!HD wizzing through photos

Found this video on youtube showing Playon!HD handling photos. We thought it’s cool to blog it here since there has been quite some interest about “how fast does Playon!HD load and flip through photos”. It seems a pet peeve of some owners of existing players is their slow handling of photos. Glad to say that the response from the users to this video has been generally “gee that’s fast”. I guess it’s great for wizzing through millions of vacation photos – families and friends beware! it’s gonna be the obligatory back-from-vacation-photos time soon ;p

Many thanks to the guy who made this vid, thanks for helping out and spreading the word. We appreciate it. Keep on postin those vids, we might just blog it here when we see it.

Video : Playon!HD Setup Walkthrough

This Playon! Setup video was made to show our resellers who were keen to see the features in the setup of Playon!HD. We decided to put this video up publicly for users to see as well – why not!

offtopic: Are you wondering how we recorded this video with perfect framing (the display screen is exactly fullsize and perfectly fitted to the video). Well the video is recorded with Playon!HD’s “brother” – the Playon!DVR TV. Yes, we are people who do use our own products. Hook up Playon!HD’s A/V-out to Playon!DVR TV’s A/V-in and record away.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

FAQ Updated

ACR-PV73100-update

FAQ has been updated about : simultaneous display, FLAC 24/96, AIF/AIFF, UPnP Mediaserver – MediaMall’s Playon, Tversity, connecting multiple Playon!HD, NTFS read+write, FAT32, mutliple partitions, USBdisk, Click here to read : www.playonhd.com/faq

FAT32 partition on Playon!HD

ACR-PV73100-fat32howto NTFS read+write support is the preferred feature in mediaplayers. Playon!HD’s default system is NTFS. For whatever reasons you may have, perhaps you still wish to have a FAT32 partition. The Playon!HD supports NTFS as well as FAT32, both with read/write.

The Playon!HD formatting utility (when installing a new hdd or when you choose format in the setup) formats the main data partition as NTFS format. The reason is simply because FAT32 cannot support files larger than 32GB while NTFS can. As a Full HD mediaplayer, we expect to have many HD video files bigger than 4GB.

However, for any reasons at all, if you prefer to use FAT32, you can!

  • Connect your Playon!HD to the computer via USB (Playon!HD’s USB slave port to Computer’s USB host port)
  • Install a partition editor in your PC, there are many available eg. EASEUS Partition Manager Home Edition (freeware, Windows), iPartition (commercial, Mac)
  • Use the partition to resize the NTFS partition (your data will not be lost as long as the new partition size is big enough for the existing data)
  • Create a new partition from the as FAT32 partition
  • Done – you now have 2 partitions in your Playon!HD – one NTFS, one FAT32
  • There are 3 hidden/unknown partitions – please do not edit or delete these partitions. They are created by the Playon!HD for system use.

Once done, you can connect your Playon!HD to TV (remember to unplug the USB cable connected to the computer). In Playon!HD, when you Browse HDD, you will now see 2 drives. Everything works as normal on the NTFS as well as the FAT32 drives. You can play, copy etc.

ps. For Mac users, OS X does not support NTFS read+write built-in. If you are thinking of creating a FAT32 partition purely for this reason, it is possible but not the recommended solution. The recommended solution is to install a NTFS driver in your Mac. Once installed, you can easily read+write Playon!HD’s NTFS drive and also all other NTFS drives running in Windows PCs. Here you can read/download NTFS-3G a widely used free NTFS driver for your Mac.