A.C. Ryan Playon! DVR review

A.C. Ryan has been producing media streaming devices for some time, such as the Playon! HD. With its Playon! DVR the company has combined such a device with a dual DVB-T tuner and a 1TB hard disk. The result is an all-in-one set-top-box for media playback, storage and TV viewing.

Scanning for channels and saving them was quick and easy, the tuners are very sensitive, getting a perfect signal even from the supplied mini antenna. You browse through channels using the up/down buttons on the remote’s 4-way pad. The volume controls are two tiny buttons though, and are orientated horizontally, which makes them hard to use. Also the EPG is accessed by a button right at the bottom of the remote, while the record button is at the very top. It all feels a bit thrown together, when compared to remotes for Sky+, Windows Media Center or Humax PVRs.

You can time shift programmes easily enough, but once activated you can’t simply press the record button to store the buffered content along with the rest of the on-going programme to the hard disk. There’s no one-touch recording of programmes at all in fact, ie. recording till the end of the current show. Instead, you simply designate recording in half-hour increments from when you press the button.

The EPG doesn’t use the usual timeline view. Instead channels are listed horizontally at the top of the screen, with days underneath, and then a vertical list of programme times and names. With various elements of this mess controlled by different buttons, it’s tough to find what you want, and there’s no search function to help. There’s a video window showing your current programme, but as you browse the EPG it changes to match channel selected. Not what you want when you’re browsing for your next programme while watching a current one.

We had lots of problems with scheduling from the EPG. It often came up with a warning message ‘Date/Time Not Feasible’ even when there were no other scheduled recordings. In addition, you can’t schedule two recordings simultaneously, which seriously limits the usefulness of the dual tuners.

The 1TB drive will hold a lot of programming, but without a decent EPG (and without a series link function to record all the shows in a series) you’ll struggle to make best use of it. There’s also an AV input so you can capture video from external sources, handy if you’ve got old footage you want to digitise, but hardly essential.

The media streaming part of the package is far better implemented, but it’s still short of what the best devices offer. There’s wide file support across video, audio and image formats. It played all our video test files without any problems. However, the interface could be better, with no thumbnails for videos, no album art for music streamed over UPnP and generally slow load times for photos. Blu-ray ISOs were supported, but there were no menus, it just played back the video. One plus point is that this device is capable of passing Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio bitstreams to a compatible AV receiver via HDMI.

There are internet feeds, from Picasa and Flickr, plus news and weather services. All these are rather basic in appearance and function. Entering search terms is done via an onscreen keyboard, rather than using an alphanumeric keypad. Surprisingly, there’s no online video services available, such as YouTube or Vimeo, and no access to social networking sites.

The hardware itself is compact, and stylish in an understated manner. It’s remarkably well-equipped with inputs and outputs, too. On the right-hand side is a memory card reader with support for SDHC and MS PRO formats, two USB ports for connecting external devices, plus a slave port so you can transfer files between a PC and the internal hard disk. On the rear is an eSATA port for faster access to external drives. A 10/100 Ethernet port is provided, and you can add wireless via a USB adaptor. There’s the usual range of video and audio outputs, including HDMI, component, optical and coaxial SPDIFs.

The Playon! DVR 1TB works fine as a basic media streaming device, but there are superior options available, such as the WD TV Live Hub. The TV element works fine for watching the odd programme, but it’s simply not suitable for day-to-day use as your main PVR. It’s reasonably priced, whether you buy it with or without a hard disk installed, but two mediocre devices don’t make one good one.