AC Ryan Veolo review

A.C. Ryan’s Veolo is a unique media streamer that runs Android and includes a remote control with a full QWERTY keyboard that also doubles as a wireless mouse. You press a button on the remote to control the on-screen cursor, and press another button to click. It works fantastically well and saves you having to plug a mouse in, so you can use the spare USB slot to attach a hard disk, for example.

Until a recent update, the Veolo didn’t have access to the Android Market, making it rather basic. Thankfully, the Market was installed in a recent patch, bringing with it access to countless useful apps, including YouTube, BBC iPlayer, last.fm, Spotify, TuneIn Radio, Aupeo. In addition, most services you’ll find on other media streamers are available in the Android Market, plus many more that you won’t find elsewhere.

As well as media apps, you can add email, calendar and even document editing apps, turning the Veolo into a mini-PC attached to your HDTV. It’s not all smooth sailing, however: in GMail, we could see our mailboxes but not the list of emails itself, while in BBC iPlayer, we could see the menu headings across the top of the page, or choose the Channels, Categories or Live TV options, but despite a spinning icon indicating activity, no videos actually appeared in the lists. Hopefully these bugs – no doubt caused by Android 2.2’s limitations with screen sizes – will be fixed in a future firmware update.

Both USB mice and keyboards are supported by the Veolo, and you can have both plugged in at once, provided you don’t need either of the USB ports for an external drive. The keyboard defaults to a US layout, however, but there are only a few keys you’ll need to remember to swap as you type (the @ and ” symbols, for example). The mouse’s right button acts like Android’s Back button, while pressing the middle mouse button brings up the menu.

As far as media streaming is concerned, A.C Ryan’s implementation is crude but workable. You use the standard Android Music, Gallery and Video apps to access content stored on the 2.9GB of internal memory or an attached external drive, while content stored on your network – either shared via SMB or NFS – is accessed via a separate File Manager app. The first time you access a networked share, you’re prompted to save it as a shortcut on the File Manager main screen, which saves time.

File support is great, although you don’t get menus in either DVD or Blu-ray films. There’s no way to queue up multiple files for playback. This is fine if you want to just watch a film, but not for playing music or browsing photos. We tried creating a music playlist, both in Windows’ Media Player format and the more open M3U format, but none of the installed players would recognise it. To play multiple tracks or create a photo slideshow, you’ll have to copy files to a local drive first.

One way to get around the Veleo’s limitations is to look for alternative apps in the Android Market. For example, a lot of media streamers come with a Bittorrent client – and there are plenty to choose from on the Market to fill the gap. However, this also means that AC Ryan is leaving it up to the user to find ways of getting features that come as standard – often with clear instructions – on other media streamers.

This DIY approach may not suit everybody, and it certainly doesn’t justify the high price of the Veolo compared to other media streamers. If you have that much to spend, D-Link Boxee Box is a stylish and feature-packed alternative that’s much easier to use. With patches to fix problems with apps fitting into the large resolution, the Veolo might become an interesting alternative to traditional media streamers, but as it stands it’s only suitable for Android geeks with deep pockets.