AC Ryan last year released the first PlayOn!HD media player, which made a positive impact to the market due to its good performance and affordable price. This year, AC Ryan strikes again with the successor of the PlayOn!HD series, the PlayOn!HD 2 media player. The new device is based around the same formula of housing a 3.5-inch hard drive within a box of tricks that can store, network and play all manner of multimedia content. What makes the new product more interesting is that it packs in some nifty new features.

First of all, the Playon!HD2 is powered by the 1185 media player processor from Realtek. The new 1185 series feature a 25% faster processor (500MHz vs 400MHz of older platform) and higher build-in memory for adding more applications. The player also comes with a build-in HDD that can be up to 2TB, making it ideal for truly media storage device without the need of other system.

Another new feature is the new Facebook, Twitter, MSN and YouTube XL internet apps, which can be also be used with external USB keyboard/mouse.

On top of the standard multi-card reader, the new player also packs Gigabit Ethernet and a USB 3.0 slave port for speedy transfers from a network or a PC to the local hard-drive.

The Playon!HD2 can be also equipped with a built-in (PCIe-based) 802.11bgn network card or connected to the 'net via an optional USB dongle.

The new player is also using the Playon!GUI2.0, which allows users to navigate through all the features with ease. Moreover, the Playon!ΗD2 includes an EZ Drive HDD slot, to make the installation of your 3.5" HDD easier. The Playon!HD21TB (ACR-PV73700-1TB) retails for around ~€250.

The main differences with the original PlayOnHD series are

• Gigabit Full HD streaming at a very attractive price point
• USB 3.0 slave port for supreme connection for file transfer from a PC
• 25% faster processor (500 MHz)
• Max memory & built-in flash storage (512MB)
• More 'App-capable' including webkit and flash lite for engaging with social media, instant messaging, and viewing YouTubeXL
• EZ-Drive slot for HDD insertion easily and securely, no tool required

- Product specifications

A/V Out
HDMI 1.3 interface up to 1080p
Composite Audio / Video
Y/ Pb / Pr Video
SPDIF coaxial (digital audio)
SPDIF Optical TOSLink (digital audio)

USB Supported
USB 3.0 and 2.0 Interfaces
Add ports with USB hubs, USB card readers
2x USB 2.0 (USB-A)
1x USB 3.0 Slave Port (USB-B)

Network - Wireless (Optional)
Wireless WLAN 802.11b/g/n 300Mbps via USB WLAN adaptor (optional, not incl.)
Supports WLAN security WEP, WPA
Supports WLAN Peer-to-Peer (connects wireless without router)

Network - Wireless Built-In (selected models only)
Wireless-N via a PCI-e port with dual antenna

Video Codecs Supported
MPEG-1 / MPEG-2 / MPEG-4 SP/ASP/AVC (H.264 | x264) / XviD / DivX / WMV9 (VC-1) / RealVideo 8/9/10 (up to 720P)

Audio Formats Supported
MP3 / MP2 / WMA / AAC / FLAC / WAV / OGG Vorbis / PCM / LPCM / MS-ADPCM / LC-AAC / HE-AAC / COOK / RA-Lossless

Image Formats Supported
JPEG, HD JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIF, PNG

Character Sets Supported (Needed for Subtitles)
Unicode (UTF8), BIG5 (Traditional Chinese), Western, Turkish, Central European, Greek, Cyrillic, SE European, Russian,
Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Thai

Storage Supported
EZ-Drive slot - 3.5" SATA/SATA2 HDD up to 2TB
2.5" HDD support via adaptor fram

Media Cards Supported
SD, SDHC (SD High Capacity), MMC, MS, MSPro

External File System Supported
FAT, FAT32, NTFS, EXT3, HFS+ w/out Journaling

Network - Wired
Gigabit

Video Formats Supported
AVI / MKV / TS / TP / TRP / M2TS / MPG / MP4 / MOV / M4V / VOB / ISO / DVD-ISO / IFO / DAT / WMV / ASF / RM / RMVB / BD-ISO / FLV
resolution up to 720p / 1080i / 1080p

Video Output Supported
PAL / NTSC / 480p / 576p / 720p / 1080i
50Hz / 1080i 60Hz / 1080p 50Hz / 1080p
60Hz / 1080p 24FPS

Audio Output Supported
Stereo, Dolby Digital AC3 5.1, (passthrough & downmix to stereo), Dolby Digital Plus 7.1 (passthrough), Dolby TrueHD 7.1 (passthrough & downmix to stereo), DTS Digital Surround 5.1 (passthrough & downmix to stereo), AAC 7.1 (passthrough & downmix to stereo), FLAC

Subtitles Format Supported
SRT, SMI, SSA, IDX/SUB, SUB

Cooling
40mm Low-Noise Fan (for HDD Cooling)