Ac Ryan Media Player

[Ariadna Parrent]

Asustries to muscle in on the media player market with this dinky little device. Kitted out with 802.11n WiFi, Ethernet, HDMI 1.3 and mkv support - is its software and hardware a match for its strong competitors?

The standout feature of the Playon!HD Essential is the inclusion of a bundled 1TB on-board drive for copying media files to. If you're after a semi-portable unit with plenty of storage, this obviously has some merit, but it hides one of the Playon!HD Essential's major flaws. One feature that's notably absent from the Playon!HD Essential is any kind of in-built networking. There is an optional 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter available, but no kind of wired Ethernet at all. Wireless performance varies widely, and while we weren't able to test the Playon!HD Essential's Wi-Fi performance, we'd be cautious about investing in a wireless-only media streaming solution.

The PlayOn!HD Essential's menus look quite slick, and certainly a lot more refined than many streaming players we've tested recently, although some of that slick presentation is only skin deep. There's a few little oddities in the way that menus work, like not flicking back to the top of a list when you reach the bottom, or the way that the enter key sometimes goes into a menu, and other times out of it in nested menu situations. It's not helped by the squishy remote buttons, which we found sometimes unresponsive in our testing.

As for actual playback, it was smooth and clear in all of our tests with a variety of media sources. We can't fault the Playon!HD Essential in the direct playback stakes at all, save for noting that the remote is, once again, a slight weak link in the chain because it's not always as responsive as we might have liked it to be.

As a straight media player, the Playon!HD Essential does its basic job well. The problem is, it's by a long shot not unique in this playback field, even though it does offer support for a wide range of file types. At this kind of price point we'd have liked to see a direct Ethernet connection, and it is worth pointing out that AC Ryan does offer units with integrated Ethernet. We'd suggest those might be better buys, but as it stands, the Playon!HD Essential is lacking features we tend to think of as actually essential.

When I first started out at TweakTown over four years ago now, one of my first reviews was an AC Ryan media player, and till this day, I still have two of them - one in each of my living rooms. They're great players with an excellent and simple UI, which playback everything I throw at them over my NAS without an issue.

Fast forward to the end of 2014, where they reached out to me asking if I'd like to take a look at their new Veolo 4K player, as they knew I was a big fan of their previous units, and an even bigger fan of 4K content. Of course, I said yes. While there's not much 4K content out there, I do have 4K-capable cameras that I use thanks to my Sony Xperia Z2 smartphone and GoPro Hero 4 Black Edition.

This gives me the ability to shoot 4K video and play it back on the media player, and thankfully I have a bunch of 4K-capable TVs and monitors to use, too. For the purposes of the review, I'm using my Seiki Digital 39-inch 4K TV.

Inside of the AC Ryan Veolo 4K, we have an RK3299 Ultra Cortex-A17 quad-core SoC, 16GB of NAND flash storage, and 2GB of RAM. The quad-core processor is clocked at 1.8GHz, giving it plenty of grunt, considering its size. We have a Mali-T764 quad-core GPU with OpenGL ES 3.0, OpenCL 1.1 and DX11 support. On the software side of things, the Veolo 4K is running Android 4.4 KitKat.

When it comes to pricing, AC Ryan has priced it quite well considering its specifications, quality, and the inclusion of a quality, versatile remote control. That's not even getting into how versatile the Veolo 4K media player itself is, thanks to it being powered by Android.

The Veolo 4K media player is available directly from AC Ryan's website for $249 Singapore Dollars, which is equal to $199. For under $200, this is a great unit, which we're going to talk about very soon. As for availability, the unit is available right now on AC Ryan's website.

AC Ryan has put quite a lot of effort into the Veolo 4K media player, which starts from the box, and its presentation, down to the finish on the Veolo 4K media player itself. It's an excellent experience that oozes style and quality.

On the back of the Veolo 4K media player, we have its various ports, where from left to right we have: Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45), a USB port, SPDIF, micro HDMI, micro USB, a 3.5mm AUX port and the DC port for power.

One of the things that I still love to this day about my AC Ryan media players is the remote control. They're simply enough that my nearly 4-year-old daughter can use it, without it being overly complicated. Well, AC Ryan has simplified it even more with the Veolo 4K remote control, which has around 1/6 the amount of buttons.

On the left, we have a full shot look at the remote control. On the right, we have a closer look at the actual buttons. We have a circle ring in the middle which acts as a directional pad for movement throughout the OS. It's super simple to use, which only goes in favor of AC Ryan.

From there, we have volume up and down which are obvious from the - and + buttons, as well as a home button and mouse control which is the little mouse cursor between the Home and Back buttons. The volume button in the upper left hand corner is obvious, as is the mute button to the right of it.

The interface itself is great, but there are multiple different layouts you can choose to use thanks to AC Ryan using Google's mobile OS, Android. Android 4.4 KitKat out of them all, so we're not using some ancient version of Android, either.

On top of that, the actual hardware specifications are quite beefy with a quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM, so there was no point throughout my entire time with the Veolo 4K media player that it slowed down. If you want to see the interface on video, check it out below.

As for the interface, AC Ryan details it in a short video that we've embedded above. But, that's not enough so we've snapped our own photos to give you a look at the user interface, and the media player software itself that plays your content back.

Starting off with the main display, this is what you'll be greeted with when you turn on the Veolo 4K media player. You can disable the Movie Jukebox screen, which will remove the entire box you see in the top half of the photo above.

Underneath, we have Android 4.4 KitKat. We're connected to our 5GHz Wi-Fi network to playback our content, with our 4K content being played from an external HDD. For most of our playback, the 5GHz Wi-Fi network was more than competent.

If the Veolo 4K media player begins to slow down or act up at any stage, you can go back to the Home menu and then select the 'X' in the app drawer at the bottom. This will kill the processes running in the background and free up as much of that 2GB of RAM that it can.

Here we have the app drawer itself, with all of the apps that were installed onto the Veolo 4K media player by default. We have the usual Android applications like the Browser, Clock, Gallery, and YouTube. Then we have some media playback apps like MX Player and the full XMBC-like app SPMC, which I used for most of our testing.

The stock File Explorer isn't flashy, and this is something I actually didn't like. For a 4K media player, the UI is really bad here. It's far too big and bulky, I would've preferred to have had this shrunken down, or have the option to tweak the UI and text elements.

Back to the File Explorer, where pressing the button on the remote with the three squares will bring up Options. This can be performed on specific folders, where you can copy/delete/move/paste/rename or share the files or folders selected.

And finally, we have the home screen with the Movie Jukebox removed. This is your standard home screen, just like it is on any Android-powered smartphone or tablet. It can be fully tweaked to your liking, adding in app shortcuts like we have for MX Player and SPMC.

Setting up the AC Ryan Veolo 4K media player was simple: plug in the micro HDMI to HDMI cable up to my Seiki Digital 39-inch 4K TV, plug the power in and turn it on. Once it's turned on you can enter the password to your Wi-Fi network, or alternatively, if you're running over an Ethernet cable, it will already have assigned itself an IP address and be connected to your network.

I binge watch a helluva lot of TV, so I consumed hours upon hours of TV episodes and movies on the Veolo 4K media player. Everything from the latest episodes of my favorite shows like The Walking Dead, Person of Interest, Boardwalk Empire, Workaholics, and so much more.

During my testing, I found that the best part of the experience was definitely the remote control. Everyone would think that it's the media player that is the center of the experience, but I don't think so. Personally, I think it comes down to the UI - which AC Ryan has nailed - and the remote control. First, you can't do anything with a media player without using the remote control, and secondly, if the UI is unintuitive, you're not going to get anywhere, fast.

Starting with the remote control, I found the lack of buttons completely freeing. I wasn't stumbling to find a button to get somewhere, as there are only a handful of buttons in total across the remote. This made navigation through the menus super easy, which is something I really respect from AC Ryan. They simplify a sometimes difficult experience, making the experience completely satisfying.

As for the UI - I've been a fan of AC Ryan's stylish user interface for years now, but the use of Android for the Veolo 4K media player is just something else. You have the option of using a totally different application to play back your content, which is something you simply can't do on most other competing media players.

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