Well, I finally bought a 1TB PlayON!HD, and seems to do everything I want of a media player. Well it will do everything. I’ve got to tell you, some head-scratching is needed, and much looking-around-for-answers. But then, I’m a Techie – I’m not an RTFM sorta guy (which is a good thing!), but I’m willing to do a bit of work in order to get the results that I want. Because...
There are plenty of folks who will assuming that after plugging the POHD in, they’ll be streaming away happily – no no no. Not gonna happen. You see, if you try to follow the manual you’re gonna fail straight away. The manual describes features in the shipped firmware that don’t work, ie. Streaming YouTube videos onto your telly – doesn’t work. Trying to follow the interface doesn’t help, sometimes showing a button on the remote control , which...argh! I haven’t got one of those buttons!
Ah, yes – the remote control. The centre of the unit has a circle with a middle ‘OK’ button –a standard interface for navigation around. But – eh? At the bottom of the remote there’s a ‘select’ button, and a ‘confirm’! Will 1 button not do this job? Near the top of the remote there’s a ‘copy’ button, but you navigate through the POHD interface to find the feature for copy files to/from the internal HD/memory card etc.; why the ‘copy’ button?
Of course, I recommend you upgrade the firmware as soon as you can, but of course the manual then becomes mostly redundant because a lot of features have moved/don’t work/have been in newer version. Nice. Oh yes, the POHD is built on Linux, so while you’ll told that Samba is part of the device, nobody tells you want Samba! Windows users well have to grow familiar with the naming of programs, devices etc.
So I know that looks like I’m putting everybody off the idea of getting a ACR-PV73100 PlayON! HD Media Player, but I’m not – quite happy with mine, really. I just wanted to let me people know (as I didn’t) then you can’t just plug it in and expect to do everything from day 1.