A.C.Ryan Playon!HD Networked Media Player Review

We live in a world where content in digital form rules supreme, a world in which the Internet has become the most important entertainment-delivery solution, prompting people to actually spend more time in front of their computers than their TVs. Nevertheless, a computer display, no matter how large, will never be able to offer the same impressive quality and size as a widecreen HDTV, and, for this reason, many people would rather use the latter for viewing movies and video clips.

One way to do so is to connect a computer to the TV set via a VGA or HDMI cable. But that's not always very practical, and, in some situation, can prove to be rather costly, especially if it involves the purchase of a brand-new HTPC (or media center PC, if you prefer).

Others, however, opt for networked media players, which are able to play just about any file format out there, while in the same time delivering a wide array of connectivity options, practically allowing users to play content stored on a huge variety of media, from memory cards to Blu-ray discs.

And, in fact, that's exactly the type of product we've recently had the chance of reviewing, namely the A.C.Ryan Playon!HD, which, however, offers so many features and functions that calling it "just" a media player is a severe understatement.

In fact, with some help from a computer, the device from A.C.Ryan can be easily used as a NAS (networked attached storage) unit, coming quite in handy for carrying out backup operations or storing all sorts of content. Also, it comes with its own, built-in torrent download client and samba server, practically allowing users to build an entire home network and entertainment eco-system around it.

And, last but certainly not least, this thing looks quite good when placed next to a HDTV and is very user-friendly, its recently redesigned user interface helping it really stand out from a crowd of similar products available out there.