Product Listing

A.C. Ryan Playon!HD2 - The Show Goes on

By Hafeez Sim - 8 Jun 2011
Launch SRP: S$269

Features

You Don’t Need to be a Rocket Scientist

We were greeted with the home screen once we got the player up and running. As with most of the media players on the market, the various media types are assigned their own submenus so navigating around your own media shouldn’t be a problem. We found the user interface (UI) to be simple to navigate, and the UI's shade of blue does remind us of Microsoft's Windows for some reason.

The responsiveness of the UI is not the fastest among the media players out there, though it definitely isn't the slowest. Just don't expect your selections to register instantly while returning to previous screens can suffer from some lag.

It's a simple and clean interface.

In order to keep up with the competition, the HD2 also offers Internet services. In fact we were surprised to find that the HD2 offered quite a number of such services like Flickr, Facebook and YouTube. These Internet services all function similarly to their PC counterparts, which make them hard to navigate if you do not attach a mouse and keyboard to the HD2. In this instance we were glad A.C. Ryan added the USB mouse and keyboard functionality for we tried navigating the browsers with just the remote and it took all our self-control to not hurl it across the room.

There's no multi-tasking when it comes to using these services, so you will have to open it again if you wish to use it later. The HD2 also launched standard versions of the website, albeit displayed on your TV. As such, the sites are not optimized for viewing or for use on the TV, and they feel slow and sluggish. One exception was the YouTube app - it worked fine though text input without a keyboard was painfully slow. The YouTube XL app however would open up a version closer to the version on the web, which obviously is not remote-friendly and thus requires a keyboard. 

The full stretch of Internet services.

Slow text entry to search for a music video if you only have a remote. Painfully so without a keyboard.
 

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8.5
  • Design 8.5
  • Performance 8.5
  • Features 8.5
  • Value 8
The Good
Plays almost every file fomat
Has USB 3.0 port for high-speed data transfer
The Bad
Big and bulky
Slow start-up
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