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The PlayOn! HD arrives in a cardboard box and the front details the player and the main formats it supports, ideal for quick perusal in a store.
The unit is shipped sandwiched between two protective foam layers and all the contents are inside another white box.
The package is substantial, you are given a remote, a high quality HDMI cable (1.3a), component cable, composite cable, USB Cable, power adapter and a set of batteries for the remote.
The remote is a very well designed unit and follows a logical approach in regards to the button positioning. The upper half has power on/off with mute and a useful 10 digit keypad. The other areas of the controller provide navigation buttons and media buttons – it is well designed and I found it very intuitive during my testing period. The remote for the Mini version is identical.
The unit itself is attractively designed – they have kept it simple, sleek ‘piano black' and the top panel has a bevelled logo engraved into the chassis which is subtle and appealing. It is also not that large either so we think many people using it in a living room will find it fits under a television or on top of a cabinet easy enough. The front has a multi coloured button which is red during standby and blue during use.
The back contains the plethora of connectivity support and on the left there is a small 40mm fan to supply cooling for the internal PCB. We would expect that most KitGuru readers would be using HDMI connectivity however if you have an older television there is full component and even composite support. A 10/100 RJ45 LAN connector is also included, for those of you who prefer the wired route.
The right of the product is home to 2 USB 2.0 ports and a single USB-B slave connector. The more observant among you will also see a memory card slot which gives full support for MMC/MS/MS Pro/SD/SDHC formats.
Underneath the unit is a door which gives access to the internals, there are only two screws to remove.
Inside we can see the 1TB Samsung drive which is attached to the board via a standard sata cable. This 3.5 inch drive can we replaced with a larger unit, and A.C. Ryan also sell the product with 500GB and 2TB units if you so wish. Also they can deliver the product without a drive if you already have one at home, to save costs.
It is a slight oversight in our opinion to see that only one drive can be fitted, especially when there is ample room for a dual configuration. We can only assume that A.C. Ryan have opted for maximum airflow with such a large chassis to keep everything very cool.
The main CPU is Realtek branded and it resides under the passively cooled heatsink in the middle of the PCB. At the rear are two daughter boards which handle connectivity such as the USB ports, and the front panel receiver for the remote controller. The memory can also be seen here.
The power adapter is a straightforward little unit which many would associate with media players. It is a self switching unit offering 100-240V with 0.7A input and 12V-2.0A output.
