Playon!DVR TV now LOWER Price – from 179 euro

Thinking of HDD Recorder? Grab the Playon!DVR TV, already the best value, now at an even lower price, thanks to your fantastic support. Now you can Record, Store, Play at these new prices : €179,- (without HDD), €229,- for 500GB and €279,- for 1TB. check out one of our resellers or immediately Buy now!

Playon! is going online and needs your help!

Help us with your favorite sites – fill up our survey form. We are conducting a survey to collect a huge list of favorite sites from all over the world, and users of different age sex and age group. From this, we can check out the cool sites you want to see on the Playon! Please do make it a point to fill in your Age group, Sex and country. Because every country has its favorite radio stations, every age group has its favorite music sites and every sex has its favorite websites, we would like to make sure we’ve got sites for everyone.

So if you want to see your favorite Dutch video portal, French news sites or your Russian internet radio in the Playon! … what are you waiting for? Fill in the survey form, tell us! We are listening,

TIP: Tell your friends to come fill in the survey too!!

Tell us now! http://www.acryan.com/playononline

Hello UK & IRELAND – Win! Playon!DVR TV

Playon!DVR TV says hello to UK & Ireland viewers. The award-winning Playon!DVR TV is the most versatile Digital Video Recorder. Available in models with 500GB, 1TB and no harddisk (you can even install your own harddisk up to 1.5TB), you don’t have to worry about your DVR running out of storage space or being force to delete recordings or burn DVDR discs – things that make every DVR owners’ pull their hair wishing there is a solution. Well, there is – the Playon!DVR TV is here.

With a built-in Analog & Digital TV (Freeview) tuner, the Playon!DVR TV is for everyone, whether your locale has made the big switch to Freeview or not. With more stations to record, you’ll surely appreciate Playon!DVR TV’s excellence in recording storage.

Not only does Playon!DVR TV sport huge storage space, you can easily copy your recordings to USB external storage, USBdisk, even to your computer via network. And once on the computer, what do you think about uploading your recorded video to your favorite online video or blog within seconds? Ordinary ‘ol DVRs sure will not do that. Heck, you can even record directly to USBdisk and have your recordings in your pocket.

In addition to recording, Playon!DVR TV also stores, plays and streams your digital media – music, movies, photos. Why? Because Playon!DVR TV is not just a DVR, it’s the new generation DVR integrated into the digital age where computers and TV live together!

To help you get acquainted with the many wonders of Playon!DVR TV, here’s a Contest where you can win yourself this cool Playon!DVR TV. Simply pick the Top 5 from the list of Playon!DVR TV features. It takes less than 30 seconds. Take a break, have a ‘lil light fun… Play n Win!

www.playondvr.com/uk/contest

Can’t wait? Wanna get your hands on Playon!DVR TV now?
Playon!DVR TV is available in UK & Ireland online from these preferred stores :
Scan.co.uk | Specialtech.co.uk | Advancedmp3players.co.uk | Komplett.ie

Playon!DVR TV Recordings

In this Blog article,
- Files of recorded video for you to check
- What file types and specs of the recordings
- Putting TV recordings to Internet
- Recording direct to USB

One of the advantages of Playon!DVR TV as compared to traditional DVDR / VCR is your video recorded with Playon!DVR TV can go “outside” your box easily. Copy via network to your PC, copy it to an external harddisk, and best of all, copy it to a USB stick. Now you may wonder why you would want to copy your recordings onto USB stick? Well, USB is so popular these days that many players are able to play audio/video from USB sticks – incl. the traditional DVDR, DVD players, Car DVD players, Portable Media Players, Mediaplayers, Mediastreamers etc. the list goes on. Cool eh? considering that if you have recorded with most DVDRs / Set-top box DVRs, your recorded video is often just stucked in the box.

We’ve received user requests asking us if we could provide recorded video files for them to test if it would play with their DVD players. So here they are:

Analog TV and A/V-In recordings are recorded as .MPG files.

Most players these days can playback .MPG, let us know if it does or does not play on your players. It will be cool to know and helps us help other users.

Analog TV and A/V-In recordings can be set at 5 different quality settings – HQ/SP/EP/LP/SLP with different quality and filesize. All the recordings here are 1min recordings so you can compare the filesizes. Technically, HQ / SP / EP records at the same quality of 720x576 (DVD resolution) but uses different compression ratio for smaller filesizes.  LP / SLP records at a lower resolution of 352x576 great for squeezing that extra hours eg. weeklong non-stop recording :). What does all these number say? Best way is to download them play them back on your screen and see if you can tell the difference. Choose the smallest filesize recording setting where you dont see a decrease in quality on your screen.

1. Recording quality setting : HQ / duration : 1min / filesize : 68.7mb
Video: MPEG2 Video 720x576 (4:3) 25.00fps 9800Kbps [Video (ID 224 @ Prog# 0)]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 256Kbps [Audio (ID 192 @ Prog# 0)]

2. Recording quality setting : SP / duration : 1min / 35.8mb
Video: MPEG2 Video 720x576 (4:3) 25.00fps 9800Kbps [Video (ID 224 @ Prog# 0)]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 256Kbps [Audio (ID 192 @ Prog# 0)]

3. Recording quality setting : EP / duration : 1min / 24.4mb
Video 720x576 (4:3) 25.00fps 9800Kbps [Video (ID 224 @ Prog# 0)]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 256Kbps [Audio (ID 192 @ Prog# 0)]

4. Recording quality setting : LP / duration : 1min / 17.7mb
Video: MPEG2 Video 352x576 (4:3) 25.00fps 9800Kbps [Video (ID 224 @ Prog# 0)]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 256Kbps [Audio (ID 192 @ Prog# 0)]

5. Recording quality setting : SLP / duration : 1min / 12.3mb
Video: MPEG2 Video 352x576 (4:3) 25.00fps 9800Kbps [Video (ID 224 @ Prog# 0)]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 192Kbps [Audio (ID 192 @ Prog# 0)]

** These AnalogTV recordings are made with Playon!DVR TV, the same information / files apply also toe AV-In recordings of Playon!DVR TV and Playon!DVR.

How were these files made? And how to get them onto Internet?

• They were recorded using Playon!DVR TV connected to analog cable TV (in The Netherlands).
• In the Playback function, you can choose Title Edit in the top menu and then Copy to FAT32 to make the recordings available on your harddisk readable by Computer.
• Turned on NAS so my computer can see the DVR TV files from computer browser.
• Opened up Windows Live Sky Drive in internet browser, dragged and dropped the files from computer browser onto Windows Live Sky Drive in internet browser. Click upload. Done.

Windows Sky Drive has a limit of max 50mb per file. There are other services, other internet uploads you will find useful. Great for blogging about TV programs, blogging about news isn’t it?

DVB-T recordings are recorded as .TS files

.TS file formats are newer, some players may not yet support it. Well, our Playon!HD certainly does play it :) Well give it a try and let us know if your DVD player etc plays the .TS recordings.

With DVB-T recordings, the TV signals are digital, and the recordings are digital. So unlike Analog TV recordings, DVB-T recordings has no quality compression settings.

Here we have 2 recordings, one recorded to internal Harddisk, one recorded directly to USB stick.

1. DVB-T Recording to internal HDD
Video: MPEG2 Video 704x576 (16:9) 25.00fps 15000Kbps [Video]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 160Kbps [Audio]

2. DVB-T Recording to USBstick (Diskje)
Video: MPEG2 Video 704x576 (16:9) 25.00fps 15000Kbps [Video]
Audio: MPEG Audio 48000Hz stereo 160Kbps [Audio]

Record to Harddisk and Record direct to USB gives the same formats and quality

As you can see, there are no difference in recording format, we did this just to show users who may have questions about whether recording to USB and recording to Harddisk is any different.

The advantage of recording direct to USB is that you can skip the step of transferring files to FAT32. The recordings are directly and immediately on your USB stick, ready to be taken anywhere.

Record to USB

All recordings (DVB-T, Analog TV, AV-In) can be done direct to USB stick. When using Timer record, you can set the recording medium as HDD or USB. For instant live record (by pressing record button on remote control or front panel), you need to pre-set the default recording medium to HDD or USB in the Setup.

Well happy recording and enjoy the freedom to take your recording anywhere, everywhere.

------
footnote [self-advertising haha]: Speaking of recording to USB… Have you checked out our cool cool merchandising product – the Diskje? the smallest USB disk, waterproof and shockproof. It’s so small, you can slide dozens of them in your pocket and still have no weird lump sticking out of your jeans. Available now in 4GB / 8GB / 16GB. The Diskje? are available as AC Ryan merchandsing promotion and come with a small small price (as small as the Diskje :) You can purchase them in our OUTLET (in Rotterdam or online), or buy them with your Playon!DVR TV / Playon!HD purchase. We use them much personally and also with our Playon!DVR TV, Playon!HD as recording and playback medium. Disk-je? ;)

New features of Firmware update

Don’t you like hate it when the product you bought says “firmware upgradable” but it never comes true cos the manufacturer never releases a new firmware for your player? A couple of weeks ago, a firmware update was released for the Playon!DVR TV. Many of you users have already downloaded it and have discovered the new features. Here we highlight the new features added in the new firmware :

• Playback of RM/RMVB, MP4, AAC, FLAC media formats
  The support of more playback formats is always welcome with joy! RM/RMVB is very popular compression format for video downloads specially included for our fans/users in Singapore and Asia. MP4 is commonly used video format in phones and portable video devices. While AAC and FLAC are audio formats, both less used than MP3 but considered by users to be better quality than MP3. FLAC is interestingly the most commonly used lossless compression format, meaning that it does not drop or lose quality in its compression which is great for keeping “true to original” backups of your CDs. This further expands the wide list of formats supported natively by Playon!DVR TV. Remember too that if we should want to play formats that are not supported natively, install the Transcoder Software on your computer and Playon!DVR TV can stream ALL formats from your computer via wired/wireless network.
• UPnP Media Player
  The Playon!DVR TV is now also a UPnP media playback device. UPnP stands for Universal Plug-n-Play. The aim is to easily have the media library (eg. Windows Media Player) of your PC on your media player devices like Playon!DVR TV, Xbox360, PS3 etc. If you are using Windows Vista or Windows Media Player 11 on XP, you can turn on Share Media in your settings and your PC Media Library (organised in albums, artists etc) will appear in your Playon!DVR TV (in Browse->UPNP). XBMC.org is another popular Media Center free software that organises your PC Media Library and with Playon!DVR TV, the media is easily available on your TV / Living room HIFI.
• Internet Radio Recording
  Yes, now your favorite internet radio can be recorded too. While listening to your internet radio channel, just press Record to start, and Stop to stop.
• Music Shuffle
  When browsing music (Browse –> Music tab), the Blue button on the Remote Control turns on or off the Shuffle mode (playing music in random order, instead of in order of the list)
• DVB-T Time Sync
  If you are using and receiving DVB-T signals, you can set the Playon!DVR TV to synchronise time using the DVB-T signal. This way, your time will always be correct and you there’s no need to manuall adjust for summer/winter time anymore.

To update firmware, simply download it from our ACRyan.com website (Support->Software section). Put it on a USB disk (eg, our lovely little Diskje), and follow the simple instructions included in the download. Enjoy!

AC Ryan Releases Playon!DVR TV 1TB HDD Recorder For Media Hungry Users

Within a month of Playon! DVR TV making its entrance into the HDD Recorder market with a no-HDD model and a 500GB model, a new 1TB model is added to its line-up. While a 1TB model has always been on the scchedule, the speed of its release reflects strongly the current user’s appetite for media storage capacity. The 1TB model serves users who are getting the Playon! DVR TV for the dual function of BOTH TV recording and playback of media content. Being able to record, store and play on its own, as well as to and from the PC via the network gives it a unique central position in the modern day home.

For media hungry users, where no capacity is ever large enough, an attractive feature of Playon! DVR TV is that unlike conventional DVD-/HDD-Recorders, when the internal harddisk runs out of space, the user can easily expand with an usb external drive or play and store content from and to a PC / Media Center via network.

The Playon! DVR TV 1TB is immediately available, and comes with a shop price of 349 euro or online price of 299 euro.

www.playondvr.com www.acryan.com

Backup DVD disc onto Harddisk using DVD Decrypter and enjoy with Playon! DVR TV

What do you need…

1. A Computer
   First of all, you need a PC with a DVD drive – a notebook, or a computer are all fine. Whether it’s a DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, etc, as long as it is able to read DVD discs.
   
   Once you put the DVD Disc in, you can see the contents of the DVD disc in your computer’s file explorer / browser. You can copy them onto your harddisk like any other files, BUT in my experience, this works with some discs and not with others. It’s easier and better to use a simple free program to do the backup/copy.
   
2. DVD Decrypter
   Do a simple search on internet for “freeware backup DVD harddisk”, you’ll see many links to freeware, shareware. DVD Fab, DVD ISO Maker, DVDSmith Movie Backup, DVD Master Backup, DVDShrink … plenty. There are also commercial software too.
   
   I myself use DVD Decrypter – a very simple uncomplicated no frills, no thrills straightforward program that works. Copies DVD to Harddisk. Downloads and installs in a couple of minutes, select DVD Drive, select directory on Harddisk, press copy and done. There are other settings you can change for your preferences, the simple thing is that it works without changing any settings.
   
3. Time to Enjoy!
   I’ve done all my DVDs onto my harddisk in one afternoon with zero problems at all. Once on the Harddisk, I transferred it to my Playon! DVR TV via wired network. Wireless would be too slow, and if you want it faster, connect the Playon! DVR TV directly to the PC with USB.
   
   Once on the Playon! DVR TV, I now enjoy all my DVD discs without discs! Change movies / music DVDs without changing discs! Watch hours of movie marathon without getting off the couch!

More info:

• Download DVD Decrypter
• http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gregoryfamily/SetupDVDDecrypter_3.5.4.0.exe
• http://www.mrbass.org/dvdrip/
• If the links no longer work, search internet DVD Decrypter, you should find it easily. It’s still being used by many.
  
• Dutch guide on how to use DVD Decrypter http://www.doom9.nl/index.html?/dvddec.htm
  
• If you want to know about DVD Decrypter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_Decrypter
  
• DVD-related File Formats that Playon! DVR TV plays:
• ISO – keeps the whole disc in one file, can be used to re-create a DVD using DVD burning/writing software (useful for when you lost the DVD disc)
• IFO – play this file and you’ll have navigation like a DVD
• VOB – this file type only stores the movie, without the DVD extras like subtitles, angles etc