Guys

I just bought the Playon HD Essential with the Wireless Dongle. I've setup the wireless and it seems to work, cause I can ping the device's IP from my laptop. But when I setup my Network Shortcut, it keeps saying Logon Failed. I have a 20TB Media Server running on Windows 7 Ultimate and thats what I'm trying to connect to.

On the Username box I enter: Tumie-server/Tumie and the Media Server's Password and the IP address for the Media Server. SAMBA is off and I can't seem to turn it on. And there's no HDD inside the Playon Device. There is no Domain, everything is on the Workgroup.

Please help. This is really frustrating, cause I cant watch anything now.

Hey Tumie,

I think the Essential was never intended to browse networks. Originally it could just play content connected through USB, but later they added the possibility to use a wireless dongle. Through this you can play Youtube videos, listen to internet radio etc. but playing from network shares was not among the features. Why AC Ryan makes a player which can connect to internet but not to network shares is beyond me, but I guess they have their reasons. The hardware should be capable of it.
If you can take it back to the store you might exchange it for e.g. the Mini, which basically is Essential + network. The Mini has wired LAN, so you don't have to sacrifice one USB port and you will get a more stable connection. Lots of people are complaining about the new models (Mini2,HD2) so you might want to check the forum before getting one of those.