I am a programmer myself. As you are working so hard for so long with so much personell, I truly honestly believe your next firmware will be able to sing and dance and make me lunch. With so much working hours developed in the firmware I guess as a programmer myself, it will be something amazing.

But then again, just maybe you'll make a new Playon HD with all new dancing and singing and cooking FW. Check back in a year if I am right.

@jerry2
I'm with you.. but again i do have to defend AC Ryan staff too. We all have to understand that they are waiting for realtek to fix their part of problem before they can do their part. Correct me if I'm wrong... but i'm quite sure realtek will not allow AC Ryan developers to touch their firmware.. AC Ryan can only play with libraries and SDK given.
The sad fact is that it looks like Realtek is retiring the product and moving on hence long delays with any support. In addition to that, AC Ryan is moving on too.. They have released new android version player so we can safely assume that developer team has been now split between old product maintenance and new product development branch.
We can only hope that AC Ryan will be kind enough to give us at least one last firmware with majority (if not all) reported bugs fixed before they completely retire the product and move onto android players.
We all have to agree that android based players are the future players.. Realtek and Sigma chipsets were excellent product for their time but they grew old now.. and we can all feel that shift towards new products.. Everything is moving to android, so why not media players..
Our old PV76120 with hopefully fixed firmware will slowly move onto our spare rooms or less technical family members...
I do thank AC Ryan staff for their contribution, Mikael, Arne and others are doing great job, but we just need a bit more news from you guys... at least give us something, Even if it simple yes not.. We want to feel heard. I know youre reading the forum, but without your response we are left to wonder whether you are still with us or we are left alone. And the more we feel left alone.. more we (we as customers / users) whinge. Just simple short answer will keep most of us happy.. Even just to say HI we are here and aware of your requests / whinges / praises etc...

Prle77 -
Are you for real ?

- 'but again i do have to defend AC Ryan staff too' ?
-'We all have to understand that they are waiting for realtek to fix their part of problem before they can do their part' ?

Prle77, have you forgotten, we are the customers who have paid out and expect the kit to do at the bear minimum what it was advertised to do. Some of us who purchased the kit not long after it was first released have had to deal with poor/bug ridden firmware release after release after release.

Do you think after 10 different firmware releases that crash and result in the posts on this forum are acceptable ?
Do you also think its acceptable that since the last fw release, ACRyan for whatever reason have been unable to commit to a release date ?
Do you really think a Company of Realtek's size would take this long ?

But then again, if you are happy to accept that ACRyans staff are doing an excellent job in keeping us informed and Realtek is the sole reason behind the delay, then you keep believing it.

Final point, if and when the next version is released, should there be any bugs, how long before............................

Hi mutley
I understand your frustration. I am frustrated myself.. But the fact is...
I have done research on other media products based on the same chipset and they are all bug ridden. AC Ryans is actually one with least bug "infested" product....
So other manufacturers are battling the same issue and waiting for realtek to fix their chipsets..
The thing is that there is ony few more product that offer things we bought this product for.. ie TV recording etc.
I am just trying to be realistic. As a consumer I am not happy cookie but again with my line of work where I deal with suppliers and broken promises and negotiations I do understand that it is not 100% AC Ryans fault..
We can only hope they are pushing realtek hard enough that they do release update...

@mutley
Personally i think realtek has already retired the product... If you check their site it has pretty much very little about their chipset
as for being happy about AC Ryan keeping us informed.. No.. not happy at all.. as in my previous post I have suggested that AC Ryan staff spend a bit more time letting us know what is happening..
Additionally although buggy.. device operates much better than its predecessor I've purchased earlier from different manufacturer (but with the exact same chipset) and the main reason why I've moved on is because other manufacturer basically simply gave up... so no upgrades or any releases and as a matter of fact no response whatsoever on their forum.. they simply gave up...
At least AC Ryan is appearing they are trying to get us some solution..
SO lets all hope for the best

There have been recent beta firmware releases (beta) for other models in the ACRyan lineup that share this chipset. See here - viewtopic.php?f=168&t=17209

Looking through the release notes I'm not sure that the stability and performance problems with the media file indexing have been resolved, though. For me, this is the one area which is preventing this box from being a winner. The PVR functions need to be improved also. I too, cannot find another candidate box with TV tuners on board and the breadth of video and audio capability. I suspect I will need to wait until the next generation of terrestrial PVRs are available to find a suitable one.

i have pretty much had it with this box... it will soon go on ebay.
I bought a pundit p1-ph1 for 130 and a pvr-150 tuner card for 30 on ebay,
i am building a mythtv setup.
i didnt have the $ to make a HD setup, but soon maybe ill look at that (i need to find a TV out card to the TV that does RGB and not hdmi).
google mythtv and see all the functions it has...

I had a quick look at the PVR-150 tuner card. Is this not an old analog(ue) tuner card? I thought the US had migrated to digital (ATSC) at this stage? Maybe your local TV transmitters are broadcasting analogue signals? The Asus Pundit box looks like it has a nice small footprint, but again, this has been around for quite a while so make sure it has the necessary connectivity options you need and will ultimately support HD for you.

I'm aware of mythtv, but have not played around with it. I built a media PC a couple of years ago and I have digital TV and satellite tuners cards in it, plus a 1TB hard drive, but it's about an inch wider and about three times the height of the Playon box, so not easily accommodated with the AV kit!

The media PC runs Win 7 and lives in my study and I can connect to it from the Playon via uPnP, so I can stream video from the satellite and terrestrial tuners using DVBviewer Pro.

Used to have media PC.. not a bad thing, but same as fat-tony I want something small to sit on the shelf and to blend with the rest of equipment.. I've even purchased ASRock atom ION330 PC for it.. Now with MYTH.. nice software and everything, but if you want to use USB HD TV card to be equivalent of the card in AC Ryan, you'll be forking bit of money for it thus making AC Ryan very affordable player... and yes if you want small factor pc you will be forced to use USB TV cards and MYTH TV which is based on linux is very picky with USB TV cards, thus my leaning toward the ACRyan product.. (additionally ACRyan is much more quiet than ION PC..)

i live in the middle of no-where.. so i only have dish network. There receiver has both analog and digital out.
So i will hook the pvr-150 to that. I agree, the only thing i am really worried about is the noise it may have.. ill need to wait and see once i get it going. Some of the small HTPC motherboards taht come with the cpu on it, are OK as well, but they all have HDMI out, my tv dont have hdmi input.. the cost of the hdmi motherboard, a hdmi to rgb converter, case and HD-pvr (like the 1212), puts the cost a bit to high for me for now. I will get it all setup in SD, then if i like it, i will look into a HD setup.
The asus computer i got , ait really a first choice, but ill see how it goes with the setup. mythbuntu makes the setup a lot easier than previously,...

kurt

the acryan box , in my opinion, is the best out there of this type, but i am loosing faith fast in any new decent firmware.
too many crashes during recordings, too many bugs overall. Mybe the'll prove me wrong with some firmware releases.... SOON.