About a year ago I purchased a PV73100, with just one goal, to help my wife to a collection of her favorite series. At the time I prepared the player with a few films and checked that Internet radio functioned. No problems so no reason to worry. I erased the files again because I found no immediate possibility to replace the numerical indication into an understandable file name. My plan was to gather the video parts on my pc (or in fect on my external harddisk) and then later move it onto the Playon!HD machine. Health problems prevented me from doing anything further with it.

Now, a year later, I tried to get the thing ready. My first attempt was to link the player to a USB port of my computer. My main PC is with an i7 processor, 64 bits Windows 7 and 8 GB memory.

However, there was NO WAY it would recognize the player, not on the regular USB2 port nor on the USB3 port. I received the advice to seek a driver. So I literally downloaded all I could find on the acryan.com site for the PV73100. First major irritation: under the header "drivers" there was NO simple driver for the USB port but only a WiFi Dongle wireless thingy which I don't need at all. Problem NOT solved.

I tried my laptop which runs 32 bit Windows 7 but I got the same result: it also wasn't able to install the USB option for lack of proper driver.

So I decided to install the latest firmware to the player. As such that went fine via the USB stick. I sure like the new environment, looks a lot better than the original. BUT... still neither PC recognizes the player. Unknown USB device cannot be installed.

So I decided to go the Network way. But there a new disaster waited for me: where the password to Home Network is given by Windows 7 on my main PC there is absolutely NO WAY to know what in heaven's name I should fill in as User name. I tried everything, my pc login name, the word Workgroup under which the group is named standard, My login name plus -PC, my computer name plus -PC, the word Home or Home Network, a new name A.C.Ryan, no matter what I did, the result was and is that I get "Logon Failed".

So I went for the last option possible: I wrote some episodes on a USB stick that I wanted to write to the player. A slow way but at least that should be easy? FORGET IT!!! Sure, I can read the films from my USB stick and yes I can play them from that stick. BUT I DON't WANT TO PLAY THEM!!! I want to transfer them. But HOW??? For some crazy reason when you try to use the Files Manager the center button with the down-left arrow has a double function: it says "to select or play" And yes, when I push it it does exactly what i don't want: it starts playing instead of selecting. If it had been possible to select some files I would then look for a "copy" function but as llong as I can't even select a group of files I can forget about copying them to the player's harddisk.

I have been working on this darn machine from 8 pm until now, it's almost 4 o'clock in the night and I can forget about surprising my wife as planned. I am just about ready to throw it out of my window onto the street due to pure frustration. The paper manual is printed in such a rotten way that you can't really use it but I did read both online PDF manuals so that can't be the cause either.

Oh, I forgot to mention: I installed every available file on my pc including the YAMJ program. There too something rather absurd happened: I got the message "It seems that you haven't installed JAVA" Total nonsense, I have a great working system in which of course JAVA is incorporated. But I thought that perhaps there was something missing for YAMJ so again I reinstalled the latest JAVA as suggested. And what happened after I rebooted the computer? Right, YAMJ told me again that it seems that I haven't installed JAVA when I started it up. grrrrrr..... great quality software!

Yes, I even installed the wireless software even though I don't use wireless, just in case it would contain the so badly needed driver. After all it was listed under the header "drivers". But no, it's all totally useless. No matter what I do, I can't transfer any of my movie files from my pc or external HD into this player.

I imagine that somehow there are reasons for this all, I hope that someone can give me the information I need to be able to use this player. I am not an expert but I am someone who works with IBM-style computers since 1982. I am totally apalled by the systematic or better said the lack of it in this piece of electronics. There is no logic whatsoever. If your PC needs a driver in order to recognize the player and A.C.Ryan doesn't supply one under the header "drivers" what more can a consumer do?????

PS: Perhaps I should also mention that I tried using FTP to reach the player without any luck. I am used to using networking programmes, I use for instance two different programmes to change databases (settings and new firmwares) on my satellite receivers. But my PC doesn't even see the player when I enter the correct IP number for it.

Hey Paul,

Sounds like your player has some kind of hardware problem. Connecting it to a PC via USB should be possible without extra drivers. It just works like a USB hard drive enclosure. If the player has an IP address, FTP should work. Can you at least ping the player? Do internet features (web radio, Youtube) work?
YAMJ is no AC Ryan software, so they cannot be blamed for that. Lots of people use it, so checking the forum (Other developments) could help. There are also lots of people who don't like it however and have switched to ThumbGen (also in Other developments). Maybe this is easier to implement. For file copying I think you need to press the menu button in the file manager. Download the manual for more information.

Hi Vanhal,

Thanks for your reply. Just to make sure that no interference is possible I disconnected all from my PC and only connected the plater to the USB3 port (later also the regular USB port). The PC responds with USB DEVICE NOT RECOGNIZED. One of the USB Devices attached to this computer has malfuctioned, Windows doesn't recognize it.

When I go to the unknown USB device and try to find a better driver it tells me after some minutes "The best driver software for your device is already installed". But it still is named as "Unknow Device" which seems a clear indication that it's still very wrong.

As this also happens to my Dell laptop, and as neither computer ever shows this kind of response I am at a loss as what to do. I changed the USB cable so that can't be a cause, and when I start up the PC I get on the screen attached to the player a conformation that the USB port is in use.

FTP doesn't work, FileZilla server however does ask for a password, I have no idea if my inability to supply that might be the cause why I cannot log in.

A network connection isn't really visible so that also doesn't offer any perspectives.

When I remove the USB connector I can proceed with the player. I first went to YouTube and getting a list of Most Viewed works OK including pictures and descriptions. However with each file I do get the message "Cannot play media file".

Shoutcast radio seems to work, at this moment it's bringing in lists of radio stations and indeed I can listen to statios I select even though the sound quality is badly disturbed. I tuned in to programs I know to be of great quality like AVRO Baroque Around The Clock so there must be something very wrong with this player, I hope it's just a matter of settings.

But it seems proven that it'has a working internet connection.

How to ping this apparatus I don't know yet.

so far my tries up to this moment. Any advice would be most welcome. I just can't understand what's going on. Before I fell ill I tested it under XP and I found nothing wrong at all. Including a normal internet radio sound which of course has nothing to do with my computer.

Update: the horrible sound is also present when I enter a USB stick and play a movie from it. So that has nothing to do with the communication as such.
It remains however absurd to be in a situation in which I can see a list of films on this USB stick without being able to select any for copying to the HD that's inside the player. I tried anything (menu+confirm, select button, menu+select, select+confirm, copy button, copy+confirm, in short nothing works to select a nunch of files and copy it to the player's HD...)

Hi Paul,

You are not connecting your player to the PC while having it attached to a TV, are you? You can only do one thing at a time, so disconnect the HDMI cables and just use the USB host connector. Network seems to be working fine. The radio sound problems have been described before and Youtube hasn't been working for several weeks now (probably Youtube changed their APIs). But getting sound or preview pictures means it's working. The forums have several threads on Win7, you need a small change in the registry to make it work. Look here:
http://www.acryan.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=2269
Look here for copying: http://www.acryan.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=17761 Seems I had the wrong remote key in mind, my bad!
Good luck!!

Update 2: I did finally get to the point where in the copy menu I could select films and copy them to the right block on the screen. But then??? No way how to get the player to effectively write teh files from the stick to the harddisk.

So I went for the "brutal way": I opened up the player, took out the 2TB harddisk and placed it into the top bay of my computer. There I saw that the files I put on last year were still present - I had assumed that they were erased or so because I got no files list when trying the player.

As for now I guess I better copy all films I wanted to transfer onto the A.C.Ryan's harddisk, just HOPING and PRAYING that somehow they will be seen after I put the disk back into the player.

I do feel rather desperate - the message that the player SHOULD be seen when connecting a USB cable isn't of any help when you tried three computers and two USB cables without the player ever being recognized by ANY of them. So it SHOULD be recognized but if it in fact ISN'T recognized, what THEN should I do????

Thank you Vanhal, I hadn't seen your reply before I posted my last message, I'm very sorry: I should have refreshed the page before writing. Right now I'm copying my films in a way that I shouldn't, just to get the films on the HD for sure.

I did indeed start with the player ONLY connected to the pc without any screen or anything else. Only after it appeared that I got no response whatsover I connected the HDMI screen. And, when I do connect the USB cable to the player I get a message on the screen asking me to select if I want to continue by controlling the player via my pc so I don't think that the problem should be sought in that direction. Although I must admit that when I connected the laptop I did have the screen connected so once I'm finished transferring the files and putting back the harddisk I will try the laptop, no screen attached.

One essential thing I do not find in your long posts, is whether your Playon's internal hard disk has been formatted with the Playon and not with your PC. During the formatting process the Playon creates an NTFS partition for your data and a Linux swap and an Ext3 partition for system use. Without these sysyem partitions the Playon will not work correctly.

Further the Playon has an FTP server on board and you should use the FileZilla FTP client on your PC.

Hi Duivels,
I know this sounds amazing but while at the one hand I purchased this player with a 2 TB harddisk that is mounted within so one would assume that it would be fully compliable to what you mentioned, in reality the harddisk once I mounted it into the PC showed absolutely no subdirectories of any kind!

And yes, unfortunately when I placed the harddisk back into the player and went to "FILMS" not a single file is shown. Confusing with this all is the fact that until an hour ago I never took the harddisk out of the player. And the fact that a year ago I could play the files on it's harddisk with this player.

Two things changed since then:
1. I now use a computer with Win 7 instead of XP
2. I replaced the firmware with the latest one.

But that doesn't explain why I see no subdirectories on the harddisk. I assume they also should have been created under the previous firmware. It sounds like perhaps I should do a format within the player to resolve this problem???

Somehow it feels like so far I am getting only further and further away from ever being able to use this thing successfully...