Got my Playon!HD a few days ago, and first thing I did after setting it up was jump on the forums to see how to actual make this thing user friendly for my music and video files.

Flash FW.... Flash FW... Flash FW... and its nearly usable

Using YAMJ:
In brief, it's alright.

Initial setup time is long, and then each time you load the jukebox... well let's just say if you want to watch a video while having dinner, then make your dinner while it loads. But aside from that, it works but it's pretty basic. I played around a little with TVixie and found this a bit better, and using ThumbGen in combination with TVixie you can get some nice results... but this is stupidly time consuming.

Things I haven't found out yet, TV show support? These ended up being a bit of a mess doesn't seem to be any tier selection options anywhere on this device only through my own folder system using the browser. If anyone has some suggestions for this then please help me

Haven't even started on the music yet.

I really think the A.C.Ryan team should work on the out of the box product a little more tweaking the user interface. Using the Media Library or YAMJ jukebox is a bit like choosing between the Electric chair or Firing Squad.

I don't care about the YAMJ interface. It's too cumbersome to use with all these naming conventions you should abide before it recognizes your content. Too much manual work for lazy bastards like me.

Nah, I just use the default UI. Which should have an option to show a random movie frame in the preview, instead of playing the movie in the preview.

I have to agree with marcof. What's really needed is not the overkill of YAMJ, but a simple, fast and clean interface. Forget the graphics, except maybe for a single thumbnail. Give me the full title and a brief synopsis (both scraped from the Internet) and a flag to show me whether or not I've watched it before. And, please let it work not just from the internal HD but from network shares as well.

There must be something in between the complexity of YAMJ and having to scroll through file names like this:

law.and.order.criminal.intent.s09e12.720p.hdtv.x264-ctu.mkv

Other.

Just bought the Playon mini I too think the out of the box GUI could easily be enhanced out of all recognisability by a few simple tweaks. Someone correct me if I'm way off but I work in software and aren't these just the odd day or two of development ?
- shortcuts for deep network paths
- pull simple title and description info from a file (xml or whatever) stored with the movie, thumbnail from jpg, if there is no file then as mentioned above the box could try to grab some info from the web but thats a nice to have, I think most people will be happy with typing in the info to a file.
- think about minimal key presses please, all very well having lots of options but 99% of the time people want to jump straight to their moveis in a minimum number of presses.

As for YAMJ, I've downloaded, not spent much time on it, instructions complex but end result looks great in screenshots. So I don't think its either/or, lets have YAMJ for hardcore techies and a simple approach (good shortcuts and file based info) for those less adventurous.

Even better than all the above would be to enable the user community to produce their own front-end, by releasing an API, stylesheet driven UI whatever. I used to have a Topfield PVR, man the default UI and EPG was UGLY AS SIN, but they published an API and the player would load add on code from disk at power-up - you would not believe how many extensions were written, any number of completely new UIs and EPGs sprang up, see here http://www.tapworld.net/index.php?optio ... &Itemid=29. People loved the box, told all their friends and soon it was a best seller.

.... do I understand from post way up that YAMJ doesn't work for content on a NAS, if so I'll stop now ?! Not much use on a mini if it doesn't do that.

I've finally given up on YAMJ. It's pretty much worthless for what I want to do which is watch TV show episodes. As implemented by ACRyan on the POHD, YAMJ gives you absolutely no episode information for TV shows. The data is there (in the Jukebox files), but the POHD software doesn't display it.

Pity, because YAMJ is an interesting concept. Too bad it's implemented so poorly on the POHD.

...but it could be solved in the next firmware...you newer know .

/Manor

patience is a virtue !!!!