The Functionality
The Functionality
Much like our original PlayOn!HD review I wanted to answer the most essential question that some of you MIGHT have; what in fact is a media TV player? Well, this is a self-contained unit with some dedicated hardware that has a focus on dedicated functions.
In the case of the PlayOn!HD series that's content playback of photos, music, but most of all video content. The last topic is where the PlayOn!HD specializes. Typically when we build a HTPC (Home Theater PC) we tend to put down significant money for a motherboard, processor, memory, power supply, storage and the chassis. And if the unit does not have a graphics subsystem, we often add a dedicated graphics card as well to be able to enjoy full 1080P content. A simple HTPC starts at 250~300 EUR really.
This is what the PlayOn!HD 2 series does best, play back high-definition content, the units are based on a 500 MHz Realtek 1185 IC, specialized in media capabilities. The Playon!HD and Mini support JPEG HD, BMP, GIF, TIFF and PNG picture formats, while audio support covers MP2/3, OGG, WMA, WAV, AAC, COOK and FLAC, Dolby Digital or DTS pass-through and stereo down-mixing - even DTS-HD is supported.
When we look purely at the video side of things we notice that the box can play back anything you can think of, including HD MPEG 2/4, H.264, WMV9/VC-1 and RM/RMVB (up to 720p) codecs in AVI, ASF, DAT, FLV, MKV, M2TS, MP4, MOV, M4V, RM, TS, TP, TRP, VOB/ISO/IFO, WMV, and xVid/DivX containers with SRT, SMI, SSA, IDX and SUB subtitles and full menu video previews. And yes, there's even proper support for 1080p 24.
In this article we review the 1GB HDD version of the PlayOn!HD 2.
These boxes offer HDMI 1.3, proper component and composite video outputs, USB connectors (one 3.0) and even Gigabit Ethernet.
You'll see in the product gallery that Wireless-N Wi-Fi is an option as well, for roughly 20 EUR you can pop in a wireless dongle and go WiFi with fully configurable settings from within the Playon!HD boxes.
As if things were not enough features wise, you'll also get analogue stereo and digital optical audio out as well, so that means that all the basics are very well-covered. Audio wise all foreseeable formats are supported. We obviously recommend you output HDMI to a proper AV receiver, have that decode sound (pass-through) and then head onwards towards the preferably full HD (1080P) telly.
Anyway, talk is cheap... let's have a look at the product gallery.
