AC Ryan Veolo review

As far as media streaming is concerned, A.C Ryan’s implementation is crude but workable. You use the standard Android Music, Gallery and Video apps to access content stored on the 2.9GB of internal memory or an attached external drive, while content stored on your network – either shared via SMB or NFS – is accessed via a separate File Manager app. The first time you access a networked share, you’re prompted to save it as a shortcut on the File Manager main screen, which saves time.

File support is great, although you don’t get menus in either DVD or Blu-ray films. There’s no way to queue up multiple files for playback. This is fine if you want to just watch a film, but not for playing music or browsing photos. We tried creating a music playlist, both in Windows’ Media Player format and the more open M3U format, but none of the installed players would recognise it. To play multiple tracks or create a photo slideshow, you’ll have to copy files to a local drive first.

One way to get around the Veleo’s limitations is to look for alternative apps in the Android Market. For example, a lot of media streamers come with a Bittorrent client – and there are plenty to choose from on the Market to fill the gap. However, this also means that AC Ryan is leaving it up to the user to find ways of getting features that come as standard – often with clear instructions – on other media streamers.

This DIY approach may not suit everybody, and it certainly doesn’t justify the high price of the Veolo compared to other media streamers. If you have that much to spend, D-Link Boxee Box is a stylish and feature-packed alternative that’s much easier to use. With patches to fix problems with apps fitting into the large resolution, the Veolo might become an interesting alternative to traditional media streamers, but as it stands it’s only suitable for Android geeks with deep pockets.