VR-Zone

Update: Wireless Dongle Connectivity 

After speaking to the engineer from AC Ryan, found out that for the first initial handshake, your Router / Access Point must broadcast its SSID first. Mine wasn’t broadcasting its SSID so the unit failed to register that. Once I configured my access point to broadcast its SSID, the unit registered the connection and was able to be part of my wireless network. To make sure that we save these settings so that you can re-secure your wireless network (to some extent) again by disabling the SSID-Broadcast, it is very important to save the login settings (when browsing to your server for music, for example) on the Shortcut tab. If you do this successfully, you should be able to set your router / access point not to broadcast the SSID again. To browse again, you need to just access the shortcuts you have just saved.

There are a few things I think can be further improved.

1. I know some devices will also require users to configure their router / access point NOT to broadcast the SSID so that initial handshake can be made. But this is usually for devices that doesn’t have any form of alpha-numeric input. The AC Ryan PlayOn! DVR has one (and a very user-friendly one at that) so I don’t know why this step is even needed in the first place.
2. If you have many shortcuts on your network server (for images, videos, movies, DVD Drives, etc) then you need to save all those shortcuts manually one-by-one so that the device remembers the logins and so that you don’t need to get your router / access point to broadcast the SSID all over again. Depending on how you set up the server folder structure and the shortcuts, this can be a very tedious step for home users, if this is not well thought out. In my opinion, this ties to Point [1], if you can solve Point [1], you will not have the problems of Point [2]

 

3. An oversight is NOT to have the above resolution documented in the user instruction manual. I consider myself a very technical user and yet I couldn’t connect with the wireless setup. I read the entire manual but there was nothing documented that explained that the wireless SSID must be broadcasted at first. Now, even if I did that, there is nothing in the 66-page booklet that told me I need to save those connection settings with my shortcuts. If I didn’t do that, my router / access point MUST always be constantly broadcasting its SSID for the PlayOn! DVR to connect to it successfully. Hopefully this can be solved by an technical FAQ section on the manufacturer’s website soon.

If you have your wireless setup to constantly broadcast its SSID, then you will not have the above problems. But seeing that it is good practice not to broadcast your SSID  in most online prescriptive guidance and router / access points manuals, the PlayOn! DVR should have a better and a more intuitive way to allow the users to input their SSID and connect directly and automatically, which is a shame since it already have one very user-friendly input software mechanism and a very good remote control to boot.