Woohoo! Managed to edit the configuration file to instruct the flashing process to leave some disk space on the / mount. Migrated the rss files from the previous working firmware and got YouTube working on my A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD again!

Not bad!

I received the AC Ryan 8GB Diskje! It is the smallest USBdisk (as of now). I won it in the Howto contest. Took some time and wrote a couple of guides on the AC Ryan forum and won one of these! I got another 4GB one lying around unused. Now I got another 8GB one. Wondering when would I have the chance to use it ?

Maybe I should try attaching it to my cellphone.

Some of you may have realized that USB mass storage devices attached to the PlayOn!HD are automatically mounted as read-only. In a read-only mount, you cannot write files to the drive.

The following script will remount all available USB mass storage devices (mounted in read-only mode) as read-write!

The down side is that you got to execute the script every time you plug in a new device. The script work best with View USB storage attached to A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD over network.

#!/bin/sh
# author: shadowandy.sg[at]gmail[dot]com <http://www.shadowandy.net>
#
# Simple remounting script for A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD Media Player
#
# Version 1.1
#

try_remount() {
echo “remounting $1 as read-write”
mount -o,remount,rw $1
}

if [$(mount | grep /tmp/usbmounts/ | grep ro | wc -l) -eq 0 ]; then
echo “no read-only usb drives found!”
else
echo “remounting read-only usb drives…”
for remount in $(mount | grep /tmp/usbmounts/ | grep ro | cut -d ” ” -f3); do
try_remount $remount
sleep 1
done
echo “all read-only usb drives mounted as read-write!”
fi

Creating the script

1. Telnet and login to your A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD
2. In the command prompt window, enter “vi /tmp/hdd/root/script/remount.sh“
3. In the vi window, press “i” to start edit mode
4. Paste the content of the above script
5. Press “<ESC>” to exit out of edit mode
6. Enter “:wq” to save the script
7. Enter “ls /tmp/hdd/root/script”
   remount.sh should be listed as one of the files

Executing the script

1. In the command window, enter “sh /tmp/hdd/root/script/remount.sh”
   The script would remount existing read-only USB drives as read-write

Some of us might want to view the content of that USB hard disk or flash drive that is attached to the A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD over the network (or samba).That is, viewing the contents of attached USB drives by access the network shares of A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD.

In fact, this could be easily achieved if you have installed a hard disk. In this guide, I will be sharing how I managed to access my USB drives attached to the media player over network.

This guide only require you to edit the file once and newly attached storage devices should be automatically detected and shared over network. You need not meddle with the smb.conf and samba service every time you want a storage device to be seen on network.

Disclaimer: Follow at your own risk. By continuing, you know what you are doing and you don’t hold the author responsible.

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Total speed of 395kBps on the A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD

Are you having slow speeds for the BitTorrent on the A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD Media Player? Saw quite a handful of discussion regarding the slow speed and decided to tweak the settings a bit. I managed to find some time this evening to toy with the media player. After 15 minutes of digging and tweaking, I managed to clock 395kBps using the BitTorrent on the A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD.

Some information I found:

• BitTorrent program is btpd
• btpd is commonly found in appliances that supports BitTorrent
• btpd on the A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD doesn’t support encryption
• A.C.Ryan had implemented it to run off default port (6881)
• A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD’s web interface doesn’t allow user to change the default BitTorrent port

Personally, I feel that running BitTorrent off default port is a bad idea as most Internet Service Provider (ISP) throttles BitTorrent traffic. Running off default port just makes it easier for ISP to identify and throttle the speed. Therefore, we would want to change this port number to allow BitTorrent to pick up some speed. Another important point to note is that the btpd on the media player doesn’t support encryption. So the BitTorrent traffic can easily be identified by the clever network devices our ISPs have and speed will drop again.

Another point – appliances have limited resources. These media players are not as powerful as our personal computer hence we might wish to optimize the available resources. One way to keep resource usage under control is to limit the number of peers the BitTorrent would connect to. More peers generally means higher speed but more peers definitely means more resources being consumed. Less available resources generally means lower speed. Go figure where is your balance.

In this guide, we will be changing the BitTorrent port to 12345. If you would like to use another port, just replace every instance of 12345 with your own port number. I would be limiting the number of peers to 48. Just change this number to your liking. If you have a router, do remember to do the necessary port-forwarding.

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Took some pictures of the PlayOn!HD Full HD Media Player!

Cant wait to unbox the media player!

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