Astone AP-300 full HD media player + 1TB drive - $179.95 + $7 shipping (Subscriber only special)

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• 

  Obs on 18/03/2010 - 21:42

  +3

  My advice is for users to do their research (WP and Astone Forums) before buying this AP-300 unit.

  Random HDD wipes is a real concern IMO.

  Disclaimer: I don't own one so I'm not talking from experience.

• 

  sk1ppy on 18/03/2010 - 22:35

  Hmmm pardon my ignorance but what are "Random HDD wipes"? Im not up to scratch with this technology but Im very interested in this player.

  • 

    andy19363 on 18/03/2010 - 22:54

    +1

    everything on the hard drive gets deleted……….randomly

    • 

      sk1ppy on 18/03/2010 - 22:58

      Why would that happen? What causes it? Does it happen often? Sorry for all the questions but wanna make sure im gonna buy a good player.Any better alternatives for same price?

      • 

        TieNN89 on 18/03/2010 - 23:15

        I'd say its just a cheap HDD that isn't reliable

      • 

        andy19363 on 18/03/2010 - 23:25

        http://www.astone.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=223&sid=…

      • 

        outlander on 19/03/2010 - 00:34

        possibly the mft gets currupted. Easy enough to fix if you can get the hdd out, but would get annoying

      • 

        WaywardOne on 19/03/2010 - 10:23

        I bought a WDTV Live! instead of a cheaper Astone. They are ~$180 and have no internal hard disk.

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  zango_tango_007 on 18/03/2010 - 22:38

  i dont know much either, but i just bought one….should be good enough for the price media player alone cost around $112 (checked on staticice), paying $80 for 1 TB…looked like deal to me…

• 

  herbie_ford on 18/03/2010 - 23:08

  +2

  I have had one for around half a year and no problems ever. The forums are a good place to go and ask for future updates with the firmware one of the upgrades I asked for just got added it gets better and better over time really happy with it never had my hard drive wiped

• 

  Topher on 19/03/2010 - 00:53

  +3

  I bought one a few months ago and it does it's job. It's cheap and supports a lot of different files/codecs.

  I have suffered from data loss on 3 seperate occasions so I wouldn't buy another, however it seems I'm part of the minority. If I had my time over I would buy a different device.

• 

  smurftech on 19/03/2010 - 10:33

  +1

  I have got one of these, don't get one…. lots of problems. I originally ordered mine from COTD 8/dec/09 just got my 4th replacement, all for the same issue with AV sound DOA.

  These units have lots of issues, main one is AV sound doesn't work(hdmi sound ok), then there are HDD format issue, HDD random delete issues.

  When these work they are good, easy to connect to network, streams well on wifi(if you have the wifi dongle), menu is good, output is good. But it really is a bit hit and miss quality wise, and only really appears to be this model the A300 with the 808Gb drive doesn't seem to have the same problems(check the astone forums)

  • 

    hunter108 on 19/03/2010 - 15:47

    bought 2 in Dec 09. 1 work fine and the other one has been replaced 3 times. AV sound is still not working and can't be bother to ship back again. Using HDMI now. Otherwise good player.

    bargain - $179.95 + $7 shipping

• 

  Rutger on 19/03/2010 - 16:47

  There was a similar player for over $300 just a few weeks ago so this is a huge bargain. There was a hdd problem with these so they replaced them though the AV sound problem I haven't heard of but check their forums. They don't hide or delete posts on there so you'll get an accurate idea of what they're like so you can make up your on mind but remember some people are just fools (it's a pc for starters, not a vcr).

  This is a HD PVR and NMT for ~$90, cheaper than a some media players with no internal hdd, so if you don't think it's a good deal I'd love to see one. It's their older model but it still has a warranty and it doesn't seem like they screw you around (like some companies) as is evidence by the replacement of the faulty units described above.

• 

  matt777 on 19/03/2010 - 19:48

  I have one and always disconnects over wireless and need to reconnect if left for 1hr without a movie playing.
  I have changed unit 3 times and still troublesome.

• 

  sk1ppy on 19/03/2010 - 21:09

  Dont think ill be gettin one so! Thanks to all for your advice : )

• 

  jeffr on 21/03/2010 - 00:02

  AStone tech support have admitted that there was a batch of these players that had both hard disk and hardware faults. They seem to be very upfront and honest about it. Cross fingers that mine will work when it arrives !

  If you have one that is problematic would you mind posting the firmware version? Thanks

• 

  SrMoure on 22/03/2010 - 10:10

  I got one of those, and they are faulty. It wiped the internal HDD causing the loss of all my stored data

• 

  greenie4242 on 27/03/2010 - 02:25

  -1

  To be honest I wouldn't go near one of these until they sort out the bugs. My friend and I both bought one last year in September, and they've both suffered a range of problems. My friend has had his entire hard drive wiped twice, and a couple of times my box has locked up and left me unable to watch movies until I downgraded the firmware. Also the menus are glacially slow, buttons such as volume and scroll have to be pushed repeatedly and don't repeat if held down like on most other equipment. Basic features like movie resizing and changing the location of the picture on the screen (useful for anamorphic DVDs and 1.85:1 movies with subtitles) aren't there, so you're sometimes stuck with a distorted picture. The remote control is pretty awful and the buttons are all jumbled up in exactly the wrong places, so it's extremely easy to accidentally stop a movie when you're just trying to pause it, or zoom in when you're trying to adjust the volume, or jump to the next movie when trying to fast forward. An annoying menu appears at the top of every single movie for the first 10 seconds or so, making it useless for short YouTube clips. Some YouTube, FLV and WMV formats aren't supported, making it very hit and miss.

  There are some good features, the networking is very good, the NAS feature works very well, 1080p playback is fantastic, subtitle support is good allowing you to change size, colour and screen location easily and playback idx/sub or srt files. I think with a bit of work this could absolutely be the best player out there, but the constant threat of data loss is a deal-breaker. I'm about to travel overseas for 3 months and will take my old MediaGate MG35 instead of the Astone, because I'd go crazy if the HD erased itself and I was stuck for 3 months without entertainment. Astone haven't said a single word about the data loss. If they acknowledged the problem and said they'd fix it I'd have faith, but Astone keep saying they've removed bugs from each new firmware release when they really haven't. Each firmware update seems to make the player slower and less responsive, and still suffers the data loss issue.

  A pity really, otherwise I'd have bought four more of them, one for each family member!

  • 

    jeffr on 27/03/2010 - 22:53

    Greenie thats for the update. I called tech support at Astone and asked them about the hard disks erasing and he was very upfront. He said the failures were due to BOTH hard disk and hardware failures on models released late 2009. He said the newer ones released in 2010 should not suffer the same problems. BTW what version of the firmware are you using?

    Thanks