Yet Another Video Streaming Player?

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/' target='_blank'>http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>&quot;Popcorn Hour A-100 allows you to pull in digital video, audio and photos from various sources for your enjoyment on your HDTV or Home Theater setup. You can stream or playback your digital media content from a variety of sources, such as your PC, NAS, digital camera, USB mass storage devices (Flash drive, HDD, DVD drive), internal HDD and even directly from the Internet via the Media Service Portal. It also serves as a NAS and a BitTorrent peer-to-peer downloader to eliminate the need to switch on a PC or other device for this purpose. The Popcorn Hour A-100 supports the latest high bitrate video formats (MPEG2 MP@HL, H.264 [email protected], VC-1 AP@L3 in TS of at least 40Mbps) to give you up to 1080p high-definition videos.&quot;</em></p><p><img border="0" alt="" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1210589913.usr14.jpg" /></p><p>It is quite suprising to me that this little device doesn't support DVI. While most of my devices support HDMI now, I wonder how many other people have that ability and instead still have older devices that only do DVI. Also, I was thinking that for $180, this is pretty good until I realized that the hard drive is not included. That still doesn't make it a bad deal but it is just something to be aware of. Having said that, this little box does seem to support a lot of functionality. But given the big players in the market, I wonder if it will survive. I do have to say though that the name of the device is pretty amusing.</p>

[Stinger]

I've got one of these on order. I'll post some pics and a mini-review if anyone is interested.

By the way, why would you want it to support DVI? Surely any device that only accepts DVI is going to be connected to a PC already - making a box like this redundant.

[Jason Dunn]

I've got one of these on order. I'll post some pics and a mini-review if anyone is interested.

Definitely! Once you've posted it, let me know and I'll look at highlighting it to the front page.

By the way, why would you want it to support DVI? Surely any device that only accepts DVI is going to be connected to a PC already - making a box like this redundant.

Well, not exactly. Pre-HDMI, there were TV's that had DVI ports. So having DVI would expand the range of devices this could connect to - though there are adaptors for anything to pretty much anything else.

[Felix Torres]

I agree that this is unlikely to make it as a mainstream product (they can't meet demand even as a niche product) but that's not its target audience anyway.
Key phrase: bit-torrent download client.
Tells you what the target audience is, right?

That said, there is mainstream potential here; it supports pretty much any video format at up to 1080p.
A friend of mine has a Canon HD camcorder and his biggest problem is what to do with the videos; they only play on or via PC. (And he's a Mac-fan; Apple TV won't do it and he doubts a Mac Mini could even if he swallowed the price.)
I've suggested burning the files to DVD and playing them on a 360, but that's a $300 solution. The A100 comes in at $180. He's looking at it.

Here's another review of it:
http://www.networkingaudiovideo.com/archives/2008/02/hands_on_with_the_networked_me.php

[Felix Torres]

I've got one of these on order. I'll post some pics and a mini-review if anyone is interested.



Just tell us how it handles lower-res video on a high-res display; does it output the lower-res full screen, upscale it internally, or matte it? Also, what aspect-ratio controls does it offer?

Those could be deal makers or breakers... :)

[alese]

Well, I have one at home connected to my TV and it's quite nice.
I bought it instead of Media Center PC - since I don't need all the media center functionality (I only want video and sometimes pictures slideshows, while music is handled by SlimPlayer).

It does everything I want - mainly playing streaming video from my "home server", it's much cheaper than any media center PC (it costed me 250 EUR including shipping) and it's completely silent (unlike certain games console).

Few other (random) thoughts:
It plays streaming video just great, I have even tried couple of .MKV HD files and it plays them without any problems (can't comment on picture quality - no HD TV), over the 100Mb Wired LAN from Celeron 2,4GHz Windows XP PC.
I really like the fact that I can rip whole DVD to an ISO image on the PC and I can then play it on my PopCorn with all DVD's functionality (menus, addins...)
It has the ability to connect to some online services, mainly YouTube.
It's interface is not all that good (pretty) but it works, firmware is updated regulary.
I don't have hard disk installed, so I can't try torrent functionality.

Felix, I can't answer your question about displaying LoRes Video on HiRes display as I don't have HD TV at home, only an old 28" CRT. I guess this will have to be my next purchase.

Another review: http://www.mpcclub.com/modules.php?name=Reviews
(the actual review is in .PDF...)

[Stinger]

OK, I've now received mine. I'll give it a few days test and let everyone know what I think.

[Jason Dunn]

I really like the fact that I can rip whole DVD to an ISO image on the PC and I can then play it on my PopCorn with all DVD's functionality (menus, addins...)

Now THAT impresses me. I've been pondering what format to rip my DVDs to, and that solves the problem complete: just rip 'em to ISO. I didn't realize there were players out there that could play the ISO as container files. That's cool!

[alese]

Now THAT impresses me. I've been pondering what format to rip my DVDs to, and that solves the problem complete: just rip 'em to ISO. I didn't realize there were players out there that could play the ISO as container files. That's cool!

Like I said , for me it's a really great feature. So now I just have to rip all my DVDs to ISO and I'll have the whole library at the reach of my remote.

There is one more thing I forgot to mention, the PopCorn is just one player built around a reference design and if you look at the reviews that I posted earlier, there are few other players based on the same basic design and with the same firmware - the only differences are overall look, price and maybe some added or removed HW feature.

[Stinger]

I've posted a review (http://forums.thoughtsmedia.com/showthread.php?p=684993) in a separate thread. Overall impression is that it's very good for video, less so for music and photos.