Popcorn Hour A-110

Hello there, I'm Ian Morris and today you find me with the Popcorn Hour A-110, a fully-featured HD media streamer designed to get video files from your PC onto your TV with the minimal hassle. So, what does the A-110 do? Well, if you have video from the internet, or you've got a collection of DVDs that you have ripped to your PC, then you'll probably want an easy way of watching them on your TV, especially if your computer is in another room. The Popcorn Hour does this with some considerable skill, and much, much more too. At the front, you'll see there is a single USB socket for playing back media stored on memory sticks. There is a second USB connection on the back, designed for devices that are plugged in more permanently. Aside from a small reset switch and some status LEDs, that's it for the front of the A-110. If I turn the machine around, you'll see that there are a variety of outputs, including HDMI, component, composite and s-video. The HDMI socket is even 1.3 compliant, which means it can carry Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD as well as deep colour information. There is, as you’d imagine, a network connection for connecting this little device to your home PC. There's no wireless built-in, but there are USB dongles available that will allow you to connect wire free. As well as the newly moved USB host socket, you'll also see a USB target connection. If you opt to fit a hard disk to your Popcorn Hour, you can connect it directly to your PC to copy files to it, be aware though that you'll need to install a linux EXT3 filesystem driver to make the machine show up under OS X or Windows, this is very simple to install and you'll find a link in my review of the A-110. You might also notice that there is an optical digital output, this is a slight change from the A-100, which had a coaxial output, that probably won't cause any problems for most people, although we're much less keen on optical inputs because they're more fragile. It's also worth pointing out that unlike the A-100, the A-110 can internally decode DTS sound, handy if you don't have a DTS capable home cinema amp. So, how does it perform? Well, HD video up to 1080p plays perfectly, we were able to watch Quicktime trailers, MPEG-4 files like XivD and DivX without problem. The best news however is that the A-110 can also play files contained within the MKV wrapper. If you don't know, MKV containers are a more modern way of storing video than AVIs and can allow for DVD style menus and a whole bunch of other useful features like multiple soundtracks and subtitles. Fitting a hard disk to the A-110 is incredibly easy, so if you were intimidated by the idea of having your hands in the guts of your new toy, relax, there's nothing to it. First of all, you undo the four thumbscrews, then the drive simply slides into place and is secured from underneath with four small screws. Then you get the added advantage of being able to drag and drop files over the network, or even by plugging the unit into your PC. If you do fit a hard drive, you'll also get the added bonus of being able to directly download and seed torrent files from the Popcorn Hour. Doing this is incredibly easy, you simply visit the Popcorn Hour's web interface, upload a .torrent file and off it goes. I'm Ian Morris, and this is the Popcorn Hour A-110.