It's easy to fail when you're making a media streamer. Many have tried to do it and almost all have come unstuck. Even Apple, masters of good design and intuitive user interfaces, fell at virtually the first hurdle with Apple TV.
When we heard about an American product called the A-100 from a company called Popcorn Hour, we couldn't help but get excited. Here was something that offered support for every major -- and a good number of minor -- codecs, had loads of flexibility and didn't cost the Earth. With fingers crossed, we dove into the hype.
The Popcorn Hour A-100 is not currently available for purchase in the UK, but it's available through European and US suppliers. It costs around £185 with VAT but not including any importing charges.
Design
When people see the A-100 -- or as it proudly proclaims across the front, 'networked media tank' -- their reactions are usually the same: "why is it called Popcorn Hour?" and "it looks like an external hard drive". We think it's fair to say it's not the swankiest looking device. Of course, Apple had its chance to make a beautiful media streamer and we got stuck with Apple TV. Now it's the turn of function over form to win the battle for our hearts.
At the front of the machine are two USB sockets, which can be used for memory sticks, a USB keyboard (handy for some tasks) or even external hard drives. Apart from that, there is nothing else on the front panel -- not even a power button.
The back is slightly more intriguing. There is a power socket, Ethernet, HDMI in, S/PDIF out, stereo RCA and composite video RCA outputs, S-Video and component video out.
The supplied remote control is light and comfortable. It has glow-in-the-dark buttons, which are a real blessing if you're going to watch a film in a dimly lit room. During our tests we found that the button layout on the controller was pretty logical. There were some oddities like having to press the stop button when playing a video instead of being able to press the return button to get back to the file list. Still, this is a very minor point.
Features
The key to a good media streamer is flexibility to get files on to the device and then play them. The A-100 supports most video file types and containers, which is a good news. A full list of the supported files is on the Popcorn Hour Web site, but the highlights include MPEG-4 (DivX, XviD and H.264/X.264) and MPEG-2 at both standard and high definition.
The only feature that's very clearly missing from the A-100 is wireless. We have mixed feelings about the decision not to include Wi-Fi: on the one hand, it's convenient and tidier than Ethernet, but having experienced 802.11g to watch streaming video with our D-Link DivX Connected box, it can be unreliable and quite annoying.
The most obvious method for getting video on to the A-100 is to connect it to your network and stream files from your PC. To do this, you'll need to use a piece of software called myiHome. It's not complicated to use: you feed in the location of your photos, music and video and then the Popcorn Hour can play them.
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gskmr2 12 January 2010
Good: Plays virtually everything!
Bad: When it doesn't it crashes, needing a downpower which will eventually kill the box.
Comment: Mine was running fine for just over a year, when the warranty expired it went wrong after I had to down power it from a frozen movie - no picture on screen and the ethernet light didn't come on.
I sent it back for repair a short while later (costing $50 which is partially expected as it was out of warranty), it came back all working again.... for a few months!
It has gone wrong again after a downpower with a near similar issue and as the warranty repair is only valid for 7 days they wanted me to pay another $50 to have it fixed. I decided to cut my losses and bin it father than have to spend $50 every few months to have the thing fixed as well as having the hassle of posting it back to California and waiting 2 weeks. M6500A DVICO here I come!!
daniel_owen_uk 3 September 2008
Good: Plays everything that I want
Bad: Audio playback isn't that brilliant, FF/RW could be quicker
Comment: Had this product for a LOOOONG time now, was in the first 200 units.
They are constantly updating features (I am in beta group), it plays every video I can find, HD looks incredible.
Support community is great.
Main issue is with speed of moving around video, they have some good tricks (time seek, 1 = 10%, 2 = 20% etc), but i-frames support will make it much quicker. Next 2 months I am promised :)
Really I wouldn't hesitate to recommend though. Bought mine direct, about £100.
Last one to sell on ebay sold for;
£170.00 +£12.50 20-Aug 12:19
Not many electrical products you could sell a year on and make 50%+ profit on.
Tsonaqua 11 July 2008
Good: Video/audio playback via HDMI, mfg support, community support, third party apps.
Bad: Currently not a very good audio playback device, sounds great, functionality as a audio player is lacking ... currently.
Comment: Signed up to correct some misinformation in the CNET review, primarily.
- FLAC has been supported since the January 31, 2008 firmware update.
- Don't use OGG so I can't comment as to whether its currently implemented but if its not it was confirmed as on the way by Syabas (firmware authors I believe) as far back as April 16, 2008.
- The latest firmware patch of June 18, 2008 added wireless via USB dongle in the form of 'Atheros USB 11n driver'.
As far as my 'review', video playback has been amazing, both from installed harddrive or http streaming. Even SMB network (slower speeds) was able to stream HD content from my PC with only the fast forward functionality lagging. That disappears with HTTP streaming.
Straight out of the box the popcorn hour will please most everyone. With a little technical know how and time you can turn it into a Dream. Setting up http streaming takes a little research and technical know how. Also implementing third party apps like 'moviejukebox', my personal favorite third party app, takes a little computer proficiency but once implemented makes the whole popcorn hour experience tops.
WARNING: In its current state the popcorn hour is a poor audio playback device period. By this I mean playback of mp3/FLAC/etc is unintuitive and down right irritating. No support for M3U files at this time which in my mind is inexcusable for a music device. Good thing you're buying this as a video device not a audio streamer. ;)
That being said, the NMT firmware is a work in progress and I suspect that sometime in the future audio playback functionality will be revisited and improved upon. For the time being though, the quality of the audio you do playback is as good as any device I've used.
www.networkmediatank.com is the community site. Check http://www.networkedmediatank.com/viewtopic.php?t=4287&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=452 for an idea of what the current third party apps will do for you.
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