Streaming media from a hard drive is pretty much flawless. The machine doesn't come with a drive by default, but fitting one is easy and high-capacity drives are far from expensive these days. During our tests, media played without stuttering right up to 1080p QuickTime material. We used a variety of material to test this including MPEG-4 video in both Matroska and QuickTime wrappers. The A-100 didn't have a problem with anything we threw at it.
Over the network, we were able to get 1080p video working without a hitch most of the time. There were occasions where playback stuttered, but this might have been a problem with our network or even the file we were playing. The Children of Men trailer stuttered, but the Get Smart clip played flawlessly. Happily, 720p video always worked flawlessly and for the time being, 1080p isn't practical to download with a movie weighing in at 14GB and virtually no TV stations broadcasting in that format.
USB playback was flawless, but only with a fast memory card. Using an older, slower stick meant we got some juddering at times. This isn't the A-100's fault, so if you're planning on playing HD material over USB, make sure it's fast.
You also get access to some Web services with the A-100, but this is the buggiest part of the system. We used the Flickr photo stream and the box hung on us. Other services like Yahoo! Weather were fine, though.
Conclusion
The Popcorn Hour A-100 is a really impressive piece of hardware. It's exceptionally well priced, although you'll have to pay to import it. Even so, it could cost you a little less than Apple TV. Also, Popcorn Hour has continually produced firmware updates that add new functionality to the device. The active user forum on its site has areas where users can suggest features and this feedback is monitored carefully by the company.
The only other product we've reviewed that comes close to the A-100 is the D-Link DivX Connected box, but that device has very limited codec support. Apple TV has the built-in hard drive, easy synchronisation through iTunes, but doesn't support any useful codecs at all.
Edited by Shannon Doubleday
Android App 
RSS Feeds 
iPhone App 
Newsletters
User reviews3
Add your review
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.
See all 3 user reviews