Popcorn Hour A-110 Hands-on
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Feb 3rd 2009 3:00PM
posted Feb 3rd 2009 3:00PM
We've been on a media streamer kick lately and decided to check the Popcorn Hour A-110 to see what all the fuss is about. Our first impressions are positive, but we'll hold out sharing too much until we've had more time to play. We're willing to share a few details though like the fact that the remote feels really good considering the price point ($179), the thumbscrews on the top give easy access to the drive bay (drive not included). And on top of all that, we have to admit we appreciate it it when an HDMI is included. Stay tuned for more...
The Popcorn Hour A-100 is $179. The A-110 (the model here) is $215. The A-110 with the wireless dongle WN-100 is $249.
I have the A-100 and I think the remote is the same so you are correct but I still wanted to toss out some dollars.
Wow, I thought I was looking at an old review because this device has been out for awhile and is pretty old news.
Check out the digital streamers section on avsforums and look into the western digital hd tv for a hundred bucks
It has the same chipset although it doesn't have wireless
BTW: I will not be staying 'tuned' for anymore of this article
You, sir, should not recommend products to anyone. The WD device cannot stream anything, it can only play from a local (external) harddrive.
I
err...that was supposed to say I (lessthan 3) my A-110 but I guess the comment system thought I was trying to get funky with some html.
i would love to know if anyone has this up and running with a slingbox?
That western digital HD streamer only streams from attached USB drives (I believe). It has no capability to stream from sources over your network.
Correct, local media only, no network of any kind.
Ben - can you try testing out some M2TS files on it? I have all my home movies recorded in AVCHD to M2TS files which is the native format of the Sony HD Camcorders. I can provide samples if you need them. I don't want to purchase it until I know it will work with my home movies on a shared network drive. I DM'd you on Twitter so you can get back to me there if you want to. Yes Roger the WD one needs a drive directly connected to it - major fail. @Chav3z - I wouldn't call it a "streamer" if it can "stream" anything. Maybe you should stay tuned in a little more :-)
Yes, it works with M2TS files, even Bluray.
m2ts works fine with everything I've tried. Let me know if you want me to try a sample from your particular camera.
Marshall
The Real HT Info Podcast
Learn to read
It's listed in the digital streamers section of avsforums
I can't believe how hard it is for people to understand English sometimes
Please make sure to THOROUGHLY test the box. It would be doing the readers a real disservice to gloss over the sub par user interface, the lack of playlist support, the buggy SMB, NFS, and uPNP support, as well as the frequent lockups and daily resets the box needs. Thanks!
It would also be doing the readers a disservice if you made them think these items you just mentioned are at all true. I've had mine for a year. Never locked up once, the user interface is simple but very pretty, and I've had nothing but flawless success with SMB, NFS, and uPNP.
I will admit the picture and music interface is terrible, but I only use mine for movies. The PCH devices are amazing. Don't listen to anyone who tells you different.
I have had lockups, and as such had to power cycle the Popcorn hour with the power cable. But networking support has been flawless.
Loban, how could you have had the A-110 for a year when its only been out for 4 months?
Popcorn Hour A-100 has been out since late 07 and is nearly identical to the A110, Frankly, it's been a pleasure watching the firmware mature over the past year (too bad the BIG companies like Sony, Pioneer, etc. can't be this diligent about adding functionality and improving bugs and quirks).
If you're still having problems, you definitely need to update the firmware. Mines been near flawless, and once again, I use it every day.
Marshall
The Real HT Info Podcast
The A-110 is the A-100. The software is identical save for 1 software difference: DTS. The (main) reason the A-110 costs more than the A-100 is that it has intergrated DTS decoding, something that Sybase/PCH/whatever had to pay a per-box license for.
Other than that, there is the relocated USB port, optical instead of copper digital output, and SATA drive support instead of IDE (although I believe it is still the IDE chipset with a SATA converter interfacing with the IDE controller.) Everything else about this is identical to the A-100.
So, unless you need any of the above, there is no reason to move from the A-100 to the A-110.
Now, as for lockups, I have had this A-110 for a little over 6 months and have had to power cycle it maybe 4 times. Locking up has never been a problem for me. The network features work as advertised and it will literally play every form of video you can throw at it, including being able to (usually) decode broken video files.
What are the problems with this? The interface sucks. It is horrible. Even navigating is something of a pain. There are themes, but none of them really help. It will play basically every audio file out there but it isn't very pretty at doing that. If you are using it just to play audio there are much better solutions out there. The remote is ugly and annoying (but the harmony interfaces with it well, search for Sybase in the Harmony DB.) The CPU isn't very powerful, so you will NEVER see flash support like you can get with boxee. There is always the possibility that netflix will work with it in the future, and Sybase claims that they are in talks with various providers of media, but don't count on it. The device is seen by a lot of people as catering to people who download video illegally (It even has a bittorrent client to grab files, although I don't use it)
In my opinion the benefits FAR outweigh the shortcomings. And there is a vibrant online community ( http://www.networkedmediatank.com/ ) that Sybase pulls ideas and bugs from when releasing firmware updates.
I need to proofread my posts a bit better, I have had this *A-100* for about 6 months, not A-110
One minor addition that is important to remember... it will not play anything with DRM. That means the latest windows media, iTunes fairplay stuff and any DVD with CSS on it. Not saying this couldn't change in the future with firmware updates but you shouldn't rely on this to replace your DVD player.
Sorry, I meant I've had the A-100 for a year, and it's been essentially flawless. Perhaps the A-100s have less problems than the A-110. I actually think I do see more issues in the forums for the A-110. So far the A-100 has been wonderful for me.
@Loban: true enough about the very basic music interface (I never could get playlists to work satisfactorily), but with something like Swisscenter, llink, [insert your favorite here]., you can get much nicer UIs for both movies and music, as well as a nice interface to streaming of Last.FM, Shoutcast, Flickr, Picasa, etc.
I've had the A100 for well over a year and like other posters have seen it just get more and more solid and more and more capable with every release.
Most impressive of all: even though the A110 has been out for a while, they continue to release firmware updates for the A100. I can think of a few firms that wouldn't do that (yes, I'm looking at you, SanDisk...)
I've been using mine for closing in on a year now (A-100 and A-110), and have a review up at meta cafe and youtube.
That remote does feel nice, but the button layout is amongst the worst I've seen. Play, stop paust, skip, fast forward...all the same size (tiny) and right next to each other. I programmed the functions into my Onkyo's remote and put the PH away.
That being said, I love mine. Use it every day to watch ripped DVDs and TV, Netflix and Hulu using PlayOn.
Marshall
The Real HT Info Podcast
Marshall
what about ripped BD's or HDDVD's? Does it play nicely streaming those w/o loss of audio (i.e - 7.1 surround) or video quality?
Yep, streamed across a wired network with the latest firmware, I get hd video and sound, no stuttering. It is worth noting that you won't get fancy menus or BDlive, just the core content (you have to select the appropriate files without the aid of the menu). Not a big dig if you're looking for the main feature (it'll be the biggest file), but can be a pain if you're looking for a particular extra. It's best to rip and rename for anything you'll be watching more than once.
how'd you get your popcorn to work with an onkyo remote? I have the 605 and couldn't figure it out...
kartick,
Do yourself a favor and get a Harmony 550. Not only are Harmonys (Harmonies?) amazing remotes, they work wonderfully with the PCH devices.
yea, i know about the harmony. but to be perfectly honest the onkyo remotes covers all my devices (tv, dvd player, reciever). so it was only after the popcorn came into the picture where a 2nd remote was needed. I feel it's really not worth the buy for me. maybe if i get more devices and the onkyo remote doesn't do it anymore...
Anyway to save the Subtitles on M2TS files ... i have had the PCH100 for a year or so .. but i cant get my bluray backups to keep the subtitles .. Its annoying when watching foreign or movies like Kill Bill ... i dont convert the M2TS files at all just use ANYDVD and use the main movie file ..
Any ideas ?
Thanks
For the onkyo remote (706), I didn't use the presets, but rather, the learning functionality to map the PH remotes functions one by one.
As for Blu-ray subs, that's a great point. I haven't played around with them much, and Kill Bill is one of my favorites. Maybe this is one area where a $250 massively multi-format player isn't as capable as a $250 single purpose device, but something to keep in mind.
Marshall
The Real HT Info Podcast
PlayOn will work with Popcorn Hour A-110?
Does application see PH A-110 as a HP Mediasmart or Xbox360/PS3?
Or is there support for the PH A-110 built in?
Loban - Any guides or advice out there for using NFS on a Mac? I have to browse to my network media all the time, and it would be nice to setup shortcuts.
My media is on a WD External drive connected to my MacBook Pro.
Seth,
I use NFS with my mac and popcorn hour... see here:
http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=10160
I have had an A-110 sent November hooked up HDMI to our Panasonic TH-42PZ80 PDP in the bedroom and "for the price" it can't be beat. Yes the interface is pretty spartan but for movies you can use one of the available jukebox programs and create a pretty functional system. My wife has no problems using it either with or without the jukebox software. My only complaint at this point is that it can't mount multiple shares. This is a problem in my setup as my movie collection is spread across three Linksys NAS200s. So what I have to do is setup an individual Jukebox for each NAS as a workaround. I am considering getting another one for the main system downstairs but for that I want a unified jukebox so the multiple share issue needs to be addressed first.
Ben, do test it with a Jukebox program like Yet Another Movie Jukebox or MovieFlow as it may address some of the shortcomings of the standard interface.
How does it work with Divx/Xvid video? Does it have support (IDX, SUB, SRT formats?)
from the product page:
"Subtitle formats : SRT, SMI, SUB, SSA"
Marshall
The Real HT Info Podcast
Just reiterating what others have said. But . . .
I have been using the PCH A-100 for about 8 months, and it is fantastic.
I originally intended to stream all my movies via ethernet to my Xbox 360, but it is a little too picky about what audio/video CoDecs it will support, and it won't read USB-attached NTFS drives (am I the only one who thinks I've woken up in crazy-world on this issue?)
So, the Popcorn Hour makes me very happy. I added a hard drive to it for the HD movie files, and stream all my DVD rips from the basement PC. Have not found a file yet that it won't play, and it scales the lower-res movies on a 1080p TV well enough to make me misty-eyed. Even marginal .avi files look good through this thing.
The extraneous web apps are not my bag, and they need more content, but for overall bang for the buck, the Popcorn Hour is the best tech thing I've bought in a long time.
I've been enjoying MKVs on my A-110 since September now, it's a great device. And it had several firmware updates, good to know they dev team is always improving it.
I also have it hooked up to Linksys powerline adapters that connects it to a NAS in the basement. 720p works well over powerline, 1080p not so much... I use external USB drives for those.
Fantastic device.
Not mentioned here but also supports full losless HD audio passthrough (DTS HD MA, Dolby TrueHD) via its HDMI 1.3 output.
Supurb for 1080p Blu Ray rips over a home network.
I've had an A-110 for a couple months now, and the comments above about the lockups and daily resets are unfortunately true (and yes I have the latest firmware). I had read glowing reviews and had high expectations, but have had nothing but frustration with all the bugs and inconsistency. The great potential of the device makes this all the more frustrating.
Read through the NMT forums and you'll find plenty of people having the same problems. If you're looking for a consistent, reliable device to play HD content...you likely won't get it with a PCH. It does the job, but makes you suffer through the process. If I had to do it over again, I'd give it another year and wait for the next model to see if they've hammered out all the problems. Great concept, but still not ready for prime time.
In the 3 months I've had mine, I can count on 1 hand the number of times I've had it freeze up (and I use it daily).
I'm not saying you don't experience lock ups, but I would guess that you got a bad unit. If I were you I'd try to return it and get another one. The PCH is just too awesome to not be in love with. At the very least I'd wish that you wouldn't try to dissuade anyone else from trying one out just because you happened to get a bad unit.
As I posted a little bit above, I have a feeling there are more issues with the A-110. That seems to be the case just looking around the forum. I've had my A-100 for a while now and it's been amazing.
@mrhand
i had troubles in the first week and i got really frustrated. Now I stopped using the WLAN and I use the internal hard drive most of the time. The external one very seldom. Since 14 days I did not have one reset or one crash. I also thought at first I had the faulty version. BUT I guess it has something to do with a) external unsuported USB disks or b) the wlan or c) (my guess) the combination of the two.
I gave support a chance and must say they replied really really fast. And I am now a Cannot live without it anymore PCH Fan
Feel free to read this thread...which is just one of many:
http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=14231&page=1
If I got a "bad unit," then there are certainly a lot of other people with the exact same issues that got the same. After reading through the NMT forums for the last couple weeks, it's obvious that there are a lot of bad units out there.
I have no interest in bashing for no reason. I'm simply relaying my experience. And if I thought my experience was an exception, I would say so. But the volume of people with the exact same problems I've had over at the NMT forums is significant enough to lead me to conclude that the sub-standard performance of my unit is not a rare exception.
Yes, I have grown weary of users there glossing over my problems as well. If the software isn't buggy, then one can only conclude that the manufacturer is not doing robust QA on the hardware they are putting out and defective units are getting through.
You should get the plastic wrap off the front side.
Will Boxee run on a PCH? If it doesn't, these two companies should realy get together as both would benefit greatly.
No, the PCH cannot support flash content (cpu isn't powerful enough) and since it is a different processor it would require a SUBSTANTIAL rewrite of code that the boxee team doesn't have time to mess with.
You will probably see a boxee-based network media player in the next 6 months. Or you can just get a Mac Mini.
I love my PCH A110. It has relegated my 360 to games only and PS3 to Blu-ray only. Everything else (which is most) is through my PCN.
That along with PlayOn Media Server got me to cancel my cable service and save $100 a month.
can I stream a .vob from my media center pc to this?