PopcornHour's latest C-200 media box is Blu-ray (& anything else) ready

The followup to the popular PopcornHour media streamer series has finally been announced, and the list of features makes it look worth the wait. Revealed in a post on the Networked Media Tank forums the C-200 contains an upgraded Sigma SMP8643 667 Mhz processor, HDMI 1.3 out, two SATA slots, a drive bay for mounting your own HDD, DVD or even Blu-ray drive (requires internal HDD or 1GB USB stick) and supports a list of networking standards, codecs and containers far too long to recount here. At first glance, only DivX jumps out as missing from the list, have a look at the forum posting and let us know if you spot. Of course, there's already a video unboxing available, seen after the break (along with the copied list of specs) or check out the full Google translated early hands on impressions from HomeTheater.co.il. The most pressing questions of when will these be available and for how much, will have to be answered at another time.

[Via HomeTheater.co.il & Geek Tonic]

Specification

Connectivity

Bonjour
UPnP SSDP
UPnP AV
Windows Media Connect
Windows Media Player NSS
Samba
NFS
Media servers: myiHome, myiHomeLite, myiHomeMS (UPnP), MSP Portal
Third party media servers: WizD, SwissCenter, Llink, GB-PVR
BitTorrent P2P
Usenet downloader
NAS access: SMB, NFS, FTP

Web services

Video: YouTube, Vuze, Revision 3, Videocast, CNET TV, Mediafly, Veoh, Mevio, Bliptv, Break Podcast, CBS Evening News, CNN Anderson Cooper 360 Daily, CNN The Larry King Podcast, NBC Today Show, The CNN Daily, CNN In Case You Missed It, NBC Nightly News, NBC Meet The Press, CBS Face the Nation, Podfinder UK
Audio: Jamendo, iPodcast, BBC Podcast, Indiefeed, CNN News, ABC News
Photo: Flickr Photo, Picasaweb Photo, Pikeo, 23
RSS feed: Yahoo! Weather, NMT Forum, Bloglines, Cinecast, MSNBC News, Traffice Condition, Yahoo! Traffic Alerts, Yahoo! News, Weather Bug
Peer-to-peer TV: SayaTV
Internet Radio: Radio box, Live365 Radio

Media files supported

Video containers:
MPEG1/2/4 Elementary (M1V, M2V, M4V)
MPEG1/2 PS (M2P, MPG, DAT, VOB)
MPEG2 Transport Stream (TS, TP, TRP, M2T, M2TS, MTS)
AVI, ASF, WMV
Matroska (MKV)
MOV (H.264), MP4, RMP4

Video decoder:
XVID SD/HD
MPEG-1
MPEG-2 MP@HL
MPEG-4.2 ASP@L5, 720p, 1-point GMC
MPEG-4.10 (H.264)
BP@L3
MP@L4.0
HP@L4.0
HP@L4.1
WMV9
MP@HL
SMPTE 421M (VC-1)
MP@HL
AP@L3

Audio containers:
AAC, M4A
MPEG audio (MP1, MP2, MP3, MPA)
WAV
WMA
FLAC
OGG

Audio decoder:
Dolby Digital
DTS
WMA, WMA Pro
MPEG-1 Layer 1, 2, 3
MPEG-4 AAC-LC
MPEG-4 HE-AAC
MPEG-4 BSAC
LPCM
FLAC
Vorbis

Audio pass-through:
DTS, DTS-HD HR, DTS-HD MA
Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD

Other formats:
ISO, IFO navigation
Rich Object Based Interactive Graphics
AVCHD navigation
Blu-ray ready (requires addition of compatible BD-ROM and at least 1GB USB stick or internal HDD)

Photo formats:
JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF

Subtitle formats:
SRT, MicroDVD SUB, SSA, SUB/IDX

DRM
Cardea DRM (WMDRM-ND)
Janus DRM (WMDRM-PD)

Chipset
Sigma Designs SMP8643, 667MHz CPU with floating point coprocessor.
Memory
512MB DDR2 DRAM, 256MB NAND Flash

Audio/Video outputs
HDMI v1.3a with CEC, 36bpp deep color, 12-bit xvYCC processing and HDCP 1.2 content protection
Component Video
S-Video
Composite Video
Stereo Analog Audio
S/PDIF Optical and Coaxial Digital Audio

Other Interface
192x64 dots white text on blue background LCD display, with software adjustable brightness and power off
Power button with standby, reset and full power down
2x USB 2.0 host at the front
2x USB 2.0 host at the back
1x USB 2.0 internal
2x SATA (one occupied by HDD tray)
3.5" HDD tray
Internal mounting for 2.5" HDD
2.4GHz RF Remote Control
Infra-Red Remote Control port (Infra-Red Remote Control optional)

Network
Ethernet 10/100/1000
miniPCI MII interface for 11n WiFi card (optional)

Power
100~240V AC, 50~60 Hz, max 2.5A
typical: 13 W (no additional device installed/attached)
maximum: 70 W

Dimension
Width x Depth x Height : 425mm x 290mm x 80mm (16.73" x 11.42" x 3.14")

Weight
3.7kg (8.3 lbs)

Package Content
Popcorn Hour C-200 (HDD not included)

IEC 60320 C13 power cord
1.5M length HDMI cable
RF Remote Control with 2 "AAA" batteries
Quick start guide

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 16th 2009 4:30PM]

No thanks. I've had my A110 for about a month, have a PS3 for BD playback, rip BDs & HDDVDs to stream through it. I do wish it had a fan since it's very hot (even tith the 1TB WD Green drive inside).

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 16th 2009 7:05PM]

Well, now users of current Popcorn Hour models know what happened to all the engineering support -- they've been off working on this. I guess the A-100 and A-110 are as close to the promised spec as they ever will be. If we want MKV trickplay, we'll have to buy the new box, or someone else's.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 16th 2009 8:05PM]

what is mkv trickplay?

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 16th 2009 9:13PM]

Sorry: fast forward, rewind, pause, slomo, etc.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 16th 2009 9:17PM]

MKV is a file format for HD. Due to file compression, moving around in the video stream at a rate and direction other-than-normal-play in HD files is a bit difficult. They promised it would work some time ago, but it still doesn't. Not being able to rewind (some) HD TV shows or movies is annoying.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 17th 2009 10:57AM]

I just use the left and right directional buttons to move forward or back in 30 second increments - either 30 seconds at once or hold it down and watch it count up/down in 30 second intervals and when i'm forward/reverse about how far i want I let it go. You don't 'see' the movie when doing this real-time but that's not a big deal. I also like the 'percentage' jumps too.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 16th 2009 9:58PM]

Not having wireless connectivity out of the box is very disappointing.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 17th 2009 3:04AM]

It does, you just need to buy the optional wireless n card. Makes sense; I personally don't want that overhead on my wireless network and would rather run some cat5/6 cable. Also, not everyone has wireless/ it makes it cheaper..

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 17th 2009 9:12AM]

For more info on HD Radio check out Http://www.hdradiotuner.org

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 17th 2009 12:35PM]

Not having any video / audio inputs of any sort nor recording capability is a killer for me.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 17th 2009 10:57AM]

In case you haven't checked out thee new PCH Site .. It will be $299

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 17th 2009 12:50PM]

I have an A-110 (and PS3), only thing here I actually want is the gigabit ethernet. I only watch from the local harddrive, so really it's just getting things on the box faster.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 17th 2009 5:31PM]

Does this allow you to play back bluray rips to ISO and then playback the uncompressed audio?
I have such a hard time ripping bluray and getting it to playback on my PS3 via tversity even without uncompressed audio. If it could play back ISO it seems like that would simplify things.

IF so I would go for this over my PS3 with tversity.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 17th 2009 7:24PM]

So far no answer .. But with the older models you can play back Bluray backups using the main .M2TS file and get perfect picture and HD audio no problem .. no tversity needed just use Slysoft anydvd HD and rip to a folder and pull out the largest stream .. I been doing that with my PCH A-100 for about a year or so

But i love like BD .ISO support for menus etc

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 17th 2009 7:37PM]

I'd really like this to be a Media Center extender!

I have a linksys DVD player extender, and it works super well for all kinds of HD content on my wired home network -- including fast forward, rewind, etc.

Media Center also now natively supports Netflix, too.

I think all the hardware support in this box would work for Extender... wish they'd add that so I could have the nice Media Center UI with Blu-Ray playback.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 17th 2009 8:16PM]

Biggest issue with being a Media extender would be extra licensing costs. I agree it would be great. I use my 360 atm as an extender and whilst it does a great job, its quite noisy and gets very hot, not to mention power hungry. Would love a simple all in one box that does BD disc playback, MKV & Divx as well as my recording via Vista media centre. Effectively if this does a good job at playing back retail BD discs and could playback DVR-MS files(with decent skip/fast-foward & rewind) this could take over from my PS3 & 360. TIme will tell i guess.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 18th 2009 12:12AM]

No Hulu? :\