Popbox V8

I have waxed lyrical about the Popcorn Hour range of players before, but they're all too large to carry on extended holiday or business trips. I went to go buy a Popcorn Hour A-400, and spotted the Popbox V8, a small media player which, upon testing, delivers very good video playback performance and relatively good stability in a small, compact package.

 

And the codec support / playback performance is as good / great as its bigger brothers. Small enough to travel with, will be testing it out in the field next week. I suspect it will do quite well.

Popcorn Hour A-400

I've always been a fan of the Popcorn Hour devices, ever since Geoff Rehmet mentioned them to me and said these look awesome. I ordered the Popcorn Hour A-110, and when it was time to replace it, bought the C-200 (original product page) and then the A-200 (original product page). Nice devices, good physical build quality but very ropy software builds, which improved over time.

 

My C-200 died, and the A-400, I had hoped, would get around the rough beginnings of previous devices. I had skipped the A-300, having no need of a media player. While the interface is prettier than the previous generations, the software bugs peek through as soon as you do anything other than playback media. And the new video-wall style interface is notoriously buggy. It has crashed and corrupted itself literally every day I've tried to use it; I've removed my photo collection to see if that makes a difference, which I suspect it will - ok, maybe these things are not built for 120GB photo collections.

 

The device has significantly more horsepower while navigating than its predecessors, and it chews through MKV playback. Also, the picture quality is notably better than the previous units, so I'm quite happy with the raw performance. But the video wall interface needs a lot of work still, in its DB maintenance / generation.

 

I don't regret buying it (my old unit packed up), and it does what its supposed to do. I'm just annoyed that I have to fight with it to enable the "new" features. Overall, a worthy buy which does what it promises, but still with some rough edges.

 

PS. For raw video performance and network speed (even at 100Mbps), it still kicks the Apple TV's butt.

Popcorn Hour A200 metal case

 

The Popcorn Hour A200 is a great device; its smaller and cheaper than the C200, with no sacrifice in functionality. I just didn't like its cheapish plastic case. It worked perfectly, but looked very unimpressive compared to both the C200 and the A110. Popcorn Hour France sells a metal replacement unit, which I bought and tried out - it works exactly as advertised, and makes the device look more solid.

 

Doesn't play any differently of course, but it is a nice accessory. Recommended!

Popcorn Hour A-200

A while back, I bought a Popcorn Hour C-200, which is a very fancy (and big) media player.

Fast forward to a new house, another TV (32" Sony BX300), and a requirement for another media player. My desired device was the Popcorn Hour A-200, and first contact with the local agents was that the device would be R4500! That was a bit steep, so I decided to go buy a Mede8er, which is actually a cool device; its better than the Popcorn Hour in that the interface is cleaner / easier to use, the preview features are awesome (compared to the lack thereof on the PCH), and the device is nice and small.

Unfortunately, it irritated my wife to no end that the user interface was different, and there was a different mechanism to view the same content as the C-200. It also didn't help that it suffered to playback some really good quality large MKV's across a gigabit network. I phoned the local agents again, and discover they had made a mistake with the price of the device, and it would only be R2100, which is what was paid for the Mede8er; I promptly sold the old device and bought the new one.

There isn't much to say, other than it does the same job as its bigger brother, in a much smaller form factor. And the wife is happy too :-)

 

PS

 

My home network is a gigabit Ethernet network, with Apple Airport Extreme base stations for local access, and wired access to a MacBook Pro which has a Drobo connected to it via Firewire 800 for storage. A desktop PC running pfsense protects the environment. It works quite well.

 

PPS

 

The new TV (46" Sony EX700) is being installed tomorrow. Watch this space for a review!

Popcorn Hour C200

I used to use a Popcorn Hour A110 as a media playback device at home. It worked well, but when the upgraded C200 was announced, I had to have it; there was no rational reason or justification.

Well, I got it, and its even more awesome than the old one; its just a lot bigger. Think old-school video machine! Pity I'm watching it on my old rubbish TV; time to get an LED/LCD.

PS. While I was looking at this, I also investigated a Mede8er. It looks pretty cool, but I'm more confident in the development and codec roadmap of the Popcorn Hour team.