Popcorn hour Media Player - good little unit..!!

iv-tecman

iv-tecman

iv-tecman

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I put a pre-order in for a popcorn player, had no idea how to use it, but I’d heard it could be used as a steaming media box and plays just about any media format known. Well, yesterday it arrived and this is a very impressive unit.

You get a rather small box with HDMI, Component and audio out sockets, a network port and two USB sockets, more then enough connectivity. It took me, a total novice with no idea about media services or devices like this 25 minutes to plug the unit in, set the HDTV res, download the new firmware and then install Twonkyvision to my home PC, setup a my external HDD with all my movies via Firewire to my PC, let twonky search for the device and media on my PC, and then connect the popcorn hour to the server and watch movies…

An absolute amazing bit of kit, no more lugging my PC downstairs to watch my collection of DVIX movies….. I’m in the process of converting all my DVD’s etc to HDD and this is how digital home cinema is meant to be….. I’m well impressed..

I’ve now heard the devices are now more readily available, so if you’ve got a spare £125 as this is what it costs when shipped and converted to ££, well recommended….

Its easy, quick and makes home cinema a lot of fun, I even like the remote… Best £125 I’ve spent in a while, but be warned, the device is a work in progress, so I’ve been told to keep on top of firmware updates, as new features are being added all the time..

Youtube on the device was painful as well, can you use USB keyboards with it? Not tried that, hmm… Have to give that a go later on..

http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/
 
Mine's still at the DHL depot. Glad you're liking it so far.

Spec-wise, it looks great. Good selection of sockets and a wide selection of supported codecs. The only downside is that it only takes PATA IDE hard-drives. I had to buy a 750GB rather than a 1TB drive. :p
 
Yep, I was a little disappointed with the internal HDD connector, SATA would have been a better choice, still I’ve yet to install a HDD into my unit.

Would the unit need some sort of cooling if I installed a 750GB HDD? Drives can run a little hot, and the unit has no internal cooling fans.

Thinking of getting a NAS box, dunno which one to go for, and as for XBOX doing the same, the PCH is a lot quieter..!! lol
 
The only thing with the PCH is that its restricted to L4.1/L5.1 material. This cant be regarded as too much of a negative as pretty much any standalone is going to have the same restrictions for playback of material but anyone trying to play back early encoded material and even some recent stuff of which the encoder thinks that more than 4 reference frames is a good thing, the PCH wont play it back. Speaking strictly on x264/mkv type material here as of course any Blu-Ray/HD DVD will conform to L4.1/L5.1 profiles.
 
If this thing ran SABnzbd+ on it I'd buy one in a heartbeat. Waiting for a UK distributor though, don't want to take a VAT/duty gamble.
 
Caged said:
If this thing ran SABnzbd+ on it I'd buy one in a heartbeat. Waiting for a UK distributor though, don't want to take a VAT/duty gamble.
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You'll probably find buying direct and paying the duty is cheaper than buying from the UK. £133 (£113 for the box + P&P, £20 for duty) is far cheaper than I've seen it advertised on European distributor websites.
 
Tunney said:
You'll probably find buying direct and paying the duty is cheaper than buying from the UK. £133 (£113 for the box + P&P, £20 for duty) is far cheaper than I've seen it advertised on European distributor websites.
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I completely agree. I recently pre-ordered one of these. Still waiting for the shipping email. There's tons of info about this unit on the AVForums, and in my opinion, this unit comes out best from a price-performance perspective.

You don't actually need an internal disk, because it's designed primarily to stream either from attached storage or across a network. My PC will become my NAS :)

My whole DVD collection, plus Hi Def stuff (all the AVCHD camcorder stuff of my daughter) plus all of my music will be streaming through this little beauty into my living room. Fantastic.

Still, if the 360 did HiDef, I wouldn't need one, but for £130, I can't really complain.
 
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any photos ?

particularly of the user interface, One of the kills of units like this in the past is that the interface looks like something belonging to an amstrad (like the netgear EV8000 thing)
 
Shimmyhill said:
I ordered one of these, does the power supply need an adaptor at all ?
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You can use a standard PC kettle type lead to power it, the power supply is external, and you can just change the lead for a UK one.. Simple, no worries about it working, one thing I did forget to mention...

The instructions are a tad thin on the ground, so best place to go its forums for help...

Ooh.. And I got a 2.5 drive kicking around, so got a 2.5 / 3.5 adaptor and nice small quite hdd in their now, perfect for a few bits n bobs...

It is better to get some type of streaming media server, or use SMB or NFS to steam movies off.. Each evening, I sit down, and watch a movie from streaming media, it really is the best gadget I've ever purchased...
 
MrLOL said:
any photos ?

particularly of the user interface, One of the kills of units like this in the past is that the interface looks like something belonging to an amstrad (like the netgear EV8000 thing)
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Hmm... I can get something, but the interface is simple and easy to use. It looks fine... The device is nice and small, sits under my TV and doesn't look out of place..

I'll get a picture or two so as you can take a look....
 
Shimmyhill said:
I was talking about the potential of this this afternoon with a mate, glad to know it works :) :)
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Yep, unlike my grammar which is appalling..!! lol ;):p

Its quiet, not quite, and its there, and not their.!! Speed typo.!!

Still, anyhow it works just fine. ebay, small adaptor for a few quid, and you're all set. Oh and USB CD/DVD or even USB Keyboard, even wireless ones work fine...
 
Right, some pictures…

This is just the basic interface, you can I’m told change this, but I’ve not worked it out yet. It looks fine to me, so I’ll leave it alone.

Its very simple, it lists your movies etc and its just a case of using the remote to navigate around.

Pictures aren’t the best, but it gives an idea….. The box with the red lights is the player, hard to make it out, its sat on top of my xbox. The green lights at the back is in fact my wireless router, the popcorn isn't wireless, so you need to hook up via RJ45. I stream across the network using wireless 54mbit. I'm amazed HD streamed so nicely on wireless, it worked just fine..!!

I’m a total novice with home cinema so my set up might not be in the same league as some of you lot, but my Panasonic 42” Plasma with a HD movie looks excellent, and streams nicely down my network to my Pop Corn player… Its using HDMI, so its audio and video all down the same cable, to my Panasonic 5.1 system....


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Youtube and torrent work just fine, you need a keyboard for this mind. Its not easy to enter searches with the remote, wireless keyboard does the trick nicely.
 
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