Popcorn Hour A110 - user review

JohnDigital

I picked up my PCH at the beginning fop January and have had ample time to exercise the unit. I must say I’ve been incredibly impressed from the outset. It has played flawlessly every file type that I have thrown at it.

I won’t list the spec here as you can just as easily check it on the manufacturer’s site, but essentially it can handle virtually every video and audio format that you care to mention, and with regular firmware upgrades available that the box will install itself over its internet connection (with a few clicks of the remote by you) it should be well future proofed.

Spec:
http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/index.php?pluginoption=catalog&task=info&item_id=6&main_id=0&category_id=

My set up is a SD 32” Philips 100hz Widescreen, rather than a HDTV which the unit is really designed for. A certain drawback of the A110 with regard to SD televisions in Ireland is that the unit does not have Scart, and does not anyway output RGB over Scart so you can’t even use an adapter cable. So on an SD TV your choices are limited to composite video or S-Video (with the latter being by far the best). Even on my TV the picture quality is fantastic, just as good in appearance as DVD. I just need a good excuse now to ditch the old telly for a full 1080p to make the most of it

Many moons ago had the foresight to install my DSL Router beside my TV thinking that something like this was going to become a reality. The unit plugs directly into the router and sets itself up as a resource on your home network. I’ve two computers connecting to the router over WIFI and after setting up a few simple shares all 3 can communicate with each other. You can add a specific WIFI component to make the unit WIFI in itself if your router is not near the TV – so don’t worry.

The machine ships from the factory with no HD installed, but many retailers have the option of buying it with a drive installed by them, but it will work equally as well streaming content from your PC, Mac or network attached storage (NAS) – including content from your iTunes library. Alternatively you can just as effectively use a USB pen drive or USB external HD.

I opted for a WD 500Gb GreenPower 3.5” SATA drive which runs very cool and virtually silently (far quieter than my Sky+ I might add). With the drive installed it opens up more opportunities for you though as it can function as a NAS in itself for storage of anything you wish, and with the drive installed you can use it as BitTorrent peer-to-peer downloader – eliminating the need to leave a PC running. With the drive installed you can also access Internet TV services such as SayaTV, Shoutcast Radio and a host of Video/audio content like YouTube, Vuse, Videocast, PodfinderUK etc.

The unit itself has a rather uninspiring user interface, but there are dozens of community generated interfaces that you can add to the system for video, audio and image libraries. Most of them are geared for HD displays, so you need to do quite a lot of re-coding do get them to work on an SDTV if someone else has not already redone a version for SD. Most popular is YAMJ – which can be further enhanced by adding new skins that are available through the community website networkmediatank.com.

I’m running YAMJ with the robinjexcal SD skin (well a version of it that a guy in Germany has further developed for SD displays).

Stock PCH Interface


YAMJ Video Index with robinjexcal skin


YAMJ Video details page with robinjexcal skin


If like me you were new to home networking, set up time from opening the box to actually streaming something from one of your other devices is probably around an hour. If you know what you’re doing formatting the HD and installing the latest firmware takes about 30 mins and then just a few minutes to set up the network shares. The instructions that ship with the machine are brief, to say the least, but a quick Google will answer any set-up related issues that you might run into.

I really love my latest toy; I’d give it an 8/10, loosing just 1 point for not having RGB over Scart and the other for the poor documentation. If I had a HD TV it would be 9/10.

In terms of buying one, currently buying from the UK is cheapest way as far as I could discover. Mine cost me £267.50 (€302.00) including the hard disc and postage from www.ripcaster.co.uk. European sellers retailing in Euro are more expensive and shipping from somewhere like Spain will cost more than from UK. You can buy directly from the US where it retails at $215 – but you’re almost certainly going to get landed with duty and vat which will bring the price a bit over that of buying in the UK. If you’re heading to the States you could always bring yourself back one on the plane – this would be by far the cheapest way to land one in Ireland.

BrookieD

Hi
this seems to be just what i am loking for. I have a Home media 1tb drive from iomega and need a player with a slick interface. Can i ask is it possible to set up a kids folder so all there films reside in here? or at least a filter?

JohnDigital

Yep, almost all the skins catalogue content by genre. This skin starts up with showing all movies sorted alphabetically but there is a family genre where all the kids stuff gets sorted. You could easily set it up to start with the family section showing first.

Any content that you don’t want the kids accessing can be saved in a different location on the PCH where it is not picked up by the movie jukebox, or you can leave that content saved on a separate resource like your PC and stream it from there. On them machine there are no parental controls to filter by certificate as such.

MediaTank

Nice review. Did you see these threads http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055249986 and http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055353512

JohnDigital

Yep, saw those threads MediaTank, cheers.

cubix

JD can you tell me what your PSU is rated at. Some of the newer supplies have a broad range of volts ie: 110-240 thus doing away with the need for converters if buying an A110 in the US

Cheers

Kensington

Nice review - could you tell me where you downloaded the Standard Definition optimised skin from? I've installed the YAMJ skin and tried (unsucessfully) to have it fit nicely on my SD TV . It keeps rendering in HD resolution so most of it gets cut off from the screen.

JohnDigital

@ Cibix, its 100-240v rated, DC Output is 12v 3.3A (max 40W). It came shipped with a UK/Irish 3 pin plug, but I’m not sure if it was retailer or wholesaler that swapped that out. The transformer itself has one of those 3 pin connectors like you would find on a kettle - so really common and easy to get hold of if you don’t just want to slap a 3 pin plug on yourself to replace a US one.

@ Kensington - have you tried the SD Skin that is part of the YAMJ?

To get it to work you need to do the following:

In the moviejukebox.properties file, change the parameter for the skin from "(default)" to "SD"

From this: mjb.skin.dir=./skins/(Default)

To this: mjb.skin.dir=./skins/SD

Re-run YAMJ again and then in the root of your PCH where you placed the index.htm, rename this to index_sd.htm. This is the bit that most people miss as it’s not clearly stated that you need to do that. If you leave it as index.htm the machine tries to render the skin back up for a HD display.

This will get the standard SD skin working for you, but there are a few bugs in it. Send me your email by PM and I will send you over the modded version that I got from that guy, (it’s not posted on the net yet so I can’t send you a link).

When you get that, place it in the Skins folder on your PC along with the other skins, and then edit the moviejukebox.parameters to mjb.skin.dir=./skins/robinsjexcal-sd_mod and re-run YAMJ.

cubix

Cheers for that JD;). On the "YAMJ Video" screen shot you put up a few posts back of the "Bank Job" where does the A110 get its info of the movie to put on the screen. Was it already on original source you got the movie from?. The reason I ask is because I will be playing divx and would be a nice feature

Cubix

MediaTank

cubix wrote: »

Cheers for that JD;). On the "YAMJ Video" screen shot you put up a few posts back of the "Bank Job" where does the A110 get its info of the movie to put on the screen. Was it already on original source you got the movie from?. The reason I ask is because I will be playing divx and would be a nice feature

Cubix

That's the robinsjexcal skin, and it downloads fan art from fanart.org I believe. I should also add that not all movies have fan art available, in which case it uses a default background, but you can always substitute your own. You also need to install MediaInfo from souceforge to get the technical details (container, codec, sound etc.) displayed, though I don't believe that skin uses them but the default one does.

MT

JohnDigital

It’s actually the plugins that come with YAMJ that are responsible for most of the info, but the skins give you control over how much detail you want included, the type of cover art and fan art to use etc.

If the movie content came from a torrent and has an .nfo file with it, lots of the info is contained in there already. The key part it needs is the IMDb film number, so it checks for an .nfo file first.

Basically it analyzes your movie files in order to extract information like: year, language, subtitles, container, part, fps, audio and video codecs. Other movie and television information like, director, rating, etc. are collected using various plugins for online databases such as IMDb, TheMovieDB, TheTVDB, Allocine, FilmAffinity, FilmWeb.

If you want to use your own fanart or cover images you can set up your own .nfo file for any movie and fill in the details in there, if it finds info in the .nfo it uses that and won’t go to the internet to find more, this gives you full control over what you want on screen.

It takes literally seconds for YAMJ to poll all the info and compile the information. It rocks.

cubix

Thanks for that, will have to check more into that

livEwirE

Great Review!!! Have a few questions which I'd appreciate the answers on please JohnDigital.

Can I connect a SATA USB drive externally and copy the data from it to the internal SATA drive?

Can I use my own 54mb wireless USB adaptor to stream my divx movies to this device and will it work ok? My router is a BT Voyager 2100 54MB so I've have been advised that it may be far too slow

Does the PCH have a power button that you can turn off? Have read online that it only has a reset button so to power the device off you have to unplug it completely.

I've read that the interface can be sluggish when browsing menus etc. How do you find it?

What is audio playback like it general and are file names truncated?

the_syco

livEwirE wrote: »

Can I connect a SATA USB drive externally and copy the data from it to the internal SATA drive?

Look into WD's device, if you already have an external USB drive?

JohnDigital: how much was shipping, and was the 500GB an option, or did you buy it separately?

MediaTank

livEwirE wrote: »

Great Review!!! Have a few questions which I'd appreciate the answers on please JohnDigital.

Can I connect a SATA USB drive externally and copy the data from it to the internal SATA drive?

Can I use my own 54mb wireless USB adaptor to stream my divx movies to this device and will it work ok? My router is a BT Voyager 2100 54MB so I've have been advised that it may be far too slow

Does the PCH have a power button that you can turn off? Have read online that it only has a reset button so to power the device off you have to unplug it completely.

I've read that the interface can be sluggish when browsing menus etc. How do you find it?

What is audio playback like it general and are file names truncated?

I'm not JohnDigital but am very familiar with this device.

Yes you can connect a drive via USB.

There is no wireless support in the device, it's intended for wired network connections. However you can buy a USB wireless adaptor for it and then stream. Some users have reported problems with the adapter.

You power it down with the remote, there is no 'hard' power button. Other NMT devices such as the iSTAR do have this feature.

Without an internal hard drive, browsing menus etc. is a little slow. However, most users install a jukebox on it bypassing the default interface and replacing it with a faster HTML one.

I don't use it for audio playback, so can't comment on that.

MT

JohnDigital

@livEwirE Copying from USB external drive to internal drive is really easy, transfer is as fast as moving files from the external drive to your PC. You don’t have to use an internal drive at all; your external will work just as well. There are USB ports on front and rear of the device so you can leave it connected out of sight easily.

Streaming over Wi-Fi would probably be ok for DIVX content, but any full HD and it will struggle. Many people have reported problems with the Wi-Fi adapter that popcorn hour sell, and others have found that it will only work with certain specific other brands. Everyone recommends that Ethernet is the best way if you can, alternatively you can use another router in bridged mode and connect that to the PCH via Ethernet. Many reports of this being a stable solution.

Power on off rocker switch, yep that’s standard on the machines now. It’s a recent addition that’s why you have see reports of them not having one.

Sluggish interface, nope not that I’ve noticed and I’ve got about 50 movies on it at the moment.

Audio playback, not any issues that I’ve noticed really. It does seem to produce some more bass that I’d like, but I just adjust that down on the TV and everything is sweet. I don’t have it connected to a surround sound system, just straight to the TV so I’ve only experienced stereo but I’ve read the user forum extensively and I’ve not seen anyone reporting issues.

File names, in the standard menu it shows about 20 characters per title, but when you move the cursor on to the titles they scroll so you can see everything including the file type (.avi etc).

@ the_syco - UPS from UK was £14.50, ripcaster knocked £10 off, originally they quoted £24.50 but I pointed out that others were cheaper. Base price of the machine was £209, HD was £44 (fitted) and shipping £14.50 = £267.50

MediaTank

JohnDigital wrote: »

@ the_syco - UPS from UK was £14.50, ripcaster knocked £10 off, originally they quoted £24.50 but I pointed out that others were cheaper. Base price of the machine was £209, HD was £44 (fitted) and shipping £14.50 = £267.50

Ouch, expensive.

JohnDigital

Price wasnt too bad really, I did extensive research on where to get it.

Places with no stock were quoting cheaper but didn't expect stock until the end of Jan, and I was mad to get hold of one (after you pointed me the right direction ) Buying from the USA site, the units ship from China so you have to contend with 13.9% duty and 21.5% VAT. Cheapest way for someone to get one is from a US reseller or buying themselves in USA.

Here were the prices at the time as I found them. I see some prices have gone up since then.

livEwirE

I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions JohnDigital - VERY informative:D

allybhoy

I have one of these aswell and have to say its the bee's knees. I have a 1Tb drive in it and have roughly 200movies on it, 15% being HD MKV's (growing daily) aswell as dozens of complete series of tv shows. It does a whole lot more besides, like i can use my N95 to control it like a remote, i can also stream music and mp3's from it onto my phone, although i havnt figured out how to stream video yet. I can also stream content from my ps3 and xbox onto it, but annoyingly not the other way around! I have just the standard menu interface and it works perfect although i do like the look of that skin john has, Might look into upgrading!

@John
Did you upload the skin using FTP? Is it handy enough?
Any chance you could send us a linky?

JohnDigital

Here's where to download YAMJ http://code.google.com/p/moviejukebox/

Here's the RobinsjExcal Skin for YAMJ http://omertron.com/pch/node/20 I suggest you get YAMJ installed and working before you try to add a different skin.

If you’re looking for a version of RobinsjExcal Skin for a PAL SD Widescreen PM me your email and I will forward you a copy that I was given by another user that works really well. The SD version that is contained in the build linked above works - but it’s got a few bugs that the version I now have has ironed out.

I installed mine over an SMB share rather than FTP, but either should be fine. I suggest you read up on http://code.google.com/p/moviejukebox/w/list and the skins section of http://www.networkedmediatank.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=34 as the installation of both can be a bit tricky to get your head around, the instructions are not as clear as they could be.

MediaTank

allybhoy wrote: »

I
Did you upload the skin using FTP? Is it handy enough?
Any chance you could send us a linky?

You need to download the jukebox (YAMJ) first from here http://code.google.com/p/moviejukebox/ and then the skin JohnDigital used from here http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=11136

I've found that version 1.0.14 is better than 1.0.15.

I would reccommend running YAMJ with the default skin first tweaking it to your liking and then use the robinsjexcal one afterwards.

It works really well I've about 600 movies indexed with YAMJ and its a lot easier to find waht you want this way.

MT

MediaTank

Doh! At least we agree on the approach :D

JohnDigital

MediaTank wrote: »

Doh! At least we agree on the approach :D

Very true

allybhoy

Cheers dudes, any step by step easy to follow info on how to install it? a dummies guide would be preferable!!

MediaTank

allybhoy wrote: »

Cheers dudes, any step by step easy to follow info on how to install it? a dummies guide would be preferable!!

Go to the YAMJ home page and there is a step by step guide on the right. It's pretty easy especially if you have all of your moviews in one location.

allybhoy

MediaTank wrote: »

Go to the YAMJ home page and there is a step by step guide on the right. It's pretty easy especially if you have all of your moviews in one location.

Cheers bud, looks like its working, its indexing away now and i have a folder called temp and it has all the thumbnails of the movies ive downloaded. The only question i have is, that doesnt seem to be answered by the readme, is what do i do once its finished? Do i copy that directory onto the PCH HD?
All the guide says is the following, but im not sure if it will copy whats on the laptop onto the PCH?

Opening the index

On your NMT / PCH

Select the network share, hard-drive or USB device where you saved the index from the GUI Config program
Select the 4th icon along (from the left)???
Browse to the folder where the jukebox was created
You should see index.htm select that and the jukebox will start

EDIT:- Sorted, just trying to get the RobinsjExcal skin on now.. seems handy enough.

MediaTank

Sweet. Just make sure the default skin works and that you can launch movies from it. I put the Jukebox folder in the root of the internal drive and the index.html file there also. Then when I browse to the HARD_DRIVE it automatically loads the jukebox.

allybhoy

Yup the default works, ah feck i should have done that, i just created a jukebox folder, ah well ill move it another day. One question i have about the PCH or any NMT, is there a defragger for them or can you defrag on behalf of? Its just i have a 750Gb drive in the machine in just a single partition and its fairly full (around 60%) and ive noticed that lately its taking just a tad longer to browse through the normal menu, and now with that jukebox there is at least a 5-6 secound delay between key input and screen movement. Playback is not affected, the interface just feels a bit more sluggish than when there wasnt as much content on it.

Or if there isnt should i have perhaps created a partition or two? I just followed the onscreen wizard and I never thought of creating one.

the_syco

JohnDigital wrote: »

Um, you have ripcaster with two different prices. What's the cheaper one?

MediaTank

allybhoy wrote: »

Yup the default works, ah feck i should have done that, i just created a jukebox folder, ah well ill move it another day. One question i have about the PCH or any NMT, is there a defragger for them or can you defrag on behalf of? Its just i have a 750Gb drive in the machine in just a single partition and its fairly full (around 60%) and ive noticed that lately its taking just a tad longer to browse through the normal menu, and now with that jukebox there is at least a 5-6 secound delay between key input and screen movement. Playback is not affected, the interface just feels a bit more sluggish than when there wasnt as much content on it.

Or if there isnt should i have perhaps created a partition or two? I just followed the onscreen wizard and I never thought of creating one.

The file system is EXT3 and you have no control over how it is partitioned - the PCH creates 3 partitions; 1 for user data, 1 for the NMT apps and a swap partition.

60% is not fairly full, so I'd hard reboot it to see if it helps. Also check the firmware version it may need an upgrade.

allybhoy

As far as i know its on the latest version [Firmware 01-17-081023]. Was reading on NMT that there is one due out soon enough,I reboot it fairly regularly, bout once every 3 - 4 days. I think i should probably turn off some of the web services i dont use aswell see if that would free up some resources, FTP, NZBGET, Casgle etc etc.

Does anybody here use the webservices on them at all? The only thing i would probably use them for is perhaps to try and watch some live sports that werent on, you can normally pick up PL matches on sopcast or even justin tv but i dont think the PCH supports either of them.

JohnDigital

the_syco wrote: »

Um, you have ripcaster with two different prices. What's the cheaper one?

Prices I have there are sterling and euro, with and without HDD

MediaTank

allybhoy wrote: »

As far as i know its on the latest version [Firmware 01-17-081023]. Was reading on NMT that there is one due out soon enough,I reboot it fairly regularly, bout once every 3 - 4 days. I think i should probably turn off some of the web services i dont use aswell see if that would free up some resources, FTP, NZBGET, Casgle etc etc.

Does anybody here use the webservices on them at all? The only thing i would probably use them for is perhaps to try and watch some live sports that werent on, you can normally pick up PL matches on sopcast or even justin tv but i dont think the PCH supports either of them.

Yes, turning off the services you don't need makes a big difference. I only tried the web services to see if they work YouTube, BiTorrent etc. All are now disabled. You're right it doesn't support the services you mention.

allybhoy

MediaTank wrote: »

Yes, turning off the services you don't need makes a big difference. I only tried the web services to see if they work YouTube, BiTorrent etc. All are now disabled. You're right it doesn't support the services you mention.

Hey sorry meant to say it to you b4 the end of the season. I found a way to stream sopcast and a few other features from the A110 if ur interested. Just add this web service... http://compiz.de then click sopcast then type in your numeric channel number. There are other services in there but they are all in German so havnt had a look at all of them.

skywalker

I got one of these recently, just looking into installing yamj onto it now. Can you setup yamj to read from both the internal hd & also a usb one?

MediaTank

skywalker wrote: »

I got one of these recently, just looking into installing yamj onto it now. Can you setup yamj to read from both the internal hd & also a usb one?

Yes, just edit the libraries.xml file to point to the drives.

MT

skywalker

Thanks, Ill be giving it a go over the weekend.

Any recommendations on skins?

MediaTank

skywalker wrote: »

Thanks, Ill be giving it a go over the weekend.

Any recommendations on skins?

If you haven't used it before then use the default skin first and tweak it to your liking. The RobinsjExcal skin is really good and includes fan art backgrounds.