Hacking the Popcorn Hour NMT A-100 I was going to write a really long reply to a reader comment on the main PCH page here, but I figured it was better to write it all down on a new page instead. This isn't really much help for people trying to teach their NMT to do new tricks, but it may give save some from reinventing the wheel.
The Good Excellent video and audio quality; great styling; the perfect enthusiast media streamer; terrific community support. The Bad Some bugs; too expensive in the UK; Blu-ray options are confusing. The Bottom Line We've awarded the Popcorn Hour C-200 the same score as the older Popcorn Hour A-110. Although the C-200 offers much more functionality, there are currently some issues that need to be fixed before it can reach its full potential. We're pretty sure, though, that the C-200 will be a superb piece of kit in a few months. Even considering the few problems it currently has, it's still the best media streamer on the market by a country mile.
Visit for details. There aren't many products that can are good enough to become part of our long-term reference system. Generally speaking, only equipment that we truly love will make the cut. Our, for example, is still a, one of the highest-scoring sets we've ever tested. Since we tested the and media streamers, they've also formed part of our long-term testing environment, and we use one or other of them pretty much every day.
What makes the Popcorn Hour machines so useful is that they provide a solution to a problem that no other company has solved, making it as easy to play media from your or on your TV as it is with products like, but without the horrible, oppressive restrictions that burden hardware from big companies. The A-100 and A-110 make video playback over a home network simple. Now, the Popcorn Hour C-200 adds more features and an impressive new design. It's available in the UK for about 300, a considerable mark-up from its US price of $300 (190).
Bug fixes This is a review of the C-200 as it was shipped to us by the manufacturer. The installed firmware worked pretty much flawlessly, but we've been led to believe that there are still a number of features and improvements that are going to be added in future firmware releases. As improvements occur, we'll update this review. We'll also be adding a Blu-ray drive to our C-200 shortly.
Once we've done it, we'll update this review with our thoughts about the process and how the C-200 works with it. Design The first thing that struck us about the C-200 is that it's larger than the A-110. It's the size of a, although it's slightly taller than most new stand-alone players. Its front has a large, monochrome display on the left-hand side and a slot on the other side that takes either a PC Blu-ray drive or a SATA hard disk using a supplied drive caddy.
Apart from those two main features, the front of the machine is quite plain. It also sports some basic controls. There's a power button, surrounded by a circular, three-colour LED, to the left of the display, and a button to dim the display and adjust the video output. You also get a simple navigation control that lets you use the C-200's display to navigate through menus. That's handy if you're just looking for some music to listen to. Menus and responsiveness Although we like the menus found on the Popcorn Hour A series, we certainly wouldn't argue that they're basic. To cheer everything up, the C-200 features a more impressive video processor, offering some graphically richer layouts.
Sadly, these don't extend all the way through the user interface and, at the moment, the second-level playback menus are largely the same as the ones on the A-110. That said, there are strong rumours that this is simply because the first round of machines has early-version firmware installed, and future releases will make the system look more unified. Even so, there are no major concerns in terms of the menus.
Everything works as it should, and the speed of the system is much improved over that of the A-100 and A-110. Interestingly, the C-200 supports Adobe Flash, which none of its predecessors have. This opens up a whole new set of opportunities for graphically rich user interfaces.
It's an exciting possibility, but, at the moment, that potential is unrealised. Picture and sound quality It always impressed us that the picture and sound quality of the A-100 and A-110 were so good. Audio and video quality is a big deal for us, as you can imagine, so we always use quite a broad range of video content, encoded at different bit rates, to get an idea of how a system can cope. Our favourite footage originates from Blu-ray, and is provided by The Dark Knight. Scenes in the most recent Batman movie have amazing clarity, and it's those that we looked at, along with some of the darker scenes, to see how the C-200 copes with high-definition video. This footage has been our non-disc-based 1080p test material for some time, and we're pleased to say that the C-200 played it perfectly. The early bank-robbery scene looked truly epic, as did footage shot on more traditional 35mm film stock.
Audio quality is also excellent, and the C-200 can decode Dolby Digital and surround sound with no problems. If you want to hear and Dolby TrueHD, you'll need to hook the system up to a separate AV receiver, but the C-200 is happy to pass this audio, untouched, via the HDMI socket. All media-playback devices rely very heavily on the source material being of high quality. The old adage 'garbage in, garbage out' holds true here. The C-200 won't make low-quality material look like it's HD, so you should make sure your video is of the highest possible quality. Remote control Unlike the A-110, the C-200 comes with a radio-frequency remote control.
There are several advantages in having an RF remote instead of an infrared model. The main benefit is that you don't need to have direct line of sight to control the player. This was an issue with the A-110, which wasn't anywhere near sensitive enough, incurring complaints from people who found the machine unresponsive to remote commands. The problem with RF remotes is that they don't work with most universal remote controls. That's a problem for people who've built home-cinema systems that are reliant on something like a. The good news is that you can order an IR remote and receiver dongle. Popcorn Hour also intends to add discrete IR codes too, which is another massive boon for people who want to more sophisticated control systems.
Upgradeability Like previous Popcorn Hour models, the C-200 offers plenty of options if you like tweaking and improving performance. On the hardware side, you can add a Wi-Fi card to give the C-200 access to your wireless network. Wireless connectivity is convenient, but it's not always the best choice for streaming HD media. There are also good options for playing back media from USB storage.
The four external USB sockets mean you can plug in hard drives and USB keys to watch video, listen to music or look at photos. There's also an internal USB socket, which is mainly designed to be used for persistent storage with a Blu-ray drive, and, indeed, if you're fitting a Blu-ray PC drive, you'll need a minimum of 2GB to act as persistent storage for Blu-ray discs.
The BBC's iPlayer is now a must-have for any self-respecting AV device. If the Spice Girls were about today (and significantly more nerdy) they'd sing, 'If you want to be my AV product, you've got to get with my iPlayer.' Apart from the fact that it doesn't rhyme.
Happily, the people behind agree - not about the rhyming, the iPlayer - and have just added the Beeb's catchup service to some of their boxes. To take advantage of iPlayer, you'll need one of the newer Popcorn Hour devices that supports apps, so the and are the machines to go for if you haven't already got one. The iPlayer app itself takes just a few seconds to download. You'll need to make sure the firmware of your machine is up to date though, which you can do through the setup menu. Once the app is installed, you're off. It's fast and responsive and works really well.
Finding programmes is easy, as it follows the standard large-screen iPlayer interface. There are options to select programmes from any of the BBC's TV or radio channels and there's a search option, to find other stuff. Most impressive, though, is the picture quality. The Popcorn Hour app supports the BBC's HD streams, so the quality is excellent.
We're not going to say it's proper HD, but it's certainly far better than Freeview. If all broadcasters had a service this good for TV catch-up, we could just shut Freeview down altogether. The update is free for existing Popcorn Hour owners, and we're hard pressed to find fault in it.
Sometimes our Internet connection didn't seem able to cope, but for the most part, the streaming worked incredibly well. Consider our thumbs engaged in the upward direction for this update to some already excellent hardware. As you can tell, we love Popcorn Hour - we've rarely been as excited as when the original arrived a few years back. Since then we've never really found a player that's as versatile or simple to use. While some devices, such as, offer some excellent features, and slicker user interface, nothing beats the flexibility of the.