Popcorn Hour A-110
Posted 10:55:15 AM on Thu, 18th December 2008 by Dj-ZoRt!

I just received my Popcorn Hour A-110! So far I have been very impressed. It cost just under AU$400 including registered and insured shipping courtesy of the nice people at Media Players & More, and Australian online store based in Queensland who specialize in media players.

You can read other reviews (ones that are actually comprehensive, unlike this) at places like MacRecon who gave it a 9/10 and Cnet UK who gave it a 9.1/10.

I wont labor the features which are listed elsewhere. Except to say that this little unit is a Linux based "Networked Media Tank", which uses hardware decoders to play various forms of media from network, optional internal hard disk or usb media (be it usb stick, usb hard disk or even usb dvd/cd).

Video outputs available are composite, s-video, component and hdmi 1.3a upto 1080p (including audio through hdmi), Audio outputs are stereo, digital optical and hdmi audio. The device can decode DTS and AC3 back to pcm or can pass straight out to a receiver - like your big surround sound stereo.

Multimedia formats worth mentioning are AVI with XVID/DIVX video, mp3 audio or ac3 audio. My main motivating factor is its support of h264 MKV with DTS or AC3 audio. It supports a plethora of formats which include FLAC audio. Nice. For an exhaustive list, click any other review.

Physical media formats include USB drives and also USB cd/dvd players. The remote includes all buttons needed to attach a USB dvd/cd and have full DVD functionality. Not what I bought it for but neat nonetheless. And iso images are treated just like a dvd and use the same menu buttons. Internal hard drive is any SATA disk. It will format to linux native, so you will be boned if you try and take it out to use on Windows etc.  Why you would actually do so seems strange. Surely you would want to leave it in your A/V cabinet, using the various network methods available to copy files on and off

Network connectivity is via built in 10/100 ethernet, there is no wireless however wireless usb is supported (but i have no idea which devices, its linux based so ones that work in linux?). Wireless is not a feature I wanted so I'm happy that wireless is excluded . Some reviewers are concerned that the the wired ethernet should be Gigabit. Such an upgrade seems pointless to me as a 1080p h264 file is only around 6meg/sec, which is only around half 100mbit speed.

The A-110 can play straight from SMB and NFS! It can also play from UPNP. With an internal hard drive it can also share its media via smb, nfs, upnp, http and ftp. Madness! With an internal disk it can download from bittorrent and usenet on to the local disk (control via http and on-tv). Streaming off the internet is supported, including youtube and googlevideo, however I haven't had a chance to try it yet.

Menus are sharp, neat, professional looking and responsive. I don't like that you must decide the media file type before browsing, yick, very draconian.

Running a firmware update was quick and came straight off the net after plugging in the A-110's ethernet. Other players I have had required burning to CD and 30+mins of time to finish. I dont know if other upgrade methods are supported if for some reason direct download isnt a good option for you.

The included HDMI cable seems very high quality. I don't feel any compelling need to replace it (unlike the miserable HDMI cable you get with Blu-Ray players) however I don't have anything to test it and quantify my claims!

Good things so far

• Nice and small size
• Nice looking menus
• Comes with a seemingly very decent HDMI cable
• Can raw output the DTS/AC3/(etc) or convert to pcm, apparently my tv cant decode dts on its own. So I can use it with or without the stereo (which i can set to do its own dts decoding)
• Menus are good
• Somehow manages to browse unix nfs!? as well as windows smb
• Load times are excellent.
• Fast Forward works properly, although after the FF finishes sound takes a second to start again.
• Configuration is thorough but simple
• Hdmi audio! huray for neat simple stereo cabling!
• Remote is good, even glows in the dark!
  
• Laptop style power supply, should keep heat away from the main unit
• Youtube interface is quite good, although searching is difficult and the search box is very small (almost unreadable at a distance)
• Embedded images in MP3 are shown on screen (for better or worse)
  

Some gotchas (ie bad things)

• Doesnt seem to do proper anonymous smb. which sucks as i don't have guest enabled so i have to thumb in my u/p with the 0-9 button alphanumerics.
• No coax digital out. Although I'm planning on just using the HDMI for audio out
• Doesn't seem to have a unified file browser, you have to select which type of file you want to open before you browse the media. However you browse the share, then select the media type. Its a complete mess.
  
• Runs quite hot (passively cooled)
• Doesn't buffer internet streaming very well
• Doesnt have CEC support.
• Feature support varies from format to format, I.e. Track details and seeking arent supported on FLAC, but are on mp3
  

Unknowns

• How how the actual device will get
• If the bitorrent or usenet clients are any good (I havent installed a hard disk)
• How well sharing files from the A-110 will go (as above, i haven't installed a hard disk)
• Internet streaming, haven't tried it yet!

Things I would like to see added

• Network API to control the device (perhaps implement the XBMC remote protocols)
  
• iPhone remote
• CEC
• Fix the file browsing mess
• More intelligent and configurable buffering on internet streams

So far im very impressed. price (under 400), size (smaller than a mini dvd player) and features (plays full hd mkv perfectly with hdmi out) having already exceeded my expectations. If you have a flat screen tv on its normal stand, you can sit it in the space between the table (surface) its sitting on and the tv without problems, its really thin.

Well worth buying over a Media PC or even XBMC.

(There are a lot of others using the same internals (which are from Sayabac apparently), all have very similar features, but have different form factors, different USB positioning, some have coax digital out and one even has SD card slot - there is lots of details here)