How would you change Popcorn Hour's A-100 HD media streamer?

When Popcorn Hour's Networked Media Tank / A-100 went on sale earlier this year, we didn't really foresee it gaining so much fanfare. Even months after launch the unit still had a waiting list, and just recently has the commotion died down enough so that supply and demand could meet in beautiful harmony. In all honesty, we haven't heard many negative feelings towards this potent little media server, but as these things go, there's always room -- if but a crack -- for improvement. So, what features would you like to see on the A-100 that aren't there currently? Who knows, Popcorn Hour may grant your wishes in one of its potentially forthcoming successors.

[Jason @ Jul 11th 2008 10:06PM]

iTunes would be nice.

[IPhoner @ Jul 11th 2008 10:10PM]

Make it an AppleTV

[ScOObyDoo @ Jul 11th 2008 10:21PM]

That would mean taking away all the decent media format support and adding a crap remote.

No thanks.

[Jon @ Jul 11th 2008 10:22PM]

R u Kidding me ??? The A-100 can play ANYTHING not just your apple DRM'd junk ..

I own one , what i would change is a speedier interface and the ability to see cover art/ DVD cover art

the best thing about it is using Anydvd you can backup bluray movies and watch them without changing any files just use the main M2TS file and you get perfect 1080p video and surround sound

[NodNarb012 @ Jul 12th 2008 12:40AM]

@Jon

How does the PCH handle Blu-Ray rips with HD audio (TrueHD or DTS-HD MA)? I have an Onkyo TX-SR705 receiver that can decode both, but I'm thinking that the PCH can't bitstream those to my receiver since the PCH doesn't have HDMI v1.3. If you're really able to rip BD's and play them back on the PCH unedited with HD audio, I'll order one immediately.

[Rich @ Jul 12th 2008 5:47AM]

I have a PCH A-100 and I was seriously considering an Apple TV beforehand.

In the end, I decided that the Apple TV was too inflexible and the hard-drive is way too small.

Being able to rip my DVDs straight to .iso and watch them on the PCH without conversion is a feature that the Apple TV simply can't compete with.

[h0mi @ Jul 12th 2008 6:20AM]

While I wouldnt want the popcorn to be as restricted as the apple tv, judging from the other comments here, it seems the popcorn doesnt work all that well.

I was interested in buying this thing but judging from the comments here, this isnt ready for prime time.

[vdogg89 @ Jul 11th 2008 10:18PM]

nothing, i love it!

[CUBSWILLWIN @ Jul 11th 2008 10:21PM]

Agreed totally. This thing is beast!

[JohnTitor @ Jul 11th 2008 11:37PM]

except make it available for purchase....
a web browser (like the ArchosTV) would be nice
and obviously as all those how would you change goes, cheaper
other than that stunning product, blows my MediaGate out of the water

[Flashpoint @ Jul 11th 2008 10:18PM]

I'd give its remote control a porno button.

[Mo @ Jul 11th 2008 10:18PM]

Agreed

[Nick Catalano @ Jul 11th 2008 10:20PM]

A remote that doesn't royally suck.

SATA & Gigabit Ethernet would make sense. The chipset for these things already exists, so it is just a matter of waiting for the PCH crew to make the new chipset standard.

Multi-part RAR support would be nice... considering there is like a 30 page thread about it on the forums

And the 'Waitlist' is something of a misnomer. There is no 'wait' involved anymore. If you put your name on the 'list' you should be getting one within a month or two.

[Jon @ Jul 11th 2008 10:24PM]

haha .."you should be getting one within a month or two."

That seems like a wait ?

I did wait a few months and it was worth it

[Nick Catalano @ Jul 12th 2008 12:18AM]

Most of the wait is just for the damn thing to arrive in the mail.

I literally got my email 2 weeks after I signed up on the site.

[Charlie @ Jul 14th 2008 10:21AM]

for mine it was two weeks from order to arrival. Not fast by any means, but not horrible either.

The interface does lack the polish of an apple tv, but it's plenty functional, and the fact that it can play damn near everything makes it a winner in my book.

Sata/gigabit would be nice in theory but since I haven't put a HD in mine and don't have gigabit switches, it has yet to bother me personally, and all the HD stuff I've thrown at it plays just fine over fast ethernet.

I've not played around with it yet because eyecandy isn't all that important to me, but I know llink supports dvd box art on the PCH, and there's instructions on the site for how to generate the files/autopull covers, etc.

[Pete @ Jul 11th 2008 10:22PM]

Make it a bit more tolerant to DTS audio dropouts when playing MKV. That is the number one thing that is annoying me about the unit still.

[Jared @ Jul 11th 2008 10:24PM]

I would make it work without taking 5 hours to do anything. In other words I agree with iPhoner. I would make it an AppleTV in terms of UI but keep the great extensibility of the Popcorn Hour.

[Ryhan @ Jul 13th 2008 11:21AM]

have you ever actually used it??!!!
Go play with your tiny little remote somewhere else

[EricD @ Jul 11th 2008 10:25PM]

I own a popcorn hour, and the performance for price comparison is decent. However, just because it's the best NMT out there doesn't mean it's actually good...

A) DTS support. That's the most frustrating item most users have, I think. Most HD content comes with DTS, and the machine cannot play it.

B) Make the thing reliable. It works, but doesn't do anything more than that. I use mine about 5 days out of the week, and it crashes about once a week(needing me to pull the power connection to hard reboot it).

C) Stop development on new, barely used features when the core ones are completely broken. Fast forward and rewind cause massive audio desync, and sometimes just cause the machine to lock up. Time Seek does the same. When playing a video your only real options are play, pause, and stop. Some users have these features working, but of the 10 other people with a PCH, 6 cannot fast forward, rewind, or use time seek.

D) Audio support for playing MP3s is functional and nothing beyond that. There should be basic things like a way to select a directory and play every file in it, but there isn't. The Audio player functionality is beyond minimal, and it feels a lot more like a demonstration of the machine's ability to play mp3s than something you would actually use to play music.

E) The UI is really slow. If this thing can play x.264 mkv's in 1080p, why does it take 2 seconds to load a directory that has 1 file in it?

[Charlie @ Jul 11th 2008 10:34PM]

I agree with pretty much all your points. It should be noted however that DTS DOES get passed through by PH, you've just gotta use the digital connection for audio to your receiver and your receiver has to be able to decode DTS.

However, it would be nice if PH decoded DTS itself.

[Evan @ Jul 13th 2008 8:29AM]

It does play directories of MP3s. Press play instead of enter.

[Mike @ Jul 11th 2008 10:27PM]

Boy, it would be really cool if someone could "hack" it and add a hard drive to it... I bet that would make front page news.

[feffrey @ Jul 11th 2008 10:33PM]

hahah i remember that post.

[Flammie @ Jul 11th 2008 10:38PM]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER1k00OQTEQ

Well?

[SubZero @ Jul 11th 2008 10:29PM]

Wifi support - I would buy this right now if it had wifi. I dont want to drag 20 feet of ethernet cable across 2 rooms to get to the box.

[Rich @ Jul 12th 2008 5:56AM]

PCH now supports a USB WiFi dongle. I think it's $17 and enabled in the latest firmware.

It's not as neat as built-in WiFi but it's a step in the right direction.

[feffrey @ Jul 11th 2008 10:31PM]

Top things I want
SATA hd connector
Gigabyte Ethernet
Ability to down mix dts audio to stereo (w/o using an additional program to convert the videos)
A button on the remote that will fully shut it off, not just do a soft off.
Other than that I love my popcorn hour.

[Charlie @ Jul 12th 2008 3:40AM]

You can actually shut down the Popcorn Hour fully with the remote... Just press the Power + Delete/clear button at the same time and it'll power itself off. Of course, then you'll have to walk over to it and manually turn it back on by unplugging it and then plugging it back in again...

[Charlie @ Jul 11th 2008 10:37PM]

I'd like PH to get better AC3 support. Anything that is encoded in 6.1 just doesn't work for me at all.

I would also REALLY like to see support for Netflix, but that's not very likely.

The web features are far too slow. It'd be great to have a real browser, but again, that's unlikely.

Otherwise I like PH a lot. My roomies and I use it all the time and so it was CERTAINLY worth the minimal $180 that I paid...

[mcatrage @ Jul 11th 2008 10:43PM]

Merge with XBMC.

[Michael @ Jul 11th 2008 11:22PM]

+1

I really only use my PCH for playing 1080p and use my XBMC for everything else. If XBMC would play 1080p I wouldn't have even considered a PCH.

[matt @ Jul 11th 2008 10:43PM]

change the name... popcorn hour? that is really lame and corny. who wants something like fruiting up their A/V stack?

[StreetStealth @ Jul 12th 2008 1:48AM]

No kidding. Seriously, "popcorn hour"?

That sounds like the name for the programming block where they run an old movie late at night on channel 9 in 1987.

(VHS noise) "Welcome to... (Cheesy synth music) ...The Popcorn Hour!" (Cheesy 80s motion graphics)

And then there's that logo. I mean, come on, you guys have some great tech, you've got pretty decent industrial design and UI design, and then you go and get your logo designed by the chief engineer's uncle.

[Jonathan Teper @ Jul 11th 2008 10:51PM]

well.. i never really got mine to work. it would stop playing movies after 10-15 min. then i updated the firmware, it got stuck, and is now bricked. getting my hands on the box was hard enough, i figured getting my money back would be impossible.. plus i spend enough time trying to get it to work.. i cant really bother with this piece of steel anymore. i could be wrong though, maybe this business is not a fly by night operation.

[Dave @ Jul 12th 2008 4:18AM]

Mine bricked when I plugged the power in funny once... Filled in an RMA request, sent it off, and within a couple of weeks, they sent me a brand new unit. Their fulfilment process is a bit weird, but their support seems conventional enough!

Get it fixed and stick with it... For the first few weeks, I couldn't get mine working well at all, but then I realised how to set up the network shares properly, it's fine.

1080p is hit-and-miss, but 720p mkv's work more or less flawlessly. I got my Popcorn Hour 6 months ago, and since then I've totally mothballed my DVD player. My living room is now 100% optical disk free.

[robohofo @ Jul 11th 2008 11:03PM]

Have it for a couple of week now.

UI, UI, UI. This is the area where is can really be improved.
For video and audio it does not show album art, no video preview etc. Just file name, which is not really up to standard. Overall presentation and usability.
Other:
- could not get MPEG 4's with AAC to work via digital output
- no ID3 file management for audio
- would love to see Pandora support
- Netflix would be nice as well

However it DOES play many formats, and that is what sold it to me.

[Tim @ Jul 11th 2008 11:46PM]

Honestly, I'd love a better visual interface and a remote that doesn't go crazy at times.

The best feature I loved from XBMC was the imdb.com lookup off a file name and being able to get movie info and a movie poster icon for the file. Instead of browsing countless file names, I can see something more visual to remind me of that movie. This gets better and better as I convert my DVDs to my home network.

[Scott @ Jul 16th 2008 6:38PM]

Thanks to robohofo for the mp4's w/AAC heads up.

I guess I'll keep looking for that box that can play my 720x480 mp4's encoded for the Sony PSP.

[snoopster85 @ Jul 11th 2008 11:14PM]

The music interface blows, and the flaky firmwares drove me away. I love the concept, and amazing capabilities. Still has a long way to go to make it main stream. No laymen will ever be able to put up with the unstable firmwares and lame interface.

[Bryan @ Jul 11th 2008 11:18PM]

-Better remote...why are the all the directional keys on the black circle so damn loud? I'd like to hear the media, not the damn remote.

-A virtual keyboard...why give (super loud) directional keys then expect me to type in URLs with cell phone style input?

-GigE

[Jonny @ Jul 11th 2008 11:23PM]

1. Show song, radio information from Internet streaming stations on the screen.

I bought this unit mainly for audio and stream Internet radio. It's way cheaper than Roku devices. It doesn't have the VTF display but it does a lot more for $20 more. Video functionality is a plus for me. Other items on my list:

* stability - hangs on audio or video streams that are slow to start or don't start due to something.
* speed up the interface
* better documentation - there is the wiki but event that is missing some basics of the popcorn.
* add user defined presets
* better / more functionality web interface
* and other stuff people mentioned too - gigabit Ethernet, SATA drive, faster proc. / more memory (anything to make it faster)

[Dave @ Jul 12th 2008 4:21AM]

Dude, this is never going to work well as an audio streamer... Get yourself a Squeezebox duet!

[Anton @ Jul 11th 2008 11:26PM]

More product availability?

Because right now it's still "pre-order"

Other than that, no need to fix what is not broken.

[Johnny Bravo @ Jul 11th 2008 11:29PM]

1) Fix the ripped DVD ISO/VOB audio level issue. Ripped DVDs with 5.1 only audio tracks played through an A-100 are pretty much inaudible and make the unit useless for this purpose unless you have the audio pumped through an amp. Scores of people have complained about the issue on the forums and they have only recently said that they are going to address it by adding a 6dB boost...which will add clipping and distortion...rather than getting Sigma to fix the (admitted) underlying AC3 defect in their chip's libraries.


2) Allow a person to resume a video or DVD that has been stopped


3) Fix the horrific remote control...including the large square matrix of buttons with seemingly no thought given to placement. Yeah, it's a joy that STOP is between FF and REW...and that if you inadvertently hit it, you are booted out of the video and there is no way to get back in to where you just were (previous issue). In general, the remote layout sucks ass...and could also use back lighting.


4) Allow browsing for NFS shares...instead of forcing me to fat finger in the protocol and trailing colon.


5) Support password-protected directories to enable family controls.


6) Add native SATA hard drive support...instead of an IDE to SATA bridge.


7) Fix the case's ventilation. The thing is a pressure cooker when a hard drive is inside.


8) Add gigabit Ethernet to speed up file transfer to units with internal hard drives.


9) Fix the horrific and useless LEDs on the front...including their "bleed" issue.


10) Get rid of the cheesy silk screened logo on the top (which one can admittedly get rid of by unscrewing the case screws, flipping the lid over, and replacing the screws.


11) Support more wireless USB sticks. One subset of one chipset is a wifi capability I suppose, but not much of one.


...and those are just off of the top of my head...and I haven't even talked about how bad the MP3 playback capability is...and how often it the unit crashes...and how it frequently doesn't respond to the remote control...and how hundreds of us on the forums have problems with having to plug and unplug the unit 5 or 6 times to convince it to turn...or, perhaps the worst issue- the forums are run by morons.

The community forums (primary source of support and interaction with Syabas...the parent company) is was not originally associated with the company...and the company now links to it from their website and hired the board admin, but he and the others there still conduct themselves like they are tyrannical admins on a world of warcraft forum.


That said, the guys in Malaysia rock...and their CEO, TL Lim, is a cool and approachable guy who is very enthusiastic about such devices...and seems to be committed to making this one better with firmware releases and future models...so keep hope alive.

Even with all those nits, it still may be the best streamer out there...especially at the price...and that is some indication of how immature this market is.

[EricD @ Jul 12th 2008 12:13AM]

You brought up some really good points that I had missed. I think the point that people glaze over is that a lot of the folks complaining love their PCH, which makes the huge problems that much more frustrating. If I bought a PCH to use once a month, these problems really wouldn't be a problem, but I use it all the time and these problems become pretty significant.

From a buisness standpoint, here is my take. This device is one the cusp of blowing up, popularity wise. Everyone and their uncle has media that they would like the play on the TV. The PCH makes the networking aspects of this fairly simple(could be even more simple, but whatever). The primary thing keeping the PCH from going mainstream is a lack of supply and the shoddiness of the device. If they spent the extra money hiring more folks for production and development, I think their investment would pay off in spades.

[tiremfej @ Jul 11th 2008 11:52PM]

Why don't I understand what this does?

[Big John @ Jul 12th 2008 12:57AM]

It lets you view a myriad (read: a metric ton) of different media from a source other than itself, offloading the processing load onto itself.

Example: I rip and store HD films on a networked drive. I hook the Popcorn Hour up to my network and it'll let me play films from that drive without having to pass the drive through say, my iMac, first to process the video.

[Joe H @ Jul 12th 2008 12:24AM]

If it was a Media Center Extender, but still kept all its support for alternative codecs such as x264 in the mkv container then it'd be perfect for me.

[Ray @ Jul 12th 2008 12:39AM]

I love mine, had used XBMC on Xbox and the Xbox360 prior to getting this. It plays everything.. Only Changes I would make to it is not having to hack the interface to handle Cover Art and refine the FF and RWD on mkv's better