Syabas Popbox hands-on

The Popcorn Hour lineup had (and still has) a huge following, but it remains one of the most under-appreciated media streamers on the market from a mainstream perspective. We get the feeling that all of that's gearing up to change, with Syabas demonstrating its highly marketable Popbox here at CES. We were able to swing by and take a look at the product tonight, and we've got to confess -- it'd be a pretty stellar add to any home entertainment setup. The box was small, light and stylish enough, and the actual user interface was drop-dead simple to navigate. It hooks up with any networked media (the demo was playing back content from a NAS drive), and it even pulls down metadata from IMDB for films. We briefly watched a couple of 720p clips, and playback started instantly and the video quality was nothing short of fantastic. We've got a video in the works, but for now, feel free to have a glance at the gallery below.

Update: Video is now live after the break!

Syabas Popbox hands-on

[kwebster Posted Jan 28th 2010 9:51AM]

Why aren't these things built into the $2000 televisions already? Seems simple enough. If you have ever opened one of these up they are very simplistic on the hardware side. If I could buy a a large LCD with a built in popbox or xbmc I would crap my pants to get one. Maybe what they need is just an acer revo like device built into the set and let the set owner decide from there. Maybe this is too much like the built in dvd player - you always won't something better. But for most, having it in the set would free up space around the entertainment center. An extra $100 bucks/tv to have it integrated would be awesome.