Econometrician said:Was very interested in getting the A-100 until I bought a PS3 and used mkv2vob. The PS3 is a great media streamer IMOI have a ps3 and a popcorn hour. For me transcoding is the deal killer, I don't want to have to deal with it. I want a small device that I can upload anything to and have it play. I used to play the transcoding game with my HDTiVo and it was unbearable.

iwearnosox said:The popcorn hour does movies, HD and .iso images perfectly. If that's all you need then pick one up, throw a hard drive in it and voila. I got rid of my xbox with xbmc- it's noisy, enormous and using a game paddle to control it wasn't very reasonable. I disagree with the whole "using a computer" philosophy, I want a device to power on and go. Dealing with an underlying OS is a pain typically, although I am unfamiliar with the mac solution noted above.PH plays all videos perfectly? You might want to post that at the NMT forums and see the responses. paddle? get a remote. xbox has a FAR better remote than the PH pos. As for power up and go, the xbox boots up ~5 times faster than the PH. We have 2 xboxes. one is quite loud, one is pretty darn quiet. xbox doesn't have heat problems. PH does for some (my guess is the application of the heat sink is a very hit or miss process). as for the underlying OS, you do realize that the PH runs linux, right?

I agree the PH is great in theory, but the interface sucks with a capital SUCK. but it plays HD reasonably robustly, which is tough to compete with. Somebody will come along with a better mousetrap. The NMT tank providers and the firmware providers (Syabas) had better get their butts in gear.