The Popcorn Hour A-110 is a enhanced version of the popular A-100 model. It adds support for 2.5"/3.5" SATA HDD and USB Slave functionality to improve connectivity and transfer rates.
HDMI has been updated to the 1.3a spec, allowing full support of HD Audio pass-through for DTS HD-HR, DTS HD-MA, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD. The ports on the device have also been reconfigured, with a USB port moved to the rear panel, optical S/PDIF replacing the co-axial S/PDIF and a hardware reset button to allow for easier use of the device.
tante said: I came really close to getting the A-100, but decided to stick with my dvd player that plays divx for time being. Anyone use this or the A-100?
I had an A-100 for about 2 days. For me, it was way to slow to be usable. I have about 1000 ripped movies, and scrolling or searching was way too tedious. Also, only about 90% of my media would play. I opted instead to use a Mac + Plex (XBox Media Center ported for Mac). That is a much better solution for me. Now I can play 100% of my media and scrolling is very fast - I can go from top to bottom of the big list in a few seconds. Also, I can play Hulu and, hopefully soon, Netflix. The A-100 gets great reviews from other sources, though, so it might be worth a try for you. If you don't like it, you can sell it for more than you paid for it (that's what I ended up doing).
wc2007
Member
posted: Aug. 28, 2008 @ 12:16p
tante said: I came really close to getting the A-100, but decided to stick with my dvd player that plays divx for time being. Anyone use this or the A-100?
are you kidding?! the a-100 has a cult following with several people using it...i use mine practically everyday. has completely changed the way i watch tv!
calvinandhobbes
Thrifty Member
posted: Aug. 28, 2008 @ 12:28p
wc2007 said: tante said: I came really close to getting the A-100, but decided to stick with my dvd player that plays divx for time being. Anyone use this or the A-100?
are you kidding?! the a-100 has a cult following with several people using it...i use mine practically everyday. has completely changed the way i watch tv!I own an A-100. What the person above said is true for me....when I got my xbox with Xbox Media Center on it a few years ago. the A-100 is slow, clunky, terrible GUI, terrible remote, missing key features, etc. Some with a background of electronics have also called the quality of the circuitry design into question as the network controller isn't protected from pulses, and a non-zero number of users have had their box fried and had to RMA.
But it does one thing that XBMC on an xbox won't, it plays HD material, which is huge. We still watch almost everything through the old xbox, and any HD material through the popcorn hour. the PH will play most anything you throw at it, but if all you watch is SD material, get an old Xbox with XBMC on it. Probably half the price and 100 times the performance.
i'm glad I have my A-100, don't get me wrong, but it falls far short of my expectations given how long XBMC has been around and how it has set the standard. users should also note that XBMC is being ported to linux. pretty much up and running these days in terms of old features. if linux drivers get up to date with HD video decoding and a cheap hardware footprint can be acheived, the A100 and other NMT devices will be obsolete IMO. for users putting a big hard drive in their A-100 or A-110, the total cost of a linux XBMC solution isn't all that much more money. will most likely build a small XBMC linux box and relegate the A-100 to another room or something.
robertwee
Member
posted: Aug. 28, 2008 @ 12:42p
tante said: I came really close to getting the A-100, but decided to stick with my dvd player that plays divx for time being. Anyone use this or the A-100?
I have it for about a week before selling it. For movies, the picture quality is great but for everything else, it sucks. Photo viewer has long blank lag between each photo. Surfing the web video is extremely choppy due to the small buffer. The interface is very basic. My remote does not respond sometime at which time I have to reboot. The harddrive does not stop spinning if you don't configure it properly. The unit runs real hot. Internet radio works fine though.
I kind of think of the A-100 as the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" of media players. It may have a cult following but it's not for everyone.
I use GB-PVR and the A100 is definitely has a "cult following" in that area.
Never made the jump to the A100, just stuck with my trusty Hauppauge MVP (wired). It's not true HD, but you can transcode in the background, so it's no big deal.
Sounds like the A-110 may be worth looking into.
I've also heard that the HP Media Smart (on sale at Newegg) is worth checking out.
I have a A100 and I use it often to play HD videos. It also has a bittorrent and newsbin client if you put a harddrive on it so its saves me the trouble of leaving my pc on all the time. So far it's a great device.
I agree, it's not for everyone (especially folks more interested in music/pictures than video), but if your priority is HD video, you really can't find any other device that beats the popcorn hour at anywhere near the price.
wc2007
Member
posted: Aug. 28, 2008 @ 1:31p
calvinandhobbes said: wc2007 said: tante said: I came really close to getting the A-100, but decided to stick with my dvd player that plays divx for time being. Anyone use this or the A-100?
are you kidding?! the a-100 has a cult following with several people using it...i use mine practically everyday. has completely changed the way i watch tv!I own an A-100. What the person above said is true for me....when I got my xbox with Xbox Media Center on it a few years ago. the A-100 is slow, clunky, terrible GUI, terrible remote, missing key features, etc. Some with a background of electronics have also called the quality of the circuitry design into question as the network controller isn't protected from pulses, and a non-zero number of users have had their box fried and had to RMA.
But it does one thing that XBMC on an xbox won't, it plays HD material, which is huge. We still watch almost everything through the old xbox, and any HD material through the popcorn hour. the PH will play most anything you throw at it, but if all you watch is SD material, get an old Xbox with XBMC on it. Probably half the price and 100 times the performance.
i'm glad I have my A-100, don't get me wrong, but it falls far short of my expectations given how long XBMC has been around and how it has set the standard. users should also note that XBMC is being ported to linux. pretty much up and running these days in terms of old features. if linux drivers get up to date with HD video decoding and a cheap hardware footprint can be acheived, the A100 and other NMT devices will be obsolete IMO. for users putting a big hard drive in their A-100 or A-110, the total cost of a linux XBMC solution isn't all that much more money. will most likely build a small XBMC linux box and relegate the A-100 to another room or something.
i never used an XBMC so i guess i am not spoiled by it!
however, majority of the time, i use the a-100 to playback my collection of sd-dvd's...plays back flawlessly...also, i am able to play back my collection of avchd clips from my camcorder...
other than this - i dont have access to too many hd videos, but the couple that i have seen have been outstanding...
cartfan said: I use GB-PVR and the A100 is definitely has a "cult following" in that area.
Never made the jump to the A100, just stuck with my trusty Hauppauge MVP (wired). It's not true HD, but you can transcode in the background, so it's no big deal.
Sounds like the A-110 may be worth looking into.
I've also heard that the HP Media Smart (on sale at Newegg) is worth checking out.
From the reviews, if you plan on playing .mkv files, forget the MediaSmart box, unless HP updates it later on. It supposedly bombs horribly to the point of locking up on .mkv files... And since I need that, it's out of the question for me, otherwise I'd look seriously at it.
wc2007 said: i never used an XBMC so i guess i am not spoiled by it! yeah, i don't know if I would recommend trying one or not. If you don't try it, the PH seems great for SD stuff, but once you try XBMC, you will see what the PH should have been.
I'm amazed that one of these companies in the media player business haven't worked with the developers to make a stripped down dedicated box for XBMC that can handle HD. It's not like the developers are against the idea. They seem more into keeping it open source than making a mint off selling the code. One should be able to make some money selling a hardware package given how many NMT devices there are, plus the overall media extender market.
AZImmortal
Happy Member
posted: Aug. 28, 2008 @ 4:39p
I definitely agree that XBMC has the interface to beat when it comes to media centers. It's sad to think that I'll have to look for a replacement for my Xbox since it can't handle HD material. Some company should seriously just take the XBMC code and put it into their own player (which should be allowed as long as they release their own code in accordance with the GPL).
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.
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.
kingjer
Member
posted: Aug. 28, 2008 @ 5:03p
i just went through all this. i ended up with SageTV and the HD Extender. i'm very happy with it. it plays everything i have in terms of SD and HD content flawlessly.
calvinandhobbes
Thrifty Member
posted: Aug. 28, 2008 @ 5:52p
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.
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.
This was my hope exactly - get rid of that noisy original Xbox - and be able to play all those MKV's I have.
But when it took me 15 minutes to scroll down to the M's in my movie list (literally, 15 minutes), I had had enough.
It is more expensive by 2.5x, but I've been very happy with a mac mini + Plex (XBMC for Mac).
I think the A-100 is perfect for some - it just wasn't what I was looking for.
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