A-110 (New version of A-100) available for preorder.

www.popcornhour.com

Popcorn Hour A-110
USD215.00

Detailed Specs

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.

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?

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 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.

(bad post)

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.

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...

Ordered mine on 8/6.. They have the worst order process I have ever seen.

This is list price; not hot.

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).