AfterDawn: News

Popcorn Hour now available for pre-order

Yesterday, Popcorn Hour announced that its only product, the highly anticipated Popcorn Hour A-100 digital media streaming device is now available for pre-order directly from the company's site.

For those unaware, the A-100 "allows for streaming digital media from users' PCs via a wide range of connectivity options, digital cameras or USB mass storage devices or directly from the Internet via its integrated Media Service Portal. The A-100 supports high-bitrate video formats, including DivX and Matroska, as well as subtitle files, with firmware upgradeable to future codecs."



More interestingly, the media hub can also act as a NAS device and BitTorrent P2P downloader in place of a computer. For those features however, you will need to add an internal HDD. Using the device's Media Service Portalallows for IPTV compatibility with YouTube, Google Video and Metacafe.

Flickr and Photobucket, as well as a ton of video, audio, Internet radio and RSS feeds can stream content to A-100.

The A-100 "includes 256MB of DDR SDRAM along with 32MB of flash memory and is network-ready. A pair of USB 2.0 plugs as well as a Parallel ATA port act as the physical interface options. Connections include an HDMI v1.1 input, component video in, S-Video, composite plugs, as well as coaxial and analog audio."

Available now for pre-order, the A-100 has a $180 USD price tag.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 4 May 2008 16:31

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• 11 comments

• hulud86

  Cool. Seems like theres going to be a lot of these pretty soon. Beats Apple's price tag for sure.

  4.5.2008 21:19 #1

• ooZEROoo

  This looks nice. Good price tag and good features. Worth checking out IMO

  4.5.2008 21:58 #2

• david89

  yep looks like very good media player and the price not bad oh side note there 3 different machines with same chip set like allso istarhd and hdx900. but it great word of these players are finally being talked about and going by what i read so far seem tons better then apple tv.

  4.5.2008 22:34 #3

• atomicxl

  Not bad. Its a decent price too. My only question is can it handle H.264 or WMV in 1080p and output via HDMI? If it can do that, supports MKV and subtitles... thats might be too much to pass up. Especially if it can read NTFS hard drives.
  
  This is everything that alot of other devices should have been.

  5.5.2008 00:06 #4

• tetrakis

  it can do all of that, but there are some bugs (as with any brand new technology). Check out their forum: http://networkedmediatank.com/

  5.5.2008 11:09 #5

• goodswipe

  @ atomicxl
  
  
  Media files supported
  
  * Video containers:
  o MPEG1/2/4 Elementary (M1V, M2V, M4V)
  o MPEG1/2 PS (M2P, MPG)
  o MPEG2 Transport Stream (TS, TP, TRP, M2T, M2TS, MTS)
  o VOB
  o AVI, ASF, WMV
  o Matroska (MKV)
  o MOV (H.264), MP4, RMP4
  * Video codecs:
  o XVID SD/HD
  o MPEG-1
  o MPEG-2
  + MP@HL
  o MPEG-4.2
  + ASP@L5, 720p, 1-point GMC
  o WMV9
  + MP@HL
  o H.264
  + BP@L3
  + MP@L4.0
  + HP@L4.0
  + HP@L4.1
  o VC-1
  + MP@HL
  + AP@L3
  * Audio containers:
  o AAC, M4A
  o MPEG audio (MP1, MP2, MP3, MPA)
  o WAV
  o WMA
  * Audio codecs:
  o WMA, WMA Pro
  o AAC
  o MP1, MP2, MP3
  o LPCM
  * Audio pass through : DTS, AC3
  * Photo formats : JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF
  * Other formats: ISO, IFO
  * Subtitle formats : SRT, SMI, SUB, SSA
  
  DRM
  
  * Cardea DRM (WMDRM-ND)
  
  Chipset
  
  * Sigma Designs SMP8635
  
  Memory
  
  * 256MB DDR SDRAM, 32MB Flash
  
  Audio/Video outputs
  
  * HDMI v1.1 (up to 1080p)
  * Component Video (up to 1080p)
  * S-Video
  * Composite Video
  * Stereo Analog Audio
  * S/PDIF Coax Digital Audio
  
  Interface
  
  * 2x USB 2.0 host
  * Parallel ATA
  
  Network
  
  * Ethernet 10/100
  
  
  Funny that it has support for HDMI 1.1 and not the latest. HDMI 1.1 came out four years ago. Yea HDMI is BWC, but you would think they would have the latest and greatest.

  5.5.2008 11:24 #6

• susieqbbb

  Great it streams content
  
  Bad news if you have itunes it won't stream from itunes i just got back from a aperture tour in seattle and they where showing off one of these devices it works great if you are a windows user but if you use itunes your crap out of luck.
  
  And even worse it records to system memory what torrents you have downloaded no offense i dont want a device that records every torrent i have downloaded wow talk about nasty if you are downloading anything from bittorrent that is questionable material and it knows the place you downloaded it from what is goint to stop the device from reporting you to the police mpaa riaa or worse.

  5.5.2008 19:24 #7

• emugamer

  Originally posted by atomicxl: Not bad. Its a decent price too. My only question is can it handle H.264 or WMV in 1080p and output via HDMI? If it can do that, supports MKV and subtitles... thats might be too much to pass up. Especially if it can read NTFS hard drives.
  
  This is everything that alot of other devices should have been.Yes, I have one. Only problem I have (and it's a personal one, not anything to do with the device) is I don't have a reciever that accepts DTS audio. So my mkv movies with DTS have no sound. Popcorn hour has SPDIF out that you can use. My friend uses it and can play everything with full audio. On the Popcornhour forums, you can find a converter that will remux to AC3 audio. This program allows you to actually retain the DTS stream and use AC3 as the primary audio stream ( in case you eventually are able to play DTS audio, you can go back and delete the AC3 stream). This works well, and I've been able to convert a lot.
  
  I do not have a HDD installed in it yet, so I have not used the P2P functions. Overall, it's a great buy. Not intuitive at first, but the forums are a godsend. And yes, it handles subtitles well and I'm using my 750GB NTFS USB external drive to stream from.

  6.5.2008 12:39 #8

• iluvendo

  Yes, but is it going to any good ??
  

  If it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck!
  "The flimsier the product,the higher the price"
  Ferengi 82nd rule of aquisition

  7.5.2008 20:12 #9

• jbloggs

  How is it that this player is on pre-order. I've read people alreeady own this who have posted in the Pop corn community site since last year. So whats with the pre-order?

  28.6.2008 18:25 #10

• emugamer

  Originally posted by jbloggs: How is it that this player is on pre-order. I've read people alreeady own this who have posted in the Pop corn community site since last year. So whats with the pre-order?The ship in bunches. If you sign up, you get in a queue. You get the offer to purchase when a new batch is available and you're next in the queue. That's how I did it. A friend of mine also. In fact, he waited 2 months. After he received his, I signed up and got the offer to purchase a month later.

  29.6.2008 21:40 #11