imwode February 22, 2010 at 15:02

"Overview" of the network media player Popcornhour A200

After the publication of the topic “Significantly reduce the noise level from the computer in 3 minutes”, I received letters asking me to review the Popcornhour A200 network media player. I am not a boom burum in the reviews, but I must try. To understand what will be discussed and what I will compare the unit with all the time, I am sending you to a professional review: “Overview of the BBK PopcornTV NP101S network player” I have been using the console for about two weeks, so I didn’t have time to test everything. Until this year I had the A-110, so I will mainly compare with it. And yet - the photos will be pulled from everywhere, from where it is possible, forgive me for the habraeffect induced by the hosts of these pictures, no matter who they are

On January 28, Popcorn Hour began accepting applications for the Popcornhour A-200 media console. I immediately wanted it, because in it, as it seemed to me (and not for nothing it seemed), the problem of freezing due to overheating should have been solved. Therefore, I especially did not look at the specifications - I just went and ordered. But the time has come to catch up. So,

specs / comparison

Connectivity

Bonjour
UPnP SSDP
UPnP AV
Windows Media Connect
Windows Media Player NSS
Samba
NFS

Media Servers: myiHome, myiHomeLite, myiHomeMS (UPnP), MSP Portal
Third-party media servers: WizD, SwissCenter, Llink, GB-PVR

BitTorrent P2P
Usenet downloader

NAS Access : SMB, NFS, FTP

Casgle iDVR RSS feed downloader
Web Services *

Video: Revision 3, Videocast, CNET TV, Mediafly, Mevio, Bliptv, Break Podcast,
CBS Evening News, CNN Anderson Cooper 360 Daily, CNN The Larry King Podcast,
NBC Today Show, The CNN Daily, CNN In Case You Missed It, NBC Nightly News,
NBC Meet The Press, CBS Face the Nation, Podfinder UK, Motorz

Audio: Jamendo, iPodcast, BBC Podcast, Indiefeed, CNN News, ABC News

Photos: Flickr, Picasaweb, Pikeo, 23, Photobucket, SmugMug

RSS feed: Yahoo! Weather, NMT Forum, Bloglines, Cinecast, MSNBC News,
Traffice Condition, Yahoo! Traffic Alerts, Yahoo! News, Weather Bug

Peer-to-peer TV: SayaTV

Internet Radio: SHOUTCast ™ Radio, Radiobox, Live365 Radio

Supported Media File Formats

Video containers:
MPEG1 /
2/4 Elementary (M1V, M2V, M4V) MPEG1 / 2 PS (M2P, MPG, DAT, VOB)
MPEG2 Transport Stream (TS, TP, TRP, M2T, M2TS, MTS)
AVI , ASF, WMV
Matroska (MKV)
MOV (H.264), MP4, RMP4

Video Decoders:
XVID SD / HD
MPEG-1
MPEG-2 MP @ HL
MPEG-4.2 ASP @ L5, 720p, 1-point GMC
MPEG-4.10 (H.264): BP @ L3, MP@L4.0, HP@L4.0, HP@L4.1
WMV9: MP @ HL
SMPTE 421M (VC-1): MP @ HL, AP @ L3

Audio Containers:
AAC, M4A
MPEG audio (MP1, MP2, MP3, MPA)
WAV
WMA
FLAC
OGG

Audio Decoders:
Dolby Digital
DTS
WMA, WMA Pro
MPEG-1 Layer 1, 2, 3
MPEG-4 AAC-LC
MPEG-4 HE-AAC
MPEG-4 BSAC
LPCM
FLAC
Vorbis

Audio Pass-Through:
DTS, DTS-HD HR, DTS-HD MA
Dolby Digital , Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD

Other Formats:
ISO, IFO navigation
AVCHD navigation
Simple BD navigation

Photo Formats:
JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF

Subtitle Formats:
SRT, MicroDVD SUB, SSA, SUB / IDX
DRM

Cardea DRM (WMDRM-ND )
Janus DRM (WMDRM-PD)

Chipset

Sigma Designs SMP8643, 667MHz CPU with floating point coprocessor.
Memory

512MB DDR2 DRAM, 256MB NAND Flash
Audio/Video Outputs

HDMI v1.3a, 36bpp deep color, 12-bit xvYCC processing and
HDCP 1.2 content protection
Component Video
S-Video
Composite Video
Stereo Analog Audio
S/PDIF Optical and Coaxial Digital Audio
Other Interface

Power LED and Attention LED
1x USB 2.0 host at the front
1x USB 2.0 host at the back
1x USB 2.0 slave at the back
Internal mounting for 2.5" or 3.5" SATA HDD
Infra-Red Remote Control
Full power down, standby and power up by remote control
Service pin hole for TV Mode switching and shutting down without remote control
Special designed fan that generate very low noise
Speed: 3800RPM (typical) ± 10%
Noise Level: 18.5 dB (A)
Size: L * W * H = 62 * 62 * 15 (mm)
Network

Ethernet 10/100/1000 ** Mbps
** Gigabit support depends on Switch / Router compatibility
Power

AC-DC adapter
Input 100 ~ 240V AC, 50 ~ 60 Hz
Output 12V DC, 3A max
typical: 8 W ( no additional device installed / attached)
maximum: 36 W
Dimension

Width x Depth x Height: 270mm x 150mm x 50mm (10.63 "x 5.90" x 1.97 ")
Weight

1.6kg (3.5lbs)
Package Content

Popcorn Hour A-200 (HDD not included)
IEC 60320 C13 power cord
12V 3A AC-DC Adapter
1.5M length HDMI cable
USB cable
IR Remote Control with 2 "AAA" batteries
Screws for 2.5 "/ 3.5" HDD
Quick start guide
Installation Guide
Last minute notes
Warranty Card

Dolby Digital: "Dolby" and the double-D symbol
are trademarks of Dolby Laboratories. Manufactured
under license from Dolby Laboratories.

If you compare with the A-110, then the hardware has significantly improved and some functions related to playing BD (I personally am not interested), AVCHD navigation (potentially interesting, because my camera writes to AVCHD, the new Rich UI interface, which we they haven’t shown yet, the application center, widgets (possibly) and everything. Innovations in hardware look more impressive - the processor frequency has doubled, the amount of RAM has doubled, the amount of flash has quadrupled, and coaxial S / PDIF has appeared.

Feelings and initial setup

What did this give me - the ordinary user - besides realizing what is bigger / higher / farther? And it gave, I have to say, a lot. The feeling is that everything flies, movie lists are instantly scrolled, playback starts, screens change, fragments rewind. I did not count on this, but I was very pleasantly impressed. To make it completely clear, I did not have the slightest complaints about the A-110, but in the new A-200 the sensations improved by an order of magnitude.
I think those users of the A-110 (and other syabas-based consoles) will be interested to learn about one feature of the A-200 before buying it - there will not be such a surprise as mine. The fact is that the A-200 can install its applications on screws removed from the "old" consoles, only by formatting them first. Surprise-surprise, I have a half terabyte of information that I don’t have much to throw off. I turned out, connecting the console via USB-slave to the computer, and draining all the information on it (speed somewhere around 20Mb / s) - it took about six hours. But I downloaded it back over the network, the router pumps about 7 Mb / s and the whole operation took almost 18 hours. Be ready…
Another surprise that I might have avoided, or maybe it would not have happened - is the installation of applications after formatting the hard drive. The forum reported that the update does not work and tell us a lot and colorfully how and for how long they solved this problem. On the advice of the same forum http://www.networkedmediatank.com I was protected - I downloaded applications on a flash drive and updated from it.
But enough about surprises, let's look at how the new console looks like.

Appearance

Well, firstly, my video . So it looks really live. This is such a brick made of glossy plastic.

It looks aesthetically pleasing to the amateur, the impressions are mixed. Especially when you look at a picture. When you pick it up, you like it a lot. And when you put it under the black TV in the interior, you get up like a native. Again, in contrast with the A-110, the design itself is much friendlier, because firstly, the prefix is black and does not shine in the dark, and secondly, the LEDs installed behind the front panel are very muffled. The A-110 shamelessly shone red LEDs in the eye, distracting them from watching the movie, while the A-200 turns on the LED only when it’s rebooted, the rest of the time the white light barely glows in it.
The remote control has changed a lot. Firstly, the arrangement of the buttons has changed, but this did not cause rejection. Apparently the remote control from the A-110 was so uncomfortable that I never used it blindly, and when it came to controlling the console, I always looked down at the buttons. The new remote is more comfortable and I fully believe that someday it will be possible to use it completely blindly. But so far I'm not used to it. And I watch movies in the dark. Therefore, a pleasant surprise was that the buttons on the remote control have a backlight.

Playing files

In such reviews, as a rule, the largest part is devoted to listing the file formats that the device can play. Sorry, I have nothing to please you. Since popcorn, I forgot what format problems are. Everything that moves is playing, but if you have a suspicion that it doesn’t work out some tricky format, you can upload a sample somewhere and I’ll try to lose and write about the results. In general, in this part, I can not say anything interesting for researchers of long lists of audio-video formats. And for the rest: isn’t this enough - the complete absence of problems for a year of using the device (I think I can expect that the A200 will inherit the omnivorous from A110?!?).

Networking features

Everything is the same as in A-110 - we can samba, we can nfs, ftp, upnp, torrent-rocking. Connecting to 100 megabits, there is “support” of gigabits, but without tears you won’t look at the compatibility sheet , a few units of routers are supported, and even those are not without problems. There is the possibility of working on Wi-Fi, for this you need to buy a native dongle, promises not to work with others. My previous prefix played movies from a screw connected to WL500gP (on that NFS export was configured, and this ball was added by a network drive to the A-110). But for half a year now I’ve got a new Linksys WRP400 instead of WL500gP, which, among other things, distributes a telephone around the apartment, so there are no network drives. Movies and music from a computer can be watched through uPnP.
Of the services I personally use only radio (shoutcast), but the list of services has a lot of video and radio, so I think many will find a service to their liking. I also tested the weather service, Moscow was on the list, I showed the weather. There’s nothing to add to this.
News (not entirely unexpected) was the lack of youtube. We didn’t agree on something, youtube support was removed. Well, probably, this is not very critical - the usability was not very high for this service on A110.

A few words about the screw

If possible, choose a 2.5 "screw - significantly reduce the heating of the insides, and the attachment will weigh a little less. By the way, now you need a screwdriver to install the screw. The case is pulled by five screws - you need to open it and install the screw on the mini-slide four more screws that slide in turn with another screw fixed to the base. Be sure to check the compatibility sheet .

Freezes

I have a hang. They are related to the work of the torrent rocking. The forum is trying to understand how this is related to the number of simultaneous downloads, peers and maximum download / download speeds. I believed that the hangs slightly depend on these parameters. Hangs occur at the moment when the download of the torrent has ended and verification has begun. The CPU load from verification + some network activity (someone is watching video over the network or torrents continue to pour) and hello. But! What is nice, the A200 quietly reboots from the remote, unlike the A110. A110 had to constantly click the toggle switch, but in the A200 it simply does not exist. Hold the power button for 4 seconds and the console starts blinking with a bright LED, indicating that it completes all the processes and goes into shutdown. After another five seconds, complete silence ensues - both the processor cooler and the screw are turned off. Turning on the prefix after this takes about a minute, which causes complaints of some observers, but I, for example, do not care ... Compared to the A-110, the new prefix is stability in the flesh itself.
In general, this is all I wanted to say - you can look at the official specs above or on the site yourself , but I tried to reveal unobvious things that you encounter by opening the box and running to the store for the hard drive, i.e. spending not very little money.

Oh yes, a few words about the purchase

The order is executed directly on the website www.popcornhour.com , the purchase is made through Google Checkout, where, accordingly, you need to have an account, for which you need a credit card. After the purchase is completed, Google takes the amount from you (I got 6.966 rubles in rubles with delivery to the MO) and gives you the tracking number ems tracking number. Here is my tracking:

Operation	date	Index	Address	Attribute surgery	Weight, kg.)	Address of the recipient
Export	01/29/2010 19:42		Hong Kong HKHKGA
Import	01/31/2010 9:22 PM	104010	Moscow EMS		1.612	Moscow region
Treatment	02/08/2010 20:29	104010	Moscow EMS	Left the place of international exchange
Treatment	02/10/2010 04:47 AM	130 100	Moscow EMS SC	Sorting
Treatment	02/10/2010 11:11 PM	141030	Mytischi EMS SC	Sorting
Handing over	02/11/2010 12:00	141030	Mytischi EMS SC	Delivery to the addressee	1.612

The parcel was brought straight home.

Well and similar results

pros

Omnivore
Relative cheapness
Significantly increased speed
Significantly improved stability
Case design
New luminous remote
Switching off from the remote control (this, by the way, is a very serious plus - until you use the console, you will not appreciate it)
Easy navigation (comparable to a VCR, a wife uses it with pleasure)

Minuses

Noise from a regular fan
Case design
There are small stability problems (it freezes when verifying torrents)