Well I know I haven’t been on here for a while and this seems like a somewhat insane way to return, but so be it.

I bought a Popcorn Hour A-110 media streaming device to go with my new TV and I thought I’d write up my initial impressions of the unit. I wish it was all roses but sadly it’s not.

Here’s my wish list for a set top box and how well it worked with the PCH:

  • Video playback from an internal HD for many video formats
    Check!
    The PCH played back nearly everything I threw at it (although I haven’t installed a HD yet I was able to use a USB stick). The one glaring exception to this is it flat out doesn’t do Adobe’s FLV format. The decoder chip (A Sigma SMP8635) doesn’t support FLV natively and the processor in the PCH isn’t nearly powerful enough to decode the FLV on it’s own. It’s possible that there will be a firmware upgrade for the Sigma chip that will allow this, but highly unlikely.

  • Streaming support over the interwebs
    Semi-check!
    The PCH has support for a number of streaming media providers (You Tube, Veoh*, Apple Movie Trailers, and a bunch more) but it does not support the two most important ones for me, namely Hulu and Netflix. I had originally thought that these were supported but it turns out the Playon software you can buy that will allow this requires that it runs on your desktop as a streaming server. The whole idea behind this project was to eliminate the need for my desktop to handle my media so this was a disappointment. There is hope however that Netflix may be supported in future firmware releases given that the hardware is capable (the the ROKU Netflix streaming box uses the same decoder chip). As of right now there is no remedy for those that want to watch Hulu other than an outright HTPC.

  • Serve as a HD PVR/DVR
    Fail!
    I knew going in that there was no support for this. While there is basic functionality for watching TV with a HDHomerun tuner there’s no time-shifting, recording, or scheduling in place yet. There is a distinct possibility that this will be available at some point since the TIVX series of media streamer boxes do PVR and use the same Sigma chip; I’m fairly sure this is somewhat low on the PCH list of priorities though.

  • Not piss me off
    Fail!
    I had immediate issues with the unit that made the process frustrating.

    • The Network Browser was unable to access my SMB shares on my windows desktop. I spent a good 1/2 an hour trying different things but ultimately gave in and installed myiHome, PCH’s super-basic UPNP server. I’m sure I could get it to work with some more screwing around but this falls in the this-should-just-work category.
    • It’s menus are not very pretty and not very intuitive. Luckily for the PCH you can completely customize them… but again more time spent screwing around (and in this case writing code) to get a decent result.
    • They provide really poor documentation and support. The PCH operates on software created by Syabas called Networked Media Tank (NMT) The NMT web page is primarily a forum that’s very hard to search and contains a huge amount of incorrect or incomplete information. On top of that it’s very hard to search. There is also a wiki but it is very weak on content.
    • The remote control provides a serious problem that is most likely the deal breaker for me. It has a conflict with my TV. Whenever you press the left navigation arrow my TV switches input to the OTA antenna and return key increases the volume on the set. I do have an off-brand TV so this is probably not going to be an issue for most folks, but this is more or less unacceptable for me since I can’t operate with the set switching sources all the time.

So most likely I’ll be returning/craigs-listing this unit**. I could live with nearly all of it’s shortcomings for the simple fact that it does what it’s supposed to –play media– really darn well, but the problem with the remote control is simply too much to deal with. I’m not sure about the next step, perhaps a Tivx box.

Vee-shall-see.

Bleh, so darn close!

* Veoh support is very spotty and (of course) it doesn’t work with data from affiliate sites like Hulu.
** after further research looks like craigslist– the ebayer I bought it from doesn’t take returns.