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PopBox STB To Ship Soon But Without Netflix, Pandora
DeviceGuru writes "Syabas says it is nearly ready to ship the PopBox, which it announced in January (though they said at the time it would ship in March). The $129 Internet-based A/V streaming set-top box will offer a variety of user-selectable media-streaming apps, but is unlikely at launch to include Netflix instant downloads (promised at announcement), Pandora music, or Amazon pay-per-view video support. According to Syabas, the PopBox only works with HDTVs and not standard definition TVs, and has component outputs in addition to HDMI; plus, the company says the device supports RealD 3D. More details are on the PopBox website."
Without Netflix, and without support for standard resolution televisions, why should I consider buying this over a Roku or any of the other "set-top multimedia" boxes?
This appears to be the first inexpensive STB that supports discovery and streaming of media directly from a SAMBA or other protocol server. Most of the set top boxes to date have been dependent on software running on a host OS on a computer elsewhere in your network (I have one of the Kodak ones).
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I was always under the impression that this tech was dependent on a specific projector. Wouldn't that mean that the TV would have to support it? The projector alternately projects right-eye frames and left-eye frames 144 times per second.[6] It circularly polarizes these frames, clockwise for the right eye and counterclockwise for the left eye. A push-pull electro-optical liquid crystal modulator called a ZScreen is placed immediately in front of the projector lens to switch polarization. -- Wikipedia entry
If this unit has the same firmware development team (and likely, it does) who handle firmware for Popcornhour & etc, good luck getting this unit to a usable state until at least a year after initial release.
popcornhour c-200 is a perfect example of good hardware ruined by crappy firmware support.
there are still bugs over a year after release that aren't getting fixed. ridiculous.
If you don't care about Netflix or Pandora, sure maybe this is something to buy. But I see inexpensive blu-ray players that have Netflix and Pandora for less. Who is the product's intended market? Not me; I don't see a need for any of the "apps" in the screen shot, and I certainly don't want something else by the TV sucking up electricity and using up space.
Make love, not reality television.
And am really unhappy with it.
They advertise that it works with network shares. The pains I had to go through to get it to work with windows 7 was crazy. It just wouldn't recognize the shared drive. I'd be able to see it from my wifes PC just fine, but the WD Live wouldn't see it. Had to go through 3 or 4 howto's online to figure out how to make it work. Finally got the right combination of settings and it worked, but if you disconnect the network cable from it (I only have one cable ran to my living room and it has to share with my 360) it takes about 15 minutes before it'll start talking to shared drives again. It'll get online and let me watch youtube, so I know it has access, but it won't talk to the drive on my laptop.
This is going to sound kinda dumb, but I also really hate how small it is. It doesn't look like it fits in my TV cabinet with everything else.
In order to use Hulu and netflix, I have to use a program that runs on my laptop called Playon. It essentially transcodes the video and acts as a media server. So I use the WD Live, go to media servers, then Playon, then select hulu, and I can search TV shows. It also works for netflix, amazon video, ESPN, Comedy Central, and a few others. The interface is really bad, it looks just like folders in explorer in windows. Actually searching for something is impossible, you just have to look through alphabetically. And no way to make playlists or anything. I'd like to make a playlist that has my favorite shows on hulu so I can check it quickly, but instead I have to check each show for new episodes individually.
I own the popcorn hour box (the same company - network media tank - as far I understand) and well, it leaves a lot to be desired. Internet is full of complaints from users trying to play their blue ray disks; youtube does not work even though there is some note about it on their main page (now the support has been promised in the "next firmware version"), podcast clients (provided as standalone "application" for each podcast) are absolutely useless - no history, no forwarding, sometimes skipping a part of the podcast. Internet browser is worse than IE 3.0. Networking quite slow (4-5MB/sec in my case), even on a 1G network.
So if you are looking for something to play your DVDs, .avi and .mkv, with optional subtitles, go for it. just do not expect it to do anything else. If you need more, it might be better/cheaper to buy a mini fanless computer with an external HDD.
Oh, so in other words, it's dead on arrival.
When you figure that Blu-Ray players can be had for $12 more than this piece of crap and the Blu-Ray player can do not only Netflix, Amazon, Pandora, Youtube, and so on, it can also play Blu-Ray, DVD, and CD media.
Fail.
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I'm an original owner of the A100 and also C200 players from this company (pch, syabas).
what the parent says is true.
I would not have any confidence in this box's ability to do what its advertised (well) and to go beyhond it with meaningful updates.
they will claim some api or toolkit or library is holding them back. for years at a time, they'll say this.
so very lame.
sorry, but do not buy this box or their designs. they are not well thought out (spdif and NICs are also not well designed from a hardware POV).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I couldn't care less about the standard res portion of that. But, without the single most popular stream service on the face of the planet, it is DOA.
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Look at the Aspire Revo 1600. http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=67819 is an excellent guide to getting it running.