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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?
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.
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.