It's Popcorn Hour part 2

I was so eager to post about my Popcorn Hour unit that I forgot to explain what it is. It's basically a Media Player. So what does it do? Well, if you have media in your PC (e.g. videos, music, pictures, etc.) then this baby can play it and display it on your TV. So what? you might ask. Well, the advantage of having one is, you don't have to turn your computer on just to look at your pictures, your videos and listen to your music, this is a small device and has a very small power consumption, unlike most CPUs.

This is recommended to those individuals that has an HDTV in the house. Just imagine viewing your vacation pictures and watching your home videos in Hi-Def on your HDTV! Wonderful isn't it? Definitely! But videos are not limited to the ones made by you, you can also rip your DVDs and either stream it from your PC or store it in the Popcorn Hour itself. This way, you don't have to stand up and look for the physical disc everytime you feel like watching a movie from your collection. All you have to do is turn the Popcorn Hour on and watch until your eye pop out!

Then there's the add-on. A very big add-on at that! It is a stand-alone torrent downloader. If you're the type who loves to watch shows from the Internet (DLTV, Diggnation, Tekzilla) then this one is for you (and did I mention that you can watch these shows in HD?). Again, you don't have to boot up your PC just to watch these shows, just leave the Popcorn Hour do it's job and you'll have tons of fun and excitement everytime.

It's Popcorn Hour part 1

When my Ubuntu box finally died last week, I wasn't able to watch my favorite "tv series" at my own time. I was thinking of a solution to watch all those "tv shows" saved in my hard drive.

One solution is to plug it into my desktop PC and watch it from there. But the experience is different from watching it in a small screen monitor as compared to watching it on a widescreen HDTV. Then came the Popcorn Hour to mind.

I have been thinking of getting one of these before Christmas, but there was no compelling reason at the time to get one. But yesterday was a different day, I finally decided to get one.

I got the bare A-110T, no HDD installed. I was surprised when I opened the box and found an HDMI cable with it. Most hardware I bought almost always, didn't come with a cable with it. I have to buy one. But this time, the only thing missing in the box was the HDD, which I got from a PC Express near our place. I got myself a SEAGATE 500GB SATA HD. The capacity is a test one, to see if I will be able to fill it up with media content.

The Popcorn Hour is a very simple device. Inside, there's a small board, it's so small that it didn't even occupy the whole area of the unit. Made me wonder how it can process the upscaling of the videos/media that is thrown it's way. When I got home, I plugged in the HDD in the unit, screw the cover back, plugged in the HDMI cable (from the HDTV), and plugged it into the power socket.

Then there it was, the home screen, giving me options on the media in the unit, web services and settings. I reformatted the HDD, downloaded the NMT apps, and I started to fiddle around the functions on the remote control. The fist badside I noticed was the lack of a User Manual. Good thing I am technologically inclined, but how about those who's going to get one that is on the late side of the techie world?

In short, I was able to figure out how to directly download to the internal HDD, locate the Popcorn Hour in my network and transferred files to it.

I haven't put it in it's paces but hopefully in the coming days, I can spend more time with it and perhaps this site will be able to help those that are looking for knowledge about the device as well.