Popcorn Hour A-110
November 13, 2008 – 4:01 pmI received my Popcorn Hour the other day and so far I am not happy with it.
I have an Xbox with XBMC that I had been using every day. I bought the Popcorn Hour for a couple of reasons, HD, quietness, and I'm worried about my four year old Xbox having a heart attack in the middle of a movie.
It was my hope that the Popcorn hour would work at least as well as the Xbox and solve those problems. The Popcorn works exactly as advertised, no complaints there. I can plug it into my network and watch videos off of a SMB share.
I really think my problems are more, 'It is not XMBC', rather than the Popcorn Hour being flawed.
What I like:
* The case looks a lot nicer than an Xbox.
* It's silent. This is wonderful.
* Watching TV on an Xbox makes you feel like a huge nerd, not so much on the Popcorn.
My problems:
* The interface is slow. There is a second or two pause between pages when scrolling through a directory listing. XMBC can scroll through the same list in a blur. This slowness annoys the hell out of me, I don't see any reason why it should be slow either. Cache the directory listing, and then scroll the cached copy, dang.
* I have a lot of music videos that I like to queue into a random play list and play while I work around the house. Popcorn can't seem to do this.
* No FLV file support, this one is my fault for not paying attention to the supported formats list, but it still bugs me.
* Whenever a video loads, my TV displays a bright blue 'NO INPUT' screen for about four seconds before the video starts. This is annoying any time, and blinds you late at night.
As my opinion stands now I wouldn't recommend the Popcorn Hour to anyone. At first I was going to say it would be nice for someone who isn't computer savvy, but anyone capable of having a collection of ripped videos and such to warrant a Popcorn Hour is probably smart enough to figure out XBMC.
Update 11/15/08:
Some goony goon goon suggested I set the PH to use one video mode instead of auto. That fixed my TV blue screening.
I still hate the PH and I am sending it back.
My Xbox will never play HD, so for that I'm going to wait until XBMC Linux matures and then I'll build an HTPC. In the mean time, so begins Operation Silent Xbox.
