Two Boxes Expand Your Entertainment Horizons
Popcorn Hour may sound like an excuse to visit the movie theater, but they actually make a mean media box. And Neuros sounds brainy, but is the manufacturer of one sexy open source media player. Each has their uses, and we tested out both over the holidays to see how best to handle our growing collection of torrented movies and shows, digital photos, and music.
We’ll start with the Neuros OSD, which serves a very specific purpose: to digitally encode videos into MP4. Small, and fairly easy to setup, it is aimed at folks who want to record TV or from other sources. But the lack of HDMI or even component and limited networking capabilities mean that buyers should carefully consider their needs before leaping in.
The Neuros also lacks onboard storage, so you need to use an external USB hard drive, or use the handy memory card reader for storage on an SD, MMC, or CF card. You can play the recorded videos on computers, even smartphones, but you’ll need to tweak the settings for best results. The open source nature of the box means that you, and the fairly large community, can hack the box, changing the user interface or modifying or adding new features. Firmware updates are regular, and we did like the easy ability to rip DVDs (via s-video) and easily play them back with any media player.
Generally though, the Neuros doesn’t quite live up to the promises it makes- the lack of NTFS support means that you need to format a hard drive in the right way, the lack of larger memory card support limits options, and the USB port won’t support all devices and is fairly slow. Finally, the device isn’t as responsive as we would have liked. But for $140, this attractive and small box does one thing and does it pretty well- just be sure to read the manual, FAQ, and forums.
A more conventional media box, the Popcorn Hour A-110 Networked Media Tank is a media streamer- instead of encoding video into digital files, it allows easy and convenient playback of whatever digital files you have. Offering HDMI 1.3a, DTS, digital optical audio (SPDIF), the A-110 is one of the better media boxes we’ve used- an excellent GUI, and support or a wide variety of formats made it a pleasure to use. Attractive, and fairly quiet, you can steam media from any PC, or install an SATA hard drive for local storage (or attach an external USB drive).
Best of all, the A-110 can serve as a fast BitTorrent client/server, and is easy to use. You can leave it running overnight without issues, and it handles most audio and photos as well, with ease. HD-capable, up to 1080p, with S-video and composite ports as well, Popcorn Hour has created quite a device. It isn’t cheap, at $215, and we wish that it had wireless networking built-in (maybe once the wireless-N spec is finalized) but we were happy with nearly every aspect of the Networked Media Tank.
