New lounge media unit to replace Shuttle PC

[adigraham]

Hi all!,

Looking at the Popcorn Home A110 to replace my Shuttle PC as a means of watching movies. Can you guys share some experiences with me please or say what you guys are running with please?

[s_kinton]

The popcorn Hour you're looking at is possibly the best media player out there in terms of functionality. The Netgear EVA-8000 is also pretty good and a heck of a lot cheaper.

I personally use a self built HTPC for all my needs, along with my PS3 and the PS3 Media Server sotfware which allows playback of pretty much anything on the PS3.

I'm also considering an Acer Revo for the bedroom for playback. At £150 it will playback all my media from the HTPC at a low cost and its tiny.
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/960679...C/Product.html

[adigraham]

I see the Popcormn is the only player to support Dolby DTS playback though?

[probspot]

I don't think the netgear offers DTS playback....in fact, i think the popcorn is one of the few to support this, at least at this price (Don't quote me on that!)

Personally i use a PS3 for my HD viewing needs...shame it take me absolutly hours to copy anything to it

[adigraham]

Yeah i got a shuttle running xp and boxee but its noisy as the fans make the cabinet vigrate and i want a portable solution so i can go rounds frends houses with the media player i buy? I used to run a xbox 1 with xbmc but that got old so i got the shuttle!

[probspot]

Yeah i've had media PCs, but the biggest problem with them in my experience is windows. (i'm not a fan of linux), so to have something as a dedicated media player is by far a better chioce IMO.

[adigraham]

Did you try using different frontends as well then? hate to sell my shuttle TBH, i have tried boxee, xbmc (couldnt get meta updates to work) and meda portal . most of them dont allow RW/ FF in mkv files which is annoying ..?

[probspot]

Yeh, the front end wasn't really a problem, i quite like MS MCE, it's booting into windows that fustrated me - oh and having to get a remote which has an external IR reciever.

But even with a dedicated media player...i'm not sure that you'd be able to FF or RW thru a MKV.

[adigraham]

Hmmm yeah i had the infrared receiver POC! Ok well I guess i will have to think long and hard about whats next .. just need a solution that has its own OS ideally?

[adigraham]

Probspot, have you done much research on the Mediacentres?

[adigraham]

Also i saw this would is neat which allows the defaults skins to be upped to fancy ones.

http://omertron.com/pch/

Just trying to suss out why you have to use a pc to run it though .. weird!