Popcorn Hour’s A-110 is an enhanced version of the very popular A-100 model which has been regarded as a bargain for the included functionality. With the A-110 you can import digital video, audio and photos to enjoy on your HDTV or projector/home theatre. The Popcorn Hour A-110 has a lot of versatility being part Digital Media Player, Network Attached Storage (NAS) and a Server. The versatility is possible due to its powerful, highly integrated Sigma SMP8635 decoding chipset.
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Improvements of the A-110 vs the A-100 include;
- Support for 2.5/3.5 inch SATA HDD and USB slave functionality (improved connectivity and transfer rates)
- HDMI is now v1.3a
- Hardware reset button
- Optical S/PDIF
The A-110 is flexible enough for you to stream or playback digital media files from sources including NAS, external HDD, internal SATA HDD, PC, digital cameras, portable media players and Flash USB drives. With support for most streaming formats you can gain access to digital multimedia content on the Internet (think YouTube or Flickr) via the Media Service Portal. The Popcorn Hour A-110 can serve as a BitTorrent peer-to-peer downloader, alleviating the need for a PC.
The A-110 when connected to a network, will configures itself and automatically displays all the available AV/DLNA UPnP devices, and the multimedia content found on them. It will also perform the reverse functionality acting as a NAS allowing registered users to save, access or copy the multimedia content via FTP or Samba, which means any UPnP or DLNA device can gain access.
The A-110 supports a wide variety of HD formats including WMV9, DivXHD, MPEG2TS and H.264 (containers include AVI, MP4, TS, MOV and MKV).
It should be noted that a hard drive (HDD) is not included and needs to be installed for some functionalities eg. NAS.
Networked Media Tank (NMT) fosters an online community of product users from their site. Firmware updates, technical support and online help are available. NMT offers two guarantees on parts and labor.
Resources
Sigma SMP8630 Series Secure Media Processors Specification (pdf)
In the Popcorn Hour A-110 Box
- Popcorn Hour A-110 (HDD not included)
- 1.5M length HDMI cable
- Remote Control with 2 x AAA batteries
- USB Slave cable
- Quick start guide
User Reviews and Price Comparisons
Popcorn Hour A 110 Networked Media Tank (EU)
Specification for Popcorn Hour A-110
Chipset: Sigma Designs SMP8635
Memory: 256MB DDR SDRAM, 32MB Flash
Video output: HDMI (1080p) / Components (1080p) / S-Video / Composite Video
Audio output: Analog Stereo/ S/PDIF Coaxial Digital
Network: 1 Ethernet 10/100 Mbps port / USB-WiFi 802.11g 54 Mbps (optional)
USB Host: 2 USB Host ports (USB 2.0). Supports external devices like: USB HDD, ODD, Flash Drive, Card Reader, etc.
HDD: 3.5” IDE Parallel ATA HDD (optional)
Connectivity: Bonjour, UPnP SSDP, DLNA, Windows Media Connect, Windows Media Player NSS, SMB, NFS, HTTP servidores: myiHome, WizD, SwissCenter, MSP Portal, BitTorrent P2P, NAS: SMB, NFS, FTP
Web Services:
Video: YouTube, Google Video, MetaCafe, VideoCast, DL.TV, Cranky Geeks
Audio: iPodcast, Radiobox, ABC News, Jamendo
Photos: Flickr, Picasa
RSS feed: Yahoo! Weather, Yahoo! Traffic alerts, Yahoo! Stock, Cinecast, Traffic Conditions.
Peer-to-peer TV: SayaTV
Internet Radio: Shoutcast
Supported File Types:
Video containers: MPEG1/2/4 (M1V, M2V, M4V) | MPEG1/2 PS (M2P, MPG) |MPEG2 Transport Stream (TS, TP, TRP, M2T, M2TS, MTS) | VOB | AVI, ASF, WMV | Matroska (MKV) | MOV (H.264), MP4, RMP4
Video codecs: XVID SD/HD | MPEG-1 | MPEG-2: MP@HL | MPEG-4.2: ASP@L5, 720p, 1-point GMC | WMV9: MP@HL |H.264: BP@L3 - MP@L4.0 - HP@L4.0 - HP@L4.1 | VC-1: MP@HL - AP@L3
Audio containers: AAC, M4A | MPEG audio (MP1, MP2, MP3, MPA) | WAV | WMA
Adio codecs: WMA, WMA Pro | AAC | MP1, MP2, MP3 | LPCM
Audio pass through: DTS, Ac3
Photo file types: JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF
Other file types: ISO, IFO
Subtitle file types: SRT, SMI, SUB, SSA
Cardea DRM:Windows Media DRM version for network devices (WMDRM-ND)
