Nearly a month ago I posted that Syabas had just announced the Popcorn Hour A-200. Since I obviously don’t have enough gadgets (I justify that I do it for our readers!), I decided to order one, which showed up at my door a few days ago. To be honest, I already felt like I had a good idea of what to expect since I own a PCH C-200 (you can see my review here) of which the A-200 is based off of. So, did the A-200 meet or even exceed my expectations? Well, throw on your reading glasses, put the dentures in some Efferdent, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

Hardware:

The A-200 comes with the usual compliment of goodies. Included is a power cord/brick, HDMI cable, USB cable, 2 AAA batteries, 1 IR Remote, some screws for mounting a HDD, and a quick start guide.

There are a couple of changes in the hardware versus previous PCH models. The first is the case is plastic, whereas previous models were aluminum. Because of this, the A-200  has an internal fan. I don’t have a problem with the plastic case but it does feel cheap when compared to the previous models. The fan is of a bigger concern, as with fans comes noise. I am guessing you could probably disable the fan if no HDD is installed, and expect that all the modders out there are licking their chops.

Here is a closer look at the fan.

There are slots for ventilation on the underside and side of the case. I am not sure exactly how effective this is since I thought hot air rises, but hopefully at a minimum the fan will push the hot air out the side of the case.

Here is a side by side comparison of the A-110 and the A-200.

Here is a picture of the PCH family!

Overall the PCH A-200 hardware appears just ok. Some people don’t like the look of the plastic case which is understandable, but then again the A-110 wasn’t exactly a looker! While operating the A-200 the case did get warm to the touch, but by no means hot (keep in mind that this is without an internal HDD). The fan was barely audible, only being able to hear a slight whisper by putting my ear up to the case. The bigger issue with the fan is that with daily use it is the one item I could see breaking down and getting loud over time (I didn’t get a chance to confirm is the fan runs 24/7 when you power down).

Before continuing I should mention that the first thing I did when I got the A-200 was update to the latest firmware.

UI Appearance:

Although the stock UI has been spiced up a little from the days of the A-110, I still think it sucks. There is however promise that a new Flash Based Rich UI will be available for both C-200 and A-200 owners come March (you can get details and a sneak preview here).

Current UI

Also, there is a very active community on the NMT forums that have created a variety of different jukeboxes/skins to use in place on the stock UI. My personal favorite right now is YAMJ + Aeon as shown below:

Responsiveness:

As with the C-200, the response time when navigating around the A-200 is much quicker then the A-110. The IR remote has decent range, but as with any IR remote if you lose line of sight it won’t respond. I do enjoy the RF remote that came with the C-200 since I don’t need to rely on line of sight to operate, however I think going with the IR remote makes more sense as many people will incorporate the PCH with their universal remote.

Network Performance:

When the C-200 was first released there were a lot of issues with playback over gigE networks. It appears that this problem hasn’t been fully resolved. There is an option to set the NIC to 10/100 or Auto. When I set to Auto (my network is gigabit) none of my videos would play back. When I set to 10/100 all my video files played without issue. 10/100 is more then adequate for video playback (including high bitrate content), so I am content with that. However, people who are looking to utilize the full gigabit network (main benefit probably being transferring data to/from the PCH) will be somewhat dissapointed.

Video Playback:

The Popcorn Hour players have a great reputation of being able to play back almost every file format out there. As expected, the A-200 continues this trend as every file I threw at it played fine (I tested over SMB and NFS with files ranging from basic xvid avi files to high bitrate Blu Ray mkv/ts to 1080p Apple Trailers). Below is a list of some of the types of files I played and the results:

• DVD ISO/Video_TS - The A-200 played as if there was an actual DVD disc present, with full menu functionality. No issues with playback
• Blu Ray ISO/BDMV Structure -This is where it gets a little interesting. The A-200 is only expected to have “BD Lite” functionality. What this means is that when playing back a Blu Ray ISO/BDMV you will not have the full Blu Ray menu that you would expect playing an actual Blu Ray disc, but instead have a very basic menu. When I tested out I did confirm that only a basic menu was available (see below screenshot However, other users have reported that they have full Blu Ray menus with certain movies, and witha  Blu Ray ISO of District 9 I got no menus at all, not even BD Lite. It is still unclear exactly the reasoning for this. No issues with playback.

• The infamous bird scene from Planet Earth - Played stutter free up to 90MB/s over NFS and 60MB/s over SMB.
• Transformers 1080p H.264 16 reference frames – Played stutter free over NFS and SMB
• Casino Royale Variable BitRate Averaging 47MB/s – Played stutter free over NFS and SMB

Audio Playback:

When I look at audio playback my focus is as always on how each player handles HD Audio. I check to see if bitstreaming of HD Audio (DTS-MA and TrueHD) is supported, as well as downmixing to stereo. For me the downmixing to stereo is important mainly because I want a player that if small enough I can travel with, and odds are if traveling wherever I stay will not have a state of the art home theater setup to decode the hd audio. Also, I want to be able to put the player in any room in my house and not have to worry about having the “right” equipment setup. As was the case with the previous PCH models the A-200 successfully downmixed TrueHD and DTS(MA) to stereo for playback when connected directly to a TV.

Now for the big one, bitstreaming of HD Audio. It seems more and more this is the first question that is asked when a new player is announced, can it bitstream DTS(MA) and TrueHD. It also became somewhat of a hotly debated topic with the C-200. The A-110 was capable of bitstreaming HD audio from standalone m2ts files, so it was expected that this same feature would apply to the C-200 (adding to the confusion is that the specs do state Audio Pass-Through of DTS-HD and TrueHD). However, it was discovered that the C-200 could in fact not bitstream from standalone m2ts files, only from Blu Ray disc structures (i.e. ISO or BDMV). It appears the lack of this feature is due to the new Sigma chip that is used with the C-200, so there is still hope that this “bug” can be resolved soon enough.

Since the A-200 has the same Sigma chip as the C-200, I would expect the same results with Bitstreaming. Unfortunately I ran into problems at the start. To confirm that bitstreaming from standalone files did not work I played a few of my Blu Ray ts/mkv rips, and as expected only the core audio (DTS for DTS-MA and AC3/DD for TrueHD) showed up on my Receiver. However, for any movie that had a TrueHD track, audio would drop out about every 5-10 seconds, not good. Next up were my Blu Ray ISO/BDMV rips which I should expect bitstreaming. To my surprise though I only got core audio, another bad sign. Yet I just created another Blu Ray ISO of District 9 and I got DTS(MA) bitstreaming perfectly. Interestingly enough, the movies that only gave me core audio had BD Lite, yet the one movie that gave me DTS(MA) did not have BD Lite available, so I am wondering if BD Lite is killing the bitstreaming??? From reading around the nmt forum there seems to be mixed results about getting bitstreaming to work, so it is not clear what the culprit is, but I hope this will be a quick fix in the next Firmware update. Unfortunately as I write this review the A-200 has mostly failed in not only being able to bitstream HD audio from Blu Ray structures but also failed in that I cannot play a TrueHD movie without audio dropouts every 5-10 seconds.

I should also mention that the A-200 played multi channel FLAC without issue.

Online Content:

Aside for the typical online content that has been available there is also an App center which is interesting because the apps in there are flash based. This gives a good sense of what is potentially in store for the new Flash UI. Below is a screenshot of the Weather Bug app (The latdy bug flies around the screen!).

Youtube Trailers (this is not flash based but probably the Online Content I use most frequently, you can read about how  to set up here). Please note that Youtube is not supported with the A-200, this is separate “plugin” that must be added manually.

Final Thoughts:

At this point I am a little unsure what to think of the A-200. In many ways it met my expectations and felt just as if I was operating the C-200 (aside from a few bumps in the road at launch I am very happy with). Network performance was flawless for me when using the 10/100 setting, bu the moment I switched to auto I lost the ability to play back any files. Every video file I threw at the A-200 played perfectly, and my already created YAMJ + Aeon jukebox operated without issue. The stock UI still sucks, but there is hope that in the next few months the new Flash based Rich UI will finally put all my complaints about the UI to bed. The plastic case and internal fan may turn off some potential buyers, but this isn’t a deal breaker for me. I also like the fact that as a PCH owner you have access to the many different jukeboxes out there, whereas with many other players out there you are at the mercy of the manufacturer when it comes to the UI. However, I cannot look past the audio issues. I like to think that the C-200 served as testing ground for the A-200, so with the C-200 already having 4 months under its belt and much more stable Firmware from its inital release I would expect the A-200 to come swinging out of the gate. I didn’t expect bitstreaming to work on standalone files, but the inability to consistently bitstream HD Audio from Blu Ray structures as well as the frequent drop out of audio is inexcusable (I figure right now I have lost the ability to play about 1/4 of my movie library with the A-200 due to the audio drop out issue). I would hope (or really expect) that this issue gets resolved very quickly in one of the next Firmware updates. As much as I want to recommend the A-200 because I think once these issues are worked out and the new UI gets implemented it will be a killer player, I just can’t until the audio issues are resolved.

One more thing regarding HD Audio. For me, if a media player cannot bitstream HD Audio from standalone files then it is completely useless in my Home Theatre. For some players such as the PCH C-200 and A-200 (assuming this feature gets fixed) there are ways to get around this by converting the standalone files into a Blu Ray structure, but for me this is just not practical nor do I have a desire to waste time going through my entire video collection. So FOR ME, I would not even consider the C-200 or A-200 for my home theater until standalone bitstreaming is added. However, many other people use Blu Ray structures and the PCH works perfect for their home theater. And lets not forget there is another group who could care less about HD audio. My point here is that don’t just go by what someone says about a product, do your research, figure out what features are most important to you, and then make your decision.

Pros:

• Ability to play a large selection of video/audio formats, including HD content
• Large user community
• HD Audio downmix
• Pending Flash UI
• Ability to implement 3rd party jukebox in place of stock UI

Cons:

• Audio dropouts
• Inconsistent results with bitstreaming DTS(MA)/TrueHD and Blu Ray Lite menu functionality (possibly related?)
• No bitstreaming from standalone files
• Hit or miss gigabit network
• Plastic case and fan

Links/Useful Information:

• PCH C-200 Review
• Setting Up NFS in WHS
• Setting Up Samba Sharing in SMB
• Setting Up YAMJ + Aeon in WHS
• Using Clown_BD With Your Blu Ray Collection

Known Issues:

• Issues negotiating certain gigabit networks
• Inability to bitstream from standalone files
• Frequent audio drop outs

Tagged as: Hardware, Media Streaming, PCH A-200, PCH C-200, Popcorn Hour, Reviews, Syabas