POPCORN HOUR A-300 Network Attached Multimedia System

Im pretty terrible at writing reviews so I'm just going to try my best to elaborate on the positive and negative aspects of this Media Player.

I've been using media players for some time now, mainly boxes like WD TV, cheap chinese £20 players, running XBMC on a 1st ten Xbox and on a small PC tower.

I would not recommend the Popcorn Hour A-300 to users who are new to media players because you will not be able to get the full benefit out of this box. Mine needed hours and hours getting all the 3rd party software installed onto it and organising my media collection. Its going to take someone a long time to learn how to configure this unless they have some idea about how networking and these boxes work.

Now to the good and bad bits. Its the best box I have had by far. My media collection looks better than ever.

The good:
Its has a metal enclosure, fan-less (the only noise you hear is the hard drive ticking). The remote is really great, feels well made. Almost considered using it next to my Logitech harmony remote, but the harmony got the exclusive rights in the end. You can download the iPlayer (which supports HD) and it looks great. You can transfer data between a hard drive to another in the background while watching videos and using apps, a useful feature that you were unable to do with the WD TV. The jukebox feature (where you can view all your movies covers and art on a wall) works well. It looks stunning and gives you information from IMDB and a fan art background. The torrent feature was just what I was looking for. The built in torrent client is a bit too simple but you can install Transmission (using 3rd party software) to get more options. I didn't have a go at usenet on this but I've heard good things about it. The unit can be used as a NAS to stream all your media around the house to iPads, computers and other devices.

The bad:

You need 3rd party PC software if you have a large media collection, otherwise it will take you years to edit it all on the unit itself. NMJ Toolbox and NMT community installer are essential. The unit can be a bit sluggish at times, specially when doing background transfers. For £200+ I would expect it to be fast enough to handle everything. Its not very user friendly. It takes a long time to learn where everything is and sometimes you can't press back to go back. You have to press red green or yellow which can get annoying. The USB 3.0 is a host feature only. That means you can hook it up to a computer but not connect it to a USB 3.0 HDD (like the one i bought with mine before I realised it was not compatible and could only achieve 2.0 speed). There are not enough apps in the app store. I suppose unless they make it more user-friendly you are not going to get a big enough community of users to get the big names developing apps. Well done to the BBC though.

Overall, id give it an 8/10.

This 'Media Tank' could easily become a 10/10 if the developers worked on the software and made it a bit quicker.


Well worth the money.