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Popcorn A400 sigma 8911 with vxp - Page 2

post #31 of 75
10/12/12 at 11:43am
That should be a given, but whether it's better than with A-300, we'll find out.
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post #32 of 75
10/12/12 at 12:52pm
I think everyone who ordered a 400 should prepare themselves for a few bugs, no ifs ands or buts. I pray I am wrong but the track record is pretty proven for new products from them! I will happily sell off my three c200 and upgrade if/when the 400 is ready for prime time! But it seems the 300 can not even get working properly so I don't have high hopes..
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post #33 of 75
10/17/12 at 3:23am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Eric View Post

preview of the nmj iPad app :

Thanks for the preview. A couple questions though. How do you have your videos ripped? Was that Blu-rays that you demoed?
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post #34 of 75
10/17/12 at 3:46am
i didn't do the demo. It was done by the french reseller who's also the exclusive importer for PCH and doing beta testing for them wink.gif

looking at the Disney splash screen i would guess that this is a mkv HD. but they also demoed the unit during a show last week and they used ISO BR 3D rip, Avatar and titanic, without any major problems (only a small skip scene problem that will be corrected in the final firmware).

Same guy posted a video for the Android version (beta) that should be out before the end of the year :


He also posted some pictures of a future app they are working on to fully control the PCH apps (will work with the 200/300/400 series) :



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post #35 of 75
10/17/12 at 3:57am
I see. I hadn't had my coffee yet when I saw your post LOL.
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post #36 of 75
10/17/12 at 8:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Eric View Post

i didn't do the demo. It was done by the french reseller who's also the exclusive importer for PCH and doing beta testing for them wink.gif
looking at the Disney splash screen i would guess that this is a mkv HD. but they also demoed the unit during a show last week and they used ISO BR 3D rip, Avatar and titanic, without any major problems (only a small skip scene problem that will be corrected in the final firmware).
Same guy posted a video for the Android version (beta) that should be out before the end of the year :He also posted some pictures of a future app they are working on to fully control the PCH apps (will work with the 200/300/400 series) :



Great info.. THANKS!!! I'm hoping the Android app comes out even soon since I don't have any Apple devices. And I've already pre-ordered my A400.

The App that can be used to control the C200 might be a nice change as well over my C200 remote.
Edited by aaronwt - 10/17/12 at 8:24am
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post #37 of 75
10/24/12 at 6:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by dbone1026 View Post

I think I read it won't have full BD Menus, so hopefully that will address the Cinavia question (i.e. no Blu-ray license)

Can someone explain the lack of BD menus and what not having Cinavia means?
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post #38 of 75
10/24/12 at 7:31am
Cinavia is a new copy protection that is in the audio stream of a movie. If the movie is not a legit copy(physical disc) you will get some msgs and the audio will stop playing or the movie all together.


To have full BD menus you need to sign up for it with the blu-ray licensing. It is mandatory for anyone using this license to implement Cinavia protection.

The way around this is to not have full menus to avoid cinavia.

Cinavia was orginally invented to combat bootleggers. So when the cinavia watermark was picked up it would stop playback. Right now Sony is the main studio Using it.
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post #39 of 75
10/24/12 at 7:41am
Good explanation. Lack of BD menus means you won't get the full, interactive menus from the original Blu-ray disc. When you play a Blu-ray ISO, you'll get a 'lite' menu that lets you only choose the playlist you want, audio track, subtitle, and chapters. You just lose the fancy menus from the original disc.
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post #40 of 75
10/24/12 at 7:56am
http://blog.dvdfab.com/cinavia-protection.html

Here is a good list of movies that have it.
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post #41 of 75
10/25/12 at 6:34am
And you could have a Cinavia disc playing in the background while making a home video. Then if you played that home video back on a Cinavia enabled played, even that video would have issues.
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post #42 of 75
10/25/12 at 6:41am
this is normal : you would have done a screener, and this is not allowed by Cinavia (in fact it's its main purpose) biggrin.gif
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post #43 of 75
10/25/12 at 7:18am
Well, if there is no menu support I suggest those of you with BR ISOs, even if they are movie only pick up a couple of existing PCH or Dune players. Presently, players with BD lite do not support forced subtitles, they create a playlist for you but they don't know when to turn subtitles on and off so that's a big fail to me. I personally do not want a player where I have to worry about whether it can play all my movies, at that point I would just defer to popping in the disc.
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post #44 of 75
10/25/12 at 10:31am
I posted this in the A300 thread but it really pertains to the A400...

I've been eyebealling another PCH product to replace another of my Boxees. I currently have an A-210 in my main media room(which replaced my 1st Boxee due to not being able to handle the audio dropouts on the Boxee anymore). I love the A210 but it was a BEAR to get it set up to be family friendly enough to use.

My biggest complaint was not being able to have 1 central movie wall that encompassed ALL my networks shares(I have 3) in ONE wall, using the built in NMJ. I ended up having to install a USB drive, then learn about scripts and eventually add the right startup commands to mount my 3 NAS devices, so that I could use a 3rd party jukebox(YAMJ) on my PC to create a central movie wall. It was a major PITA to get to that point(I'd still like to figure out how to autostart my movie wall, but that requires more time) and every time I add a new movie, I have to rerun YAMJ to rescrub(which ended up not getting some of the movie file details right). PCH never seemed to want to support multiple shares into one movie wall on NMJ. I heard it was supposed to happen on the A300, but I'm not sure it ever did there either.

So now we have the A400 coming and so my question is, has PCH addressed any of these above issue and made the thing more user friendly? Can the built in NMJ support a central movie wall, with multiple shares, without having to jump through hoops with learning scripting and using a 3rd party media scraper and how is the menu speed? I know using YAMJ, the scrolling through the movie wall could be a painful experience at times. Even using Eversion wasn't the greatest(especially if you used a different skin).
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post #45 of 75
10/25/12 at 11:01am
With the A-300 (as we've only seen demo videos of A-400 to date), the NMJ experience was improved, but some of the deficiencies you noted are still there. Werner just reiterated that, "The A-400 NMJ don't have one NMJ for multi shares!" So, what I need to do is have a single share and put exclude files in directories I don't want scanned. But, if I have another share in a different drive/source, I'm out of luck and I'm forced to maintain separate NMJ walls.

The NMJ navigation/speed looks noticeably faster. Also, I liked NMJ v2 when I had my A-300. I know many hate it, but it's certainly as good (if not better) than Boxee Box's internal scraper. For the items it identifies incorrectly or not as you want, you can use the community tools NMJToolbox2 or NMJED3 to edit the NMJ database results to your liking.
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post #46 of 75
10/25/12 at 11:19am
Thread Starter 
I will crosspost what I wrote on the nmt forums

"Because the 3rd party way is dirty. Think of it this way you have a guy with 4 usb drives using NMJ, he unplugs ones, First NMJ has to show hey that drive is disconnected so either dont display the covers for the movies on that drive or put a mark on them some how. Then you get into ok said drive or share has not been active for x amount of time how long to wait before purging the movies out of the DB, How do we handle updates to the DB if said drive or share is not active. If you take in terms like yamj/eversion sure it will mount multi shares but it also wont tell you if movies are actually present or not, and it will crash with an error on the player if not find.

There is more to it then mounting shares and letting NMJ run wild, it actually is more complex from a planning and implementing standpoint then it is from a coding standpoint. For people that dont remove, or change drives around it sounds like an easy solution but some people are always shifting things, Your same 3rd party trick will work with NMJ just mount all shares to a folder on the root of usb/sd card and let it scan that."

If someone wants multiple shares in one NMJ it is possible, all it takes is for you have to an internal usb/sd card inside the unit. You make a folder called mounts or something, Then using csi install an app to create start_app.sh then edit it to mount all your network shares to /mount/ and have NMJ scan /mount/ it will use all your shares you have. But if a share goes down, or something NMJ will remove the content thinking it was deleted. So like my post above multi mounts needs a lot of thought process to work for everyone.

And multimounts happened to a degree just not from NMJ standpoint. You can go inside a share start an mp3 leave that share go into another one and start pictures and it keeps both shares active and mounted. In the past it would only keep one so as soon as you left share1 the mp3 would stop playing.
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post #47 of 75
10/25/12 at 11:20am
There is a thread over at the UK avsforum that shows a youTube test of the Popcornhour A-400 (NMJ Jukebox)

http://www.avforums.com/forums/streamers-network-media-players/1675094-popcornhour-a400-4.html
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post #48 of 75
10/25/12 at 11:36am
Brajesh,

Yea I just read that thread where Werner made that comment. It basically will prevent me from buying one till this happens. I already hate the fact that I have to deal with Yamj everytime I add a movie(it always get the file info wrong... everything is 1.78:1 and 5.1 autio no matter what).

Halfelite,
I understand the some of the complexities but if other streamers can do it, so should PCH, especially after all these years. I really don't see an issue with what you talked about tho and why PCH can't implement it. NMJ should only be scanning at a given interval(say once a day or when you tell it). It should build a wall based on what it sees then. After that, if something changes, then either force a wall rebuild or wait for the automatic rebuld at the given interval. Now if you don't and try to play a movie that is no longer there, it simply doesn't play(that is why Yamj does) or at that point drops a red circle with a slash through it showing the movie is no longer available. Even if you want to go further and say if it detects a USB plugged in, it prompts you and asks you if you wanna rebuild the wall at that point. I still don't really see the major hangup that has prevented them from doing this over the last few years.
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post #49 of 75
10/25/12 at 12:02pm
Thread Starter 
Think of the guy that switches out a usb drive daily. Do you think he wants to wait 20 minutes while NMJ gets all the movie information and downloads the images again. because last time he unplugged his drive NMJ removed everything from the db. There has to be checks and balance built into it, its not just slap it in there or you will make more people angry then happy, The DB for NMJv2 has been setup for multimounts but never completed so hopefully they finally get around to it. Everytime you mount a share or plug a drive in NMJ should not have to rebuild it needs to be smarter then that.
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post #50 of 75
10/25/12 at 12:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by halfelite View Post

Think of the guy that switches out a usb drive daily. Do you think he wants to wait 20 minutes while NMJ gets all the movie information and downloads the images again. because last time he unplugged his drive NMJ removed everything from the db. There has to be checks and balance built into it, its not just slap it in there or you will make more people angry then happy, The DB for NMJv2 has been setup for multimounts but never completed so hopefully they finally get around to it. Everytime you mount a share or plug a drive in NMJ should not have to rebuild it needs to be smarter then that.

I think he was referring to devices like Boxee, which seem to do this with ease (once you get it set up). you can remove\add as you want as long ass the share name doesnt change. If the NMJ was sotred locally (which is what people are looking for) then it should be able to compile a DB of all shares and then only update once a share is removed\changed.......For Boxee it would retain the movies\but the movie\show\media would not be playable....
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post #51 of 75
10/25/12 at 1:25pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ph8te View Post

I think he was referring to devices like Boxee, which seem to do this with ease (once you get it set up). you can remove\add as you want as long ass the share name doesnt change. If the NMJ was sotred locally (which is what people are looking for) then it should be able to compile a DB of all shares and then only update once a share is removed\changed.......For Boxee it would retain the movies\but the movie\show\media would not be playable....

Ah thanks for the reply. Yes the NMJv2 can be stored locally, and actually holds a field for mount path that is not used at the moment, so it could be done. hopefully the focus on it a little.
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post #52 of 75
10/25/12 at 2:17pm
I believe werner said its in the works for the next major release\update (NMJ) but there is no ETA and it wouldnt be available at launch....
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post #53 of 75
12/17/12 at 1:58am
Quote:
Originally Posted by jac601 View Post

I just pre-ordered, hope this is a better experience than what I had with the PopBox......eek.gif
My friend, I just send it back to the seller, is a complete mess/failure. DTS-HD passtrhrough keeps dropping. mad.gif
I suggest to cancel the order if you can. I am totaly dissapointed, PHC-A400 is a joke :mad.gif
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post #54 of 75
12/18/12 at 6:27am
Quote:
Originally Posted by realmode View Post

My friend, I just send it back to the seller, is a complete mess/failure. DTS-HD passtrhrough keeps dropping. mad.gif
I suggest to cancel the order if you can. I am totaly dissapointed, PHC-A400 is a joke :mad.gif

I watched the entire 2012 movie this past weekend which has DTS-HD MA audio from one of my unRAID boxes. It didn't have any drops. Now to be fair I've had other titles with both advanced audio codecs have issues, but it has been inconsistent. I've had titles play through with no issue and some have issues right way. And it has never been specific to the HD audio codec for me. I've had titles with each codec play through fine and also with each codec have issues. I expect them to get a handle on those issues at some point though. But I like the A400 enough that I have a second one on the way to me right now. I really like using NMJ Navigator from my FireHD Tablets.

My C200 had some issues when I first got it in December 2009. It has been rock solid for me since a firmware release in January 2010. So hopefully the A400 will see similar results as well.
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post #55 of 75
12/18/12 at 8:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by aaronwt View Post

I watched the entire 2012 movie this past weekend which has DTS-HD MA audio from one of my unRAID boxes. It didn't have any drops. Now to be fair I've had other titles with both advanced audio codecs have issues, but it has been inconsistent. I've had titles play through with no issue and some have issues right way. And it has never been specific to the HD audio codec for me. I've had titles with each codec play through fine and also with each codec have issues. I expect them to get a handle on those issues at some point though. But I like the A400 enough that I have a second one on the way to me right now. I really like using NMJ Navigator from my FireHD Tablets.
My C200 had some issues when I first got it in December 2009. It has been rock solid for me since a firmware release in January 2010. So hopefully the A400 will see similar results as well.

You are probably one of the few who like the A400. I had high hopes for the A400, but PCH didn't disappoint just like they did with the A300. I'll give them a year or two to have the A400 somewhat stable, and then the A500 will be out rolleyes.gif
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post #56 of 75
12/18/12 at 9:46am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by GusGus748s View Post

You are probably one of the few who like the A400. I had high hopes for the A400, but PCH didn't disappoint just like they did with the A300. I'll give them a year or two to have the A400 somewhat stable, and then the A500 will be out rolleyes.gif

If they get the network issue and dts-hd fixed it should be fine to use, I think the network issue is what is causing the most problems as people are just reporting files dont play, I have been using the A400 as a daily player for about a week, everything I have plays fine except dts-hd, It functions no differently really then the past models. and the strange slowdowns I get in flash when using eversion. But should note I dont use ISO files I am a single format MKV type person.
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post #57 of 75
12/18/12 at 10:14am
I've got he folder structure, mkv's, a few BD ISOs, DVD TV Shows ISOs. All of which play fine with my Dune D1 and PCH-a210.

I'm thinking about selling them and going with Mede8er as long as they add a good jukebox.
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post #58 of 75
12/18/12 at 10:16am
Thread Starter 
I am going to try sell some older players to play with the mede8er, But hard sell for me as right now all players work for me as I dont do 3d yet, but I like toys and trying to get a jukebox on mede8er might be a fun project,
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post #59 of 75
12/18/12 at 10:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by halfelite View Post

I am going to try sell some older players to play with the mede8er, But hard sell for me as right now all players work for me as I dont do 3d yet, but I like toys and trying to get a jukebox on mede8er might be a fun project,

I don't care for 3D at the moment. My Dune and PCH are working fine, but I am getting tired of maintaining two different jukeboxes. I am also waiting for the new Zappiti / Dune media player. Hoping it isn't too buggy.
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post #60 of 75
12/18/12 at 11:05am
Quote:
Originally Posted by GusGus748s View Post

I've got he folder structure, mkv's, a few BD ISOs, DVD TV Shows ISOs. All of which play fine with my Dune D1 and PCH-a210.
I'm thinking about selling them and going with Mede8er as long as they add a good jukebox.

Just curious since I havent used a pre-bought streamer in years (I have multiple XBMC boxes I use), but what would be the draw to buying a box such as a Dune or the a400 over a pc running xbmc?

You mention multiple jukeboxes, adding jukeboxes, etc etc.
It seems that many of these boxes are at least as expensive as a inexpensive htpc and much more convoluted to have a nice GUI than running something like XBMC or even WMC.

What are the pros to something like the a400 over a htpc. My htpc's running xbmc in the livingroom and master bedroom are literally install and never touch again. I dont really ever need to update, change, tweak....they just do what I want.

That said, I wouldnt be opposed to a 'simple' streaming box for my 2nd bedroom or office...if the price is right and decent GUI and ease of use.

Thanks
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