POPCORN HOUR A-400 is coming soon - Page 6

Thanks to all of you who have helped a long time ht guy who is new to the networking arena. So, let me make sure I have this right. I rip my movies using one of the ripping programs to my hard drive and the a-400 connects to my network and ht pre-pro and via a GUI I can access all my films and music. That sounds right but I wanttomake sure I know before I order one.

That is essentially what media players do, once you get used to it, optical media would become rather .. 'clumsy'

Very Clumsy. It is extremely rare for me watch/listen to any content from a disc now. The first thing I do when I get a new BD title is rip it to an ISO before I watch it. Then I throw the disc in a pile of titles that I still need to put in storage.

Way to make me feel old. If I wanted to hear a whole lp, I had to get up and flip it over. How things have changed.

Nah, just another way to watch content. In the days of LaserVision you had to flip the disc for most titles unless you had a CAV version which required two disc with four sides for most titles. I have several TB’s worth of content on hard drives and NAS drives. I do like having my CDs ripped to my NAS media server but think nothing of putting a BD (or sometimes a DVD) in the player. Seems some people are so anxious to have the day come when they have no body and are just a head on a pedestal.

Several people have asked me about my FTA satellite (PBS) recordings and when I explain the process that usually ends their desire to do what I do.

I think LP is probably an exception to the rule, watching it spin in dimmed light is quite an enjoyment, and the quality of music from a good setup, well shall I say just worth the effort? Enough said before derailing the thread

Does anyone know when the pre-orders will start shipping?

I dumped all of my LPs when I got my first CD player in 1985. After hearing the CDs I could not go back to listening to any records. I either bought them on CD or recorded them to a cassette tape. Then I threw the whole lot in the trash. I did the same thing with my VHS tapes. After getting my first DVD player in 1998 I trashed all my VHS tapes a couple of years later. After after getting BD/HD DVDs in 2006, at least with my DVD s I didn't trash them. I donated them to a local charity and took a $2k write off(or was it $1k?) on my taxes that year.
Edited by aaronwt - 10/18/12 at 6:22am

Last I heard was that they would ship from China near the end of the month or the beginning of November. And then the people that paid the extra $8 for the air shipping from China would get their units shipped out the day DiamondDesigns receive them from China.

Okay, thanks.

I really can't wait to put this thing up against my Oppo BDP-93. My Oppo has been flawless playing .iso's, but always having to connect a USB drive stinks. Also, support for certain audio and subtitle tracks in .mkv's is pretty poor. I'm really hoping the A-400 handles all of that, while outputting the same quality video. Really, the video output quality is my main concern, as up until this point, I haven't seen a device that comes close to the Oppo.

If anyone could help e out with this I would really appreciate it. I just downloaded dvdfab. Can anyone tell me the steps I need to take when ripping disks (dvd, blu-ray abd 3d) to my hard drive so that when I recieve and set up my a-400 it will be able to access my movie library? There are so many options with fab I'm a little confused. Thanks again!

Can you clarify what you want (i.e. do you want a full disc rip, main movie only, compressed mkv file, etc...)

I want to rip my library in the highert quality possible (non compressed full hd audio and video, true hd 5.1 etc) and in most cases just the feature without all the extras. I have been playing with it but must be doing something wrong. I wish I had a "dvdfab for idiots" guide. Thanks for the help, feel free to pm me if you would like.

You can optionally try MakeMKV (which is currently still free) to rip just the main movie with hd audio to MKV. You get the untouched video and audio. MakeMKV is very easy to use.

http://www.dvdfab.com/blu-ray-copy/how-to-copy-blu-ray-movies-in-an-easy-and-professional-way.htm


Or this ^. MakeMKV also rips full discs

I rip to full disc ISO only, and this is what I do:

1. I got DVDFab Passkey, and the free and awesome Imageburn
2. DVDFab is a very simple decryption utility, all you need to do is to set some very minor preferences, and start the program whenever you want to rip anything
3. Insert the BD/DVD you want to rip
4. DVDFab will attempt to find the encryption on the disc and decrypt it, once decrypted,
5. Run Imageburn, select the optic drive you want to rip the disc from, and the destination and name of your ISO file
6. Click 'Image File from Disc'

That's it !

Thanks again for all the help in this forum. I am now successfully ripping my library to Mkv files. I ordered an a-400 and did get the 8 dollar air mail offer which I jumped on. Going to get a 4tb hard drive then should be all set ( till the 400 comes in.)

If getting an internal drive I would just make sure it is a green drive (i.e. 5400-5900rpm) and not a 7200rpm drive due to heat concerns in a small case

I'm going with an external "cloud" type drive but thanks for the tip.

Does the A400 need a USB stick for the applications or will an SSD work fine? I have 8 or 9 SSDs lying around that I need to sell. So I figure I might as well put one of them in the A400 instead of a platter drive. Since I really don't need a bunch of storage in the unit. I put a 500GB drive in my C200 and really never used it for anything.

I pre-ordered it as well, did not get the $8 air shipping proposal email yet. I really hope I am not late with that as waiting 3-4 weeks for the unit to arrive "on water" would drive me just crazy

my understanding is that a SATA SSD/disk would work fine, as would a SD card.

I think I'll go the SD card route, myself.

The smallest used SSD I have is a 60GB SSD ,which I figure isn't worth much to sell. So I'm planning to use that in my A400. Plus I figure it should be faster than an SD card or USB stick. Not sure what the difference in speed would be though.

I had an SSD in an A300 to use for my Eversion library. It was by far the fastest way to run Eversion, beating out running it off an NFS share.

Can someone direct me to the best forum / thread for discussions regarding jukeboxes for Popcorn hour?

I currently have a Boxee Box that have a very nice jukebox for both movies and TV shows.

I use Ember to generate nfo files and tumbnails and so on, but the discontinued support of Boxee Box and audio dropouts ans so has forced me to look for alternatives.

I also have a couple of WD TV Live and Dune HD MAX players.

Is it correct tat the jukebox in Popcorn hour is more or less useless for TV shows?

i use nmj since it was released on the C200, it was a pain in the beginning and totally useless when it came to Tv shows, also the missing multi language was crap.
I have currently an A-300 with the newer NMJ, on this i have no issues anymore, i have my music, movies and tv shows in nmj, the metadata is in my language now and it just works for me.
One important thing is that your library is correctly named, so naming like avatar.1080p.dts........ will not work, or you use nfo files then the naming doesn't matter.
My music is perfectly tagged, so also there i have no issues.
Anyway XBMC or in your case Boxee jukebox is for sure still more advanced, but i am fine what NMJ gives me and my family.

Yesterday in the nmt forum they posted new videos, maybe this helps?

http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=62790

new videos posted as well as a lot of screenshots for the ipad app : http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=62790

on screen browsing seems a bit slow while the app seems quite fast. nice to see that there's a parental control...

edit : should have read the previous post

Im in the same boat as you, looking for a repalcement for my Boxee Box. It looks like Ill be getting the Roku for Net Apps and either this or the med1000x3d. Im leaning towards the A400 though. The TV show NMJ looks greatly improved form teh videos they have posted. With the App control\NMJ control app and the interface\ability to play most everything (I dont care about Menus for ISO) I think the A400 is probably going to be the winner. Im heavily debating on pre ordering or waiting for the 1st reviews to see if there are any MAJOR bugs...

Go here for info and forums:
http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=62791

http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/index.php?pluginoption=buynow

looked at their app store I assume its also for the 400.
still no netflix?