ok, a few words about my new popcorn hour A110 + THE wn 100...have been extensivey tinkering around with it and at the end of the day reaised, though the main product page and specifications at their website list a whole lot of abcdxyzee, a few lines are missing... here goes...
1) the heat as an issue (in the popcorn 100) has been effectivey addressed, the chipset in 110 has a brand new heatsink with the lid having some sort of a squarish material stuck to its underside where it covers the heatsink of the chipset / processor. I tried sticking my hand on the heatsink within seconds of stopping extended operation (2hrs) and was surprised to find, that , though the unit gets quite bearaby warm during operation , the heat dissipated away instantaneousy on stopping the unit.
2)pop corn hour links to your internet either via ethernet wire or via the wifi usb dongle wn 100....a few other supported dongles are also available (some even in india), wn 100 being from the same company that produces popcorn hour.
3)you can access the internal hard drive of your PCH A 110 from your computer put or pull fies from it.
4)just using the remote of PCH A 110 (which is connected via wifi or ethernet to isp), u can access ur comp (which for illustration purposes is in another room and is connected via wifi to the same router) and play videos,music, etc
5) HD videos dont stream that well (some senior members must be thinking u dumbo u must already be knowing that) well, i didnt, and in the intention of heping others ike me
im posting this.
6)All other medial files streamed from comp to PCH a 110 excellenty well and played without a hitch. The speed of transfer being marginally better with the PCH connected via ethernetcable to router rather than wifi dongle connected. ( i didnt try the vice versa ....ie...comp cabe connected to modem/router with the PCH connectedvia wifi dongle) the net connection in question being BSNL 512 kbps unimited conn with their standard modem / router with four ethernet ports and wifi routing capabiity. future i plan to cable both PCH and comp to modem / ISP and try playing HD content.
7)PCH connects to the net on its own and updates firmware, self installs applications (after u ask it to do so ),plays youtube and other such media site content, podcasts, internet radio, p2p tv list is endess.....but one thing that i thought of while installing internal hard drive is ..." on PCH itself (without needing comp)i will be able to browse and add torrents for downoad" ....it is not so . The clients supported by PCH are primitive and need you to open your comp and add torrents (on firefox, ie not supported), which are then taken care of (downloaded) by the PCH using its internal HDD.
8) question : if u need your comp to browse and add torrents, why not u use an external HDD itself attached to comp usb to do the job? then u can ferry the hdd to the PCH for play. This would also save PCH the heat and the operation time (standard 1080p MOVIE RIP takes 2 to 4 days even on a 512 kbps bsnl connection)
Other than these minor issues ( issues at least to me, who was looking at PCH replacing my laptop completey) PCH is a nice gentle beast, handling with ease hell a lot of formats, athough a certan lag time is apparent after u chose the play option and the actual play starts.
anyother men sailing the same boat ? additional info, critiques aways wecome
