Popcorn Hour A-210

Noise levels and manufacturing quality were the main criticisms leveled at the Popcorn Hour A-200. Now we have the Popcorn Hour A-210, technically similar but with an aluminium casing and minus the fan. We've taken the opportunity to take another look at the Popcorn Hour software.

Quality casing, quiet

Out with the doubtful quality plastic casing, then, and in with the black brushed aluminium. A quality finish, but it is a shame you need to use your screwdriver so extensively to install a hard drive (2.5 or 3.5 inch).

There's no longer a fan to dissipate the heat given off by the decoding chip, but rather a large block of aluminium. It enters into contact with the upper part of the casing, which plays the role of radiator. The casing doesn't heat up too much and, best of all, the centre remains quite quiet. Hard drive vibrations are attenuated by supple rubber pads.


The remote (IR) is similar to the ones used on the A-200 and C-200. We like it: it's a high-end model with backlighting and a smooth surface with rubber on the back for better handling.

The navigation interface can be broken down into two parts. First you get the standard presentation that we're going to go into more detail on below and then there's the NMJ (Networked Media Jukebox). This is a universal jukebox which catalogues all files stored so as to facilitate visualisation (film and music album jackets).


The standard interface is however a good deal more sparse. The main menu is built around a merry-go-round of icons, each representing one section of the centre. The various files are presented in tree form, as a list. This means photos aren't displayed in miniature as they are with the NMJ.

Things are a little bit better for audio playback where album covers and track info is displayed. MP3, M4A, OGG and FLAC tags are all recognised.

Video jukebox: two possibilities

A video jukebox displays film and series posters in wall format. Popcorn Hour centres can display this system in two different ways. The first, as we saw higher up, is with the NMJ. The advantage of the NMJ is that it is entirely autonomous (it runs from the centre itself) but it still has a few bugs (some errors in the IMDb search engine, updates laborious, RIP-DVD jackets ignored) and takes some time to set up.

The other solution is to use a third-party programme, developed by other users. There are several options here but the one with the best rep is still the YAMJ. It performs well and handles both films and TV series. The numerous available skins mean you can make yourself a first-rate video jukebox.


Nevertheless, newbies will sometimes be put off by its configuration and usage. To generate your pages, you need your computer (Windows, Mac or Linux) and then you need to update the jukebox after adding each film or series (you fill in the settings manually).

Not necessarily the most practical system at first though the results are excellent. Developers in the community are now offering small applications to help you with configuration. These provide you with a graphics interface to help manage the multitude of options or automate the updating of pages. We particularly liked the TOMY.

Compatibility: decent overall but without Blu-ray menus

Multimedia compatibility has always been a strong point on Popcorn Hour centres, except for the growing pains on the high end C-200 range. HD 1080p videos are fluid, whatever the throughput.

DTS and Dolby can be decoded (stereo downmix) or sent to an external amp (bitstream). These formats are also supported in HD, with the exception of Dolby TrueHD which is only accessible in bitstream (decoding impossible).


There's playback for ISOs and RIPs of Blu-rays and DVDs. You can access the various audio tracks and subtitling. However, only DVD menus are displayed. For Blu-rays, the film starts up on its own.

There are various little extras that are nice to use. You can move the sound/image around should there be any synchronisation required (lipsync 2 seconds). The auto framerate allows you to set the image throughput according to the video (24p, 23.976 and so on). The subtitles can be moved on the timeline if they don't appear at the right time.

Connectivity: not really a Gigabit network

There are numerous audio and video outs, which will please owners of HD (HDMI 1.3, YUV) and SD cathode ray (composite) screens. Sound can be sent via HDMI, optical, coaxial or analogue stereo.

A USB 'type B' port means you can link the device to a computer to copy files at an average of 25 MB/s. Two USB Host ports, one of which is on the front, are also there to link up to peripherals. Again, speeds are pretty good (14.7 MB/s) for copying, which translates to fluid playback of videos with high throughput.

Networking is via an Ethernet Gigabit (1000 Mbps) connector. Unfortunately, the chip used doesn't support this mode perfectly and copying to or from the centre doesn't match what you get with a true Gigabit peripheral: 10.5 MB/s. This is nevertheless a good deal better than most other media centres at 100 Mbps. You can access wi-fi using a USB key.