I've been wanting something to allow me to play HD movies from my PC onto my new big Plasma (cos I'm not buying a Blu-Ray player!).

After much hunting around I came up with this:

Popcorn Hour

Now this was completely new to me a few days ago, but it seems so good (and had LOTS of great reviews from those in the know) that I ordered one from Pixmania, as far as I know the first UK company to stock it (they are often sold out at the makers they are in such high demand).

And for £150 (I paid the £75 extra for a 500Gb internal drive) it will stream and play practically all known video formats, stream video from the internet, and even act as a dedicated media PC for downloading Torrents. So defintiely good value for money, and updated on a monthly bases as they develope the software.

Thought I'd post it on here incase anybody else is looking for a relatively locost option of getting HD movies onto your nice big new telly.

I'll let you know how I get on with it once it's all set up.

That looks interesting - Keep us updated with progress of how it works out!

I too have a nice HD TV with just SD sources - Really want to see HD quality on it!

Are these big in the States?

Looks a pretty cool bit of kit! Do let us know how this works out please, I'm interested in getting one already!

Chris

It's definitely an interesting product but it's also a really fast developing market. I use a 360 but there now TVs out there (Loewe and others) with ethernet ports built in that will stream content without the need of any additional boxes like this. Not sure I can wait though as I need something now.

And the problem with the TV's I'm sure is that they will be more restrictive in what they can stream. The great thing with Popcorn Hour is that is updated every month so can always keep with with the ever changing formats, I doubt very much the TV's will, and the PCH is only £150 - how much more will you have to pay from a TV that does it?

Well, it arrived today, plugged it in and connected a USB HDD to it (waiting for Hicost to come over and terminate the ethernet cables I had installed in the walls so can't connect to my PC or the outside world yet) and it immediately found the High-Def movie I had on it and played it perfectly with the 5.1 sound too.

Lots more functionality to play around with yet, but just out of the box it seems like a great piece of kit and easy enough to set up.

I just placed a pre-order for the A-110

It's probably going to take a month or two to get it, but it has some very nice enhancements (SATA hard drives, USB2 port, HD sound), and it's only $265 inc shipping which is around £136 at the moment. Then again I may well get screwed by customs...

Yeah - I did think about the A-110, but wanted it straight away

So the PCH is now connected up to the PC (had to do a fresh install of Vista 'cos Windows Media Centre was playing up - DivX issues apparently) and is streaming movies no problem at all.

It does take a bit of messing around, and I haven't got the Torrent downloading sorted from PCH yet, but it's already giving me what I want, a locost way of watching HD movies with full DTS sound on my plasma - and they do look completely awesome

So yes, I would totally recommend it, but you do need to have some computer skills.

[Edited on 8/8/08 by Jasper]

I finaly got my A-110 (after two trips to the "local" DHL depot to pick it up, each one an 85 mile round trip ). At least I didn't get stung for any customs charges.

Anyway I put a 1TB Western Digital "GreenPower" drive in it, which runs amazingly cool (it's a 5400RPM drive) and I have to say it's a cracking bit of kit. It's played all the video files I've thrown at it so far with no problems at all, and now I have my digital photo collection on it so we can view them from the TV, desktop PC or laptop.

Glad your enjoying it, still loving mine, though I do find I have to do a regular hard restart as it won't see myiHome if I add things to it. Apart from that it's great. Next challenge is to set up Torrents on it...

The Sky+ will be going soon