From what I’ve read it does 1080p rips just fine.
I have my 360 reading divx, xvid and wmv now, but it won’t work for MKV and that’s the format the majority of the HD rips come in. You can convert MKV to something the xbox can read but it takes forever.
Popcorn hour will play every format you can download, then you throw YAMJ on your PC and get this interface:
BUMP
So it took DHL 2 days to get my popcorn hour from Shenzen, China to Cincinnati OH, but 4 days to get it from Cincinnati OH to my door. I really hate DHL.
Anyway, my A100 refurb is here. It’s on my network, it’s streaming from my server, and holy shit this thing is cool. 1080p MKV’s with DTS sound play perfectly. They buffer for about 2 seconds and then play without a hitch. Fast forward/rewind works great. Changing audio tracks works great.
So far I’ve played:
MKV, 1080p and 720p
WMV 1080p and 720p
Various DIVX
AVCHD bluray rips
I’m having trouble getting .iso files to play. It does support them so I’m guess it’s just a setting somewhere.
The up side:
It works. It streams lots of formats. It’s silent. It has a nice remote. Perfectly smooth 1080p MKV for $99. Build me a media server PC for that bitches. 
The down side:
You’ve got to be pretty technical to set this thing up. I’m a software engineer with a pretty strong networking background and I’ve found this a bit confusing.
I’m in the process of installing YAMJ (really nice interface with DVD box art, descriptions from IMDB etc) right now.
A couple quick pics from the iphone:
Looks like I still have some issues with the format of my NFO files which is why I’m getting all that html code after the movie rating.
If you’re wondering why some movies are listed multiple times it’s because I have multiple formats of the same movie. I started re-downloading some of my lower quality stuff in HD since this will play way more formats than my xbox. I’ll be deleting the low quality stuff soon.
yay, time to order one :), thx jay
It doesn’t seem to care about how shitty the server is either. I’m running a single core 2ghz AMD with a gig of ram in Win XP Media Center.
I had Win7 on it but it was struggling. I knew ahead of time Win7 was probably too much for it but wanted to try the divx beta that was supposed to add MKV support via xbox streaming. It never worked right and when I started having trouble last night getting the sharing working right for the PCH I blew away the OS partition and dropped XP back on there.
Lots of people on the forums say the PCH is working fine with Win7, I just didn’t want to deal with it since I wasn’t going to be upgrading anything but HD space on my server.
EDIT: One heads up. I mentioned DTS sound playing perfectly. I have the PCH outputting audio straight to my receiver. I don’t believe the A100 will downmix DTS on it’s own if you’re just running an HDMI straight to your TV and using the TV speakers for sound.
ugh so win7 will be problems?, i just installed it a few days ago lol
As far as dts working, i should just bypass the popcorn and use my receiver?
Lots of people have it working with win7. Win7 was running like crap on my crappy old desktop so the first issue I had I just canned it.
And yeah, if you have a receiver the DTS will go straight out of the PCH to that and you’ll be fine. DTS encoded MKVs on the A100 won’t have sound for people getting the sound from their TV speakers.
shit…I might have to buy one of these and turn my os x media box into a dedicated server
edit: refurbs out of stock, phew, that was close(i’m trying not to spend money)
Think I figured out my issue with the HTML code showing up in the descriptions. The tutorial I was using last night to setup YAMJ sent me to some site that didn’t have the latest version. IMDB changed their output so they had to change YAMJ. I’ll know for sure when I get home.
whatever you’re using to get the DVD covers, does it do it automatically based on filename, or is it a manual process?
It’s mostly automated. You have to have a .nfo file named the same as your movie file in the same directory, and the first line in the nfo has to be a link to IMDB.
EX: e:\movies\batman_begins.mkv needs e:\movies\batman_begins.nfo and the first line in that nfo file needs to be the link to the movie in imdb.
Assuming that’s all set up right you click a batch file and it downloads all the cover art, descriptions etc. The first time it’s a long process but after that it just grabs info/pictures for new files.
sounds like a pita to create a new .nfo file everytime you download a new movie though
I bet I could automate it on linux box…
The majority of movies come with an nfo file that already has the imdb link in it. I just move it to the top.
It’s also possible to do it without the nfo if you follow their strict file naming convention.
hmmm, yeah, I probably trash all of the nfo files without realizing it
I wonder if I can write a script to grab all the ones I don’t have though
I just recreated my missing ones manually. It was quite a few since I had been deleting a lot of them as well but it’s mindless work. I did it over a couple nights while watching TV.
it would probably take more time to code the script, but it would be way funner(fml, for thinking coding is fun)
nice, i really stopped researching after running xbmc on my mac mini… it has been completely flawless running 1080p mkv, ISO’s, hd wmv’s or anything i’ve thrown at it so far.
the only downside is i am not crazy about its remote interface with the apple remote, some day i’m going to have to sit and get my logitech harmony remote configured to work with the mac, but reading through the writeups it looks like a real pain in the ass.
Ever look into Plex… it was a port of XBMC for OS X only has a crap load of features and plugins. I think it is more apple remote friendly too.
just ordered mine today
cant wait
Once I get everything set-up within my house and get a homer server built, this is something I want to do!!!
