SEEPEYU

First came Popcorn Hour A-100, it was good and plenty of support for codecs out there. Then came Popcorn Hour’s A110, it supported MKV 720p quality videos, HDMI display, and a list of codecs far too many! It even let you slide in hard drives of your desire (as long as they were on the compatibility list). Now, they have released Popcorn Hour C-200.

Popcorn Hour makes the best hardware based media tank out there for the money. I have tried Media Center, D-link media center, and Popcorn Hour. Let me tell you, even thou it could be a bit more intuitive, just the sheer amount of codecs supported, the ease of setup, the high quality images streamed through the network, and upnp support for PlayOn made Popcorn Hour stand out from the rest by far.

They have done it again. Check out the C-200’s specs and supported media files here.

Highlights:

- Expansion by adding up to two SATA drives, ports for USB 2.0 external drives or usb flash drives, open bay for  BLU-RAY drive!!!!!

- Flickr, Picasa Web, FTP, RSS, bittorrent download….

My head can explode with what follows…

Video containers:

MPEG1/2/4 Elementary (M1V, M2V, M4V)

MPEG1/2 PS (M2P, MPG, DAT, VOB)

AVI, ASF, WMV

Matroska (MKV)

MOV (H.264), MP4, RMP4

Video Decoders:

XVID SD/HD

MPEG-2 MP@HL

MPEG-4.10 (H.264) : BP@L3, MP@L4.0, HP@L4.0, HP@L4.1

WMV9 : MP@HL

Audio Containers:

AAC, M4A

MPEG audio (MP1, MP2, MP3, MPA)

WAV

WMA

FLAC

Audio Decoders:

Dolby Digital

DTS

WMA, WMA Pro

MPEG-1 Layer 1, 2, 3

MPEG-4 AAC-LC

MPEG-4 HE-AAC

Audio :

Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD

Other Formats:

ISO, IFO navigation

Blu-ray ready (requires addition of compatible BD-ROM and at least 1GB USB memory stick)

Photo Formats:

Hardware accelerated JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF

—–It is extremely difficult to restrict myself from mentioning everything.

Price: $299.99…  i know… a little steep but, it’ll replace your HTPC on your desktop, reduce Bluray player cost, make you cut your cable tv bill, and spend every moment with your partner in front of the tv enjoying countless movies…

Update: Launches Next Month…