PopBox Media Player

Update 21 Aug 2010:Just returned second unit. Have spent 15+ hours trying to get it to reliably play a movie from my server. I can eventually get it to recognize a network share, but only after defining the share, then going to the media page, then back to the share config page. Share config page will not see the share until the media page is viewed once. Movies then get indexed and will play. Until a few hours later, at which point the PB loses connectivity with the server. I've tried everything to make it happy with the shares, including using a fixed IP address for the server and creating a user account for it. It'll work after I do a factory reset, reconfigure the shares, do the ritual touch of the media screen and cast the chicken bones. For a while. My Sonos works on the same network, getting music from the same server, and it works. Every time. Even when the network is reconfigured. It took me all of 10 minutes to configure. A year ago. Never a problem since.The PopBox is unusable in it's current state. I'm not sure how they convinced themselves that this thing was ready for limited beta test or even an alpha, much less a full-on production release. Most functions that I'd consider must-have and must-be-solids either don't work reliably or aren't there at all. The bottom line is that this thing's supposed to play a movie from my home server over my home network, after a configuration procedure that can be performed by an average consumer. It doesn't perform it's primary, basic, essential intended function.I'm not sure what's going on, but looks like a shell of a product got released in the hope that the resulting cash flow would fund the actual product development. Not with my cash. Syabas is dead to me.Original Review:I was excited enough about the PopBox to pre-order. After reading the early reviews I left it in the box until night before last. Hooked it up and got ERR022. Got the USB drive out and ran the recovery procedure. Twice. Exactly per the instructions from Syabas. No joy--it's a brick. Returned it.Got a new one from Amazon and hooked it up last night. It updated fine. Loaded YouTube app fine. Freezes on about 1/3 of the YouTube videos I've tried. Got it to find my video share with almost no problems (but the add share interface could use some reworking soon--the browse option wasn't obvious to me and having to select from Samba/NFS/TCP NFS probably ain't gonna work for the average consumer).After scanning, no thumbnails and it displayed the file name as the movie name. I attempted to edit one of these to the actual movie name. Hit enter and the box locked up. Had to pull power. Upon reboot it had the thumbnails and descriptions. Only have 12 movies ripped, but am concerned about the lack of genre / cast / etc. selection ability--this interface won't work for 600+ titles.I'm going to have to side by side test with my DVD/BD player, but SD content looked a little soft and I'm playing ISOs. Not being able to resume the movie is tedious and it's really easy to push the wrong button and bail out of the movie. No glitches on playback that I could see and skips worked fine.I've developed embedded firmware for over 30 years in startups and large companies, for medical, cellphone, telecom and semiconductor applications. This kind of stuff should be happening in the lab. If at all. It could be a lot of late-stage integration problems, in which case we should see substantial improvement in the next couple of firmware updates, or it could be a giant cobbled together hack, in which case we'll still be screwing with it this time next year. I'm waiting another week or so and then punting back to Amazon if the stability issues aren't substantially resolved, if I can't stop and resume a movie at the same location, or if the picture really is softer than what I get from my DVD player.I need a system that family and guests can use to play our 600+ DVD/BD ISO files from the server. It needs to come up, have a consumer-grade graphical interface, allow browsing/searching, and I want it to scrape something for the thumbs/names/descriptions so I don't have to maintain nfo files. It needs to just work. I don't have the time or interest to tinker with something, and I'm really, really tired of being the human remote control for movies.It's not looking good.

I feel sorry for this device, but it is going back. It froze playing approximately 75% of my videos. The interface frequently leaves you in a black-screen limbo with no way forwards or backwards without powering down the box. You can't power down the box without unplugging it (not too hard because the plug fits very shallowly into the socket on the back of the device.) When the PopBox works, it work just OK. Response time can be very laggy and awkward working through large filelists. The network functionality (wired to router, bridged 802.11N to Linux Samba fileserver) worked great and it worked well connecting to the Internet for firmware updates. The unit was pathetic playing Yahoo videos (video would freeze up and audio would continue with a static image at the point it froze.) For an example of this, search "swedish popcorn" and play the first video (Muppets Swedish Chef making Popcorn Shrimp). The humorous disclaimer at the beginning of the video plays fine, but when the video should start the audio continues and there is no video, just the image of the disclaimer. My Sony BluRay player plays this same video fine. There seem to be some third-party utilities to mess around with the database on the SD card to get everything just so...

Scraping is horrendous with TV Shows, it locks up a lot, no netflix (was pulled in ads prior to release) You can't delete shows from the popbox...if you delete the file on the server it will just have a dead link on the popbox. UI is buggy to say the least...if it pulls the wrong show there is no way to tell it...it locks up a lot....online apps were buggy they crashed and upgrading was a pain.I have found it to be a good streamer if you just don't set up any cataloging. I just access my media through the network shares option and with that it is as good as WDTV Live.The pretty interface is somewhat of a waste because when it does work it is just not designed for a large library. I have 450 titles and that is too many for it to handle.It does not resume playback when you stop a movie and restart it.Originally it didn't allow you to FF and Rew worth a damn...that has been updated.I would hold off as you already have a functional player....wait to see what we get from Boxee and Google.

I can understand to a degree some people praise this as a simple box that plays "MOST" media files but C'mon!! If I wanted a simple box and didn't care about UI, Scraping, ETC...I would have kept my WD TV Live Plus.There is no way, this company (Syabas) can claim they didn't overhype this product. A couple of apps, sluggish UI, no Netflix, a power cable that doesn't fit right, half a$$ meta data scraping, missing audio channels, no bitstreaming of high def audio, system runs extremely hot, ETC....ETC.....read other reviews, I can attest they are all true.I know many are saying this is a $130 box no biggie but seriously......I didn't sign up to be one of their free Beta Testers!!This thing should have been in the works for another 6-12 months easy before it hit the streets. As consumers of electronic gadgets, I really feel that we need to send a message to Syabas, that we won't buy your overpriced junk if it isn't ready to go.....I say send them all back and let them know they have a responsibility to their customers to give us a product worth our hard earned cash!!Never again Syabas!! - Plex and XBMC smoke this peice of junk any day!! P.S. Plex and XBMC are Free :)