Popcorn Hour C-200 Networked Media Tank Unboxing Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,229 words · ~6 min read
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this is exciting even I would say this is the popcorn hour c200 this is the
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brand new networked media tank from popcorn hour these things just landed so
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we're finally shipping them so I'm really excited to be able to bring you
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this unboxing the first thing you might notice and I'll use a there I'll use an
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external hard drive for size comparison this thing is huge the box is like way
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oversized I know because we had to Airship these things in to make sure
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that we had stock right away okay first of all let's have a look at the back so
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the chipset most important thing about the popcorn hour it's using a sigma
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designs chipset so awesome so they haven't changed the design from that
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perspective they do have a full list well probably not a full list but an
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extensive list of all the different media files that are supported all the
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video decoders all the audio containers all that good stuff all the web services
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so you can even do where was it you can even have a uset downloader on here so
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it does bit torrent uset UPnP all that
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kind of connectivity Ethernet gigabit now as opposed to the 10100 that was on
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the old A200 and or a100 110 one of
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those the old popcorn hour uh you know what let's get this open cuz I'm kind of
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failing at reading the boxs there so open up the top just like this then open
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up this side and open up these two sides
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and let's just flip it over and slide out the popcorn hour c200 now one of the
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big changes they've made with the c200 is that it now has support for an
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optical drive so what that means is you can actually
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inall a Blu-ray Drive in the popcorn
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hour now so first let's have a look at the quick start guide so this is for
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setting up your c200 shows you everything that should come with it
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which we'll have a look at in a minute so we don't need to talk about that too much shows you you want to connect the
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HDMI cable install the antenna for the RF remote control that's cool that it
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comes with an RF remote control the old one was infrared and it you know I mean
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infrared remotes are never perfect but this is non-directional so you can use
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it when you're pointing it anywhere and then you just do the RF control matching
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to make sure that they are synced up awesome okay so let's see what we've got
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for accessories so you got kind of a an
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brown paper bag like a lunch bag here and that has your accessories in it so
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here is your quick start guide okay so it's about let me see it's about yay big
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and it's giving you the basics of setting up your Home Server where you're
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going to pull all of your nwor data off of to watch media on your popcorn hour
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okay oh some last minute notes due to the short time to Market some features
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may not be available but will be enabled in future firmware updates now this is a
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big thing that popcorn hour does is they do support their products for a very
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long time they have huge user support as well as really good support from popcorn
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hour so you can expect them to actually add the features that they say they're
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going to add even if it's not feature complete when it ships so here we go
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HDMI cable looks like a 6t HDMI cable it's sleeved looks quite nice then
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you've got your ablea batteries here's your oh no those are AAA sorry AAA
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batteries for the remote and then we've got a power cable so it's just your
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standard PC three-prong power cable okay
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nothing particularly interesting about that here is the RF antenna just like
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that little guy okay and then next
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inside here we've got four fan screws as
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what they appear to be although they're probably or something else and then four other small screws which are threaded
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for an optical drive so we can tell what that's for that's for the Blu-ray Drive
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should you choose to install it now here's the remote the remote is quite a
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bit more advanced looking even than the original popcorn hour remote which was
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quite good it's got a bit of a glossy finish to it here and you can tell from
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the from the way the buttons are yeah whatever you can tell from the buttons
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that they are back lit so you'll be able to use this in the dark no problem so
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that's it for the accessories let's get the popcorn hour it's s out of the
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protective foamies here it's extremely well packed you can see we've got more
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than an inch of foam around it on all sides so there's no way this thing is
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going to get damaged in shipping okay here it is so this is
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quite a bit bigger than the old popcorn hour this is like the size of well I
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mean it's about the size of a Blu-ray player I guess so you put that right in
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your home theater here so let's have a look at just what we can show here so
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let's have a look at the front first you've got a hot swap Bay so that's
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where you can install a 3 and 1/2 in hard drive if you want but you can also
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see the border around here you can also take that whole thing out and install a
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Blu-ray Drive here you've got your menu navigation from the front dim TV mode
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two USB ports on the front power button as well as an LCD let's go around to the
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side there you've got some ventilation for the hard drive all right and then
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let's keep going around so here at the back here's where you plug in the RF
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antenna for the remote here's where you can install what appears to be a 60 mm
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fan it might be 40 mil it's hard to eyeball that I've got HDMI here's IR
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then you've got digital audio out in both formats Optical and coax two more
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USB ports Ethernet port s video
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component as well as composite and then
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you've got your power in it accepts either North American standard or
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European Asian standard power and you've got your onoff switch so thank you for
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checking out my unboxing of the popcorn hour and I think that based on that we
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did a popcorn hour tech tips last time around I think this definitely deserves
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a tech tips where let's have a look at the menu and just how well this thing
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works cuz this is the Cadillac of network media players