The guys over at networkmediatank's forums have been waiting anxiously for more details on the newest version of the PopcornHour and Sybas finally delivered the specs and a few pics (see below) to feed the frenzy.
Some things I noticed when browsing the specs and the forum Q&A include:
- It's pretty big - much bigger than those older PopcornHour A110's.
- A nice move up to the much faster (more powerful) SMP8643 Sigma Chip (the A110 uses the SMP8635)
- It looks like it will support standard DVD and Blu-Ray, but not HD-DVD - there's a removable drive tray that seems to support a hard drive, DVD drive or Blu-Ray Drive!
- Gigabyte Ethernet support finally. Too many media players don't yet support this.
- It comes with an RF remote control - something not all that common even these days. I'll be interested in seeing what that remote looks like. I would guess it will be something much less than a Harmony remote and closer in function/style to the Snapstream Firefly remotes.
- The C-200 (16.73" x 11.42" x 3.14") appears to be close to 2x the size of the A110 (10.5" x 5.25" x 1.25")
- The C-200 will be running with the latest Sigma Chip SMP8643 vs. vs the Sigma Chip SMP8635 on the current A110.
I didn't see anything showing price, but I'm betting it will start in the $300 price range at least. Those GB-PVR guys have to be excited about this media player as they can use this thing as a GB-PVR extender.
Here's the details announced this morning by Sybas:
- The new PopcornHour will be called the C-200.
- The C200 uses the Sigma Designs SMP8643 chipset - 667MHz CPU with floating point coprocessor
- Dimensions: 16.73" x 11.42" x 3.14" and 8.3 lbs
- Memory: 512MB DDR2 DRAM, 256MB NAND Flash
- A/V Outputs: HDMI v1.3a with CEC, 36bpp deep color, 12-bit xvYCC processing and HDCP 1.2 content protection
Component Video, S-Video, Composite Video, Stereo Analog Audio, S/PDIF Optical and Coaxial Digital Audio - 2x USB 2.0 host on front and 2x USB host on back
- 1x USB 2.0 internal
- 2x SATA (one occupied by HDD tray
- 3.5" HDD Tray
- Internal mounting for 2.5" HDD
- LCD display for quickly searching, streaming and/or downloading content - useful for listening to music without the TV on!!!
- 2.4GHz RF Remote Control
- IR Remote Control port
- Network: Ethernet 10/100/1000 and miniPCI MII inteface for optional 11n WiFi card
- Connectity options: Bonjour, UPnP SSDP, UPnP AV, Windows Media Connect, Windows Media Player NSS, Samba, NFS
- Media Servers: myiHome, myiHomeLite, myiHomeMS (UPnP), MSP Portal
- Third Party Media Servers: GB-PVR, BitTorrent P2P, Usenet downloader, WizD, SwissCenter, Llink,
- NAS access: SMB, NFS, FTP
- Video Containers supported: MPEG1/2/4 Elementary (M1V, M2V, M4V), MPEG1/2 PS (M2P, MPG, DAT, VOB), MPEG2 Transport Stream (TS, TP, TRP, M2T, M2TS, MTS), AVI, ASF, WMV, Matroska (MKV), MOV (H.264), MP4, RMP4
- Video Decoders supported: XVID SD/HD, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 MP@HL, MPEG-4.2 ASP@L5, 720p, 1-point GMC
MPEG-4.10 (H.264), BP@L3, MP@L4.0, HP@L4.0, HP@L4.1, WMV9, MP@HL, SMPTE 421M (VC-1), MP@HL, AP@L3 - Audio Containers supported: AC, M4A, MPEG audio (MP1, MP2, MP3, MPA), WAV, WMA, FLAC, OGG
- Audio Decoders supported: Dolby Digital, DTS, WMA, WMA Pro, MPEG-1 Layer 1, 2, 3, MPEG-4 AAC-LC, MPEG-4 HE-AAC, MPEG-4 BSAC, LPCM, FLAC, Vorbis
- Audio pass-through: DTS, DTS-HD HR, DTS-HD MA, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD
- Other formats: ISO, IFO navigation, Rich Object Based Interactive Graphics, AVCHD navigation, Blu-ray ready (requires addition of compatible BD-ROM and at least 1GB USB stick or internal HDD)
- Photo Formats supported: JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF
- Subtitle formats supported: SRT, MicroDVD SUB, SSA, SUB/IDX
UPDATE 06/17/2009: A Representative of Syabas contacted me today confirming that the Popcornhour C200 is expected to be available in July for $299
