RE: Mac Mini v Popcorn Hour A110

["Phil Harris" <phil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > I am always warmed by Phil's reviews, he always was an anal
g*t
>
> Yeah, but I seem to recall him having a prob with XMBC because it
> navigated folders in the old days and he complained bitterly about
> that (ie the way PCH does it). :)

Oh yes - the UI sucks! (I do think I made that clear in my first post on
this didn't I?)

I had many issues with XBMC when we all first started leaping on that as
the
new savior, not just navigation but playback issues aplenty. I'm more than
happy to restate that the UI on the PCH is very very basic (I know I said
that before as it seems familiar) but whereas for example Plex always seems
to forget the bloody logins to my server shares (whether or not I specify
them explicitly when creating a source) the PCH seems to have no such
issues.

Also you don't *HAVE* to navigate the network structure every time on the
PCH as you can create "sources" in a similar way to Plex which
are
effectively shortcuts to network locations so I can have "DVDs",
"TV Shows"
and "Hi Def" showing on my PCH main screen and they just take you
straight
to the appropriate network locations without the user seeing any sort of
folders structure.

Anyway - the main reason I glopped a wad of cash on a PCH was one of the
guys at work has been looking at this...

http://omertron.com/pch/YAMJ_Latest

...and he reckons it's pretty sweet.

> > If Phil says the picture and sound quality is good then I know
that
> > little old me (OK, not very little but certainly old) with specs
and
> > knackered ears can only be happy :-)
>
> Having played HD Rips DD/DTS thru the mini/Plex I can tell you there's
> nothing wrong with its sound.

Nope - absolutely - have not said otherwise and wouldn't want anyone to be
under the impression I had done.

> PCH is an option at a price, but I wouldn't subject my family to it.

Hmmm ... interesting that as I honestly reckon my parents (the worlds
biggest technophobes) could handle being handed the remote for the PCH and
told to get on with it much easier than they could handle Plex.

I've had to explain how to use Plex to everyone who has used it (the
navigation around Plex is dire but navigating lists is a particular one
that
trips people up - you know, when you are moving up and down a long list one
item at a time but if you hit "left" then you are then
controlling the
scroll bar so toggling a page at a time rather than a line at a time and it
confuses the sh*t out of people) but I've not had to explain how to use the
PCH to anyone yet.

> You're also very reliant on a single small company to provide firmware
> updates.

Whereas with XBMC / Plex you run a piece of software which doesn't actually
take advantage of the underlying hardware (video decoding is done in
software on Plex remember) and you just hope that someone on the
"development team" (who are after all just a bunch of guys doing
this for
fun) takes whatever issues you have seriously enough to take a look at it
and fix them ... I posted my issues on the forums (and a few other people
did post that they'd had similar problems) but aside from a few suggestions
for things to try there was no sort of offer of "well here's a version
of
code with some debug logging switched on - lets see why it's taking so
long"...

> Plex just gets better all the time.  Their BBC iPlayer
> plugin hit last week for example and works great.
>
> But hey, different strokes and all that.

Absolutely - I'm not saying that the PCH is "the Answer" to life,
the
universe and everything. Hell, seeing my pride and joy AV system being
driven by such a skanky looking piece of cheap kit offends my sensibilities
and would possibly get me publicly flogged at work with a cat-o-nine-tails
made of our finest interconnect cables until I begged for forgiveness but
it
is *A* solution.

Anyway - wasn't it Gareth that was enthusing about these originally? I'm
just trying to be fair and give credit where it's due.

Phil



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