Popcorn Hour streams and plays all kinds of video and digital media – from your PC, storage device, network or the Internet – directly to your TV or home entertainment system.
Popcorn Hour is the consumer electronics brand of Syabas Technology, a pioneer in wired and wireless home entertainment, digital electronics and P2P mesh network broadcasting. The company’s Popcorn Hour line of groundbreaking digital home entertainment devices is opening up a new era of unlimited streaming media possibilities. Breaking down the barriers between TV, personal computers, digital storage devices and the Internet, Popcorn Hour gives individuals unprecedented control over how they source, manage and experience video, high-definition movies, digital photos, music and more.
Founded in 2001, Syabas quickly emerged as an early leader in the 
development of digital entertainment middleware solutions for consumer electronics manufacturers in the U.S., China, Europe and Japan. The company’s enterprise partners and customers have included Netgear, Hewlett Packard, D-Link, Buffalo, I/O Data and Pinnacle. Syabas launched the Popcorn Hour consumer brand in late 2007, and, in combination with its licensed platform, the company has captured a significant share of the global market for digital media players / streaming media devices.
That’s the company blurb out of the way, what does it mean to us, well if you have used other platforms you will most certainly have come across codec hell, in other words “this file type is not supported”, broken video, no audio yada yada yada, it drove me mad which is why I am here at this point.
Popcorn claim to support the most codecs of any media player and from my experience I cannot argue with them, it plays everything I have thrown at it, and the list of supported formats just goes on and on.(See below for all the details)
The downside is the user interface, its like a file manager and is hardly family friendly, luckily there are ways round that and the results can be very impressive, we will look at them in future posts, until then here’s the specs on my C-200
C-200 Technical Specifications
Connectivity
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: WizD,SwissCenter, Llink, GB-PVR
BitTorrent P2P
Usenet downloader
NAS Access : SMB, NFS, FTP
Casgle iDVR RSS feed downloader
Web Services*
Video : Revision 3, Videocast, CNET TV, Mediafly, Mevio, Bliptv, Break Podcast, CBS Evening News, CNN Anderson Cooper 360 Daily, CNN The Larry King Podcast, NBC Today Show, The CNN Daily, CNN In Case You Missed It, NBC Nightly News, NBC Meet The Press, CBS Face the Nation, Podfinder UK, Motorz
Audio : Jamendo, iPodcast, BBC Podcast, Indiefeed, CNN News, ABC News
Photos : Flickr, Picasaweb, Pikeo, 23, Photobucket, SmugMug
RSS feed : Yahoo! Weather, NMT Forum, Bloglines, Cinecast, MSNBC News, Traffice Condition, Yahoo! Traffic Alerts, Yahoo! News, Weather Bug
Peer-to-peer TV : SayaTV
Internet Radio : SHOUTcast™ Radio, Radiobox, Live365 Radio
Supported Media File Formats
Video containers:
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:
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, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
WMV9 : MP@HL
SMPTE 421M (VC-1) : MP@HL, AP@L3
Audio Containers:
AAC, M4A
MPEG audio (MP1, MP2, MP3, MPA)
WAV
WMA
FLAC
OGG
Audio Decoders:
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
AVCHD navigation
Blu-ray** ready (requires addition of compatible BD-ROM and at least 2GB USB memory stick)
Photo Formats:
JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF
Subtitle Formats:
SRT, MicroDVD SUB, SSA, SUB/IDX
DRM
Cardea DRM (WMDRM-ND)
Janus DRM (WMDRM-PD)
Chipset
Sigma Designs SMP8643, 667MHz CPU with floating point coprocessor.
Memory
512MB DDR2 DRAM, 256MB NAND Flash
Audio/Video 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
Other Interface
192×64 dots white text on blue background LCD display, with software adjustable brightness
Power button with standby, reset and full power down
2x USB 2.0 host at the front
2x USB 2.0 host at the back
1x USB 2.0 internal
2x SATA (one occupied by HDD tray)
3.5" HDD tray
Internal mounting for 2.5" HDD
2.4GHz RF Remote Control
Infra-Red Remote Control port (Infra-Red Remote Control optional)
Network
Ethernet 10/100/1000
miniPCI MII interface for 11n WiFi card (optional)
Power
100~240V AC, 50~60 Hz, max 2.5A
typical: 13 W (no additional device installed/attached)
maximum: 70 W
Footprint
Width x Depth x Height : 425mm x 290mm x 80mm (16.73" x 11.42" x 3.15")
Weight
3.7kg (8lbs 3oz)
Package Content
Popcorn Hour C-200 (HDD not included)
IEC 60320 C13 power cord
1.5M length HDMI cable
RF Remote Control with 2 "AAA" batteries
Quick start guide
So hopefully this would work with DVBLink network tuners which output as DLNA (ie UPNP)
You know that is something I haven’t even investigated yet, I use a Sky HD box for TV and multiroom is via sky boxes also, Sky do not have an easy way to integrate with third party systems.
Nice one Chris, good to have on board!