Popcornhour A-110 Review #4 - Conclusions

Better Firmware on Popcornhour A-110?

One more thing to mention before we get into the conclusion section: people always ask if the Popcornhour A-110 has the better firmware installed. Since Popcornhour is Syabas' own brand, the firmware of the Popcornhour A-110 is maintained by the original design team. People think the original design team should know better about the code and could make the firmware work better. Is this assumption correct?


The Popcornhour A-110

The answer is no and yes. From my understanding, Digitech does not have the software programing capability yet. They still relay on Syabas to maintain the firmware on the HDX 1000. In addition, they have the agreement signed to keep up with the latest NMT software revision. There should really be no difference between the firmware on the two machines.

However, according to the history, there is still a little difference in the firmware update speed. The latest A-110 firmware update (01-17-081023-15-POP-403) happened on 11/4/2008. The latest of the Hdx 1000 (50-17-081023-15-HDD-403-000) happened on 11/11/2008. There exist a one-week delay on the HDX 1000 side. But, you can see two firmwares are both in the 081023 version. Eventually, they will become identical.


The Digitech HDX 1000

Well, don't begin to throw rocks on me. I know HDX 1000 still cannot do dts downmixing. I've heard several versions of the reasons. The only thing I can be sure of is they will eventually have that activated on the HDX 1000 (via firmware update). The estimated time for that to happen is at Jan, 2009.

Conclusion

Again, the Popcornhour A-110 has almost identical function set as the Digitech HDX 1000. They stock very similar components on the PCBs and are installed with the same NMT software. The known issues and workarounds listed for the HDX 1000 can still be applied to the A-110. I think the look and the thermal performance are the two main decision points to make if you want to pick one machine out of these two.

In the following you can see the list of all the major differences between the A-110 and the HDX 1000.

• The Look: The A-110 looks more trendy. The HDX 1000 looks more sturdy.

• The Weight: The A-110 weights 1.5 pounds. The HDX 1000 weights 2.5 pounds.

• The Size: The A-110 is 10.5" x 5" x 1.5". The HDX 1000 is 8" x 8" x 2".

• Case Sheet Metal Thickness: The A-110 uses 0.06" sheet metal on the case. The HDX 1000 uses 0.09".

• Sheet Metal Painting: The HDX 1000 is easy to collect finger prints. The A-110 is not.

• Output Interface Options: Both have very similar options, such as the HDMI 1.3v. The only difference is the A-110 has S-Video output. The HDX 1000 has optical audio output.

• I/O Interface Option at the Front Panel: The A-110 has USB port at the front panel. The HDX 1000 has 3-in-1 card reader.

• AC Power Adapter: The A-110 AC power adapter is more efficient. The HDX 1000 power adapter outputs less noise & ripple.

• Thermal Performance: The HDX 1000 is designed with better heat management mechanism.

• DRAM Size: No difference.

• Battery on PCB: The A-110 has the watch battery installed on PCB. The HDX 1000 does not.

Check out the HDX 1000 on AmperorDirect Website

Popcornhour A-110 Review #3 - Peek inside the Box

Introduction

Part #3 of the Popcornhour A-110 review will take you on a journey traveling inside the A-110. The trip starts from disassembling the A-110’s well designed mechanical case. Then, the secret and the benefits of the A-110’s miniature design will be revealed. At the end, we are going to compare the A-110 with the HDX 1000, again, down to the component level inside the case.


Ready to open the case?

Good Mechanical Design

While disassembling the A-110 case, I realize Popcornhour must have spent quite some time on the mechanical design. Many details are thought out in the R&D process. As a customer, I have the feeling of being very well taken care of.

On the four corners of the top cover, you will see four big thumb screws. There is no need to grab a screw driver if you just want to lift off the cover. The shining thumb screws also serve for cosmetic purposes. They take away that monotonic and computer device type feeling and create a trendy appearance.


The Shining Thumb Screws at the Four Corners

There are slots constructed on the four corner supports. You can slide the four side walls into these slots. This preformed-metal-design reduces the screw usage and guarantees an easy assembling / disassembling experience.


Slide out the Rear Panel

Two of the four side walls have venting holes built-in, to improve the A-110’s convection cooling performance.


Two Side Walls Equipped w Venting Holes

The bottom case is equipped with two long narrow-shape stand-offs. It assures that there is enough clearance between the internal SATA HDD and the bottom case (if you want to put one in). Besides, the internal HDD can be directly connected to the SATA connector on the PCB. There won’t be a long, messy SATA cable hanging around inside the case.


Room Reserved to Install SATA HDD

Miniature Footprint

The small footprint of the A-110 is achieved by a jam packed PCB design. Popcornhour’s engineer has made use of every spot on both sides of the PCB and has successfully kept the distance between parts, short. The size of the A-110 PCB is 3.5” x 5”. Compared to the HDX 1000’s main PCB: 5.5” x 5.5”, it is relatively small. If it was not necessary to reserve a space inside the case for the installation of an internal SATA HDD, Popcornhour A-110 could really be as small as an IstarHD Mini.


HDX 1000 Main PCB (left) & A-110 Main PCB + Output Interface Daughter Board (right)

The A-110 internal layout design is really compact. Components, including the main PCB, output interface daughter board and the optional SATA HDD, are arranged to sit side by side, but in a very clean and neat way. The only thing I don’t like in this arrangement is the long on/off switch cable running across the output interface daughter board. This long cable can work as an antenna and pick up noise from the busy output interface.


See the Red and Black Cables Running Across the Output Section?

A-110 vs. HDX 1000

After carefully observing the PCBs from both vendors, I found that they use identical parts on the PCBs in many positions. For example, they both use Sigma’s SMP8635 as the main processor, Silicon Image’s SiI9134 as the HDMI 1.3 transmitter chip and Nanya’s NT5DS32M16CS as the DRAM. It makes me wonder if there is a reference design published by Sigma or Syabas. With the identical hardware components and the NMT software installed, you can expect to have a very similar experience when using Popcornhour A-110 and Digitech HDX 1000. (They are even produced by the same factory!)

The most significant difference between the two machines is on the heat management mechanism implemented. This is where the HDX 1000 excels. Except the thicker sheet metal and the larger metal surface area mentioned in the previous post, the larger PCB footprint on the HDX 1000 helps to improve the thermal performance, too. The big components (usually the heat generating sources) are placed further apart on the PCB. Thus, the heat density is lower in the HDX 1000 machine.

In addition, on the HDX 1000, the hottest part: Sigma SMP8635, is attached to the case through a flat aluminum heat-sink (equal to the chip size) and the white thermal grease. From my previous life as a power supply design engineer, I used to have this argument with the production engineers about the thermal grease. They always complain that the grease is too messy to use on the production line and want to replace the grease by silicon pad. But, I always find the grease ensures better contact between two hard objects and helps to drain the heat faster. Guess what... Silicon pad is what they use on the A-110 to connect the SMP8635 heatsink to the case. This is another reason why I think the HDX 1000 can have better thermal performance than the A-110.


The White Thermal Grease used on the SMP8635 Heat-sink in HDX 1000


The Silicon Pad used on the SMP8635 Heat-sink in A-110

There is also a myth about the memory size. According to the manufacturers’ website, the A-110 has 256MB and the HDX 1000 has 512Mb DRAM installed. It makes some people think that the HDX 1000 provides more memory. However, when I opened up the machines, I found both machines are equipped with 4pcs of Nanya 512Mb DRAM. What Digitech puts on their website is the DRAM type (512Mbits) they use in the HDX 1000. What Popcornhour lists is the total memory size (512Mbits x 4) / 8 = 256Mbytes in the A-110. The two machines actually carry the same amount of the DRAM, and both vendors are telling the truth. However, I found the information on the Digitech website is a little misleading.


#1 and #2 Nanya DRAM on the A-110 PCB component side (You can also see the heat-sink on SMP8635)


#3 and #4 Nanya DRAM on the A-110 PCB Solder Side


All four Nanya DRAM on the HDX 1000 PCB

The other minor dissimilarity to mention is that the HDX 1000 does not have the watch battery installed on the PCB. (The A-110 does.) According to Digitech, the battery is used to provide time information to the machine. Considering there is no time shift or advanced recording functions offered by the NMT player, the time information actually has little use. The lack of the watch battery on the HDX 1000 PCB won’t affect its performance.


Watch Battery Installed on the A-110 PCB


Battery not Installed on the HDX 1000 PCB

Check out the HDX 1000 Product Page on AmperorDirect

Popcornhour A-110 Review #2 - A-110 vs. HDX 1000 Round One

Introduction

In this article, we are going to run through a detailed comparison between Popcornhour A-110 and Digitech HDX 1000. The major differences are the look, the case material used, the available A/V interface options and the AC power adapter provided. As we mentioned in the previous post, both the A-110 and the HDX 1000 use Syabas NMT software. Therefore, the user interface and the functions offered are almost identical.


HDX 1000 & A-110: Front View

The Look, the Weight and the Size (What do you think I'm talking about...:p)

Placing Popcornhour A-110 and Digitech HDX 1000 side by side, you can easily notice the difference. The A-110 has that trendy type appearance. It reminds me of the look of the new computer gadgets you usually see spread unorganized around a computer wizard kid’s PC. On the other hand, the HDX 1000 looks like an old fashion sturdy machine. It is obvious to me that Digitech wants a design of which most people won’t have issues to place it on their entertainment rack in the living room.


HDX 1000 & A-110: Rear View

The A-110 weighs around 1.5 pounds and measures 10.5” x 5” x 1.5” in size. It is wider than the HDX 1000. The HDX 1000 weights around 2.5 pounds and measures as 8” x 8” x 2”. It is 1 pound heavier than the A-110.

Case Material

The sheet metal used by two vendors to build the case is different in thickness. According to my caliper, the thickness of the A-110 case measures around 0.06 inches. On the HDX 1000, it is measured around 0.09 inches. This is one reason why the A-110 weighs less than the HDX 1000. For the A-110, the major advantage of using a thinner sheet metal is they can better control both material and shipping costs. On the Popcornhour website, the transportation cost to ship A-110 from the Far East to the US is $20. (I know they have an office in California. But, the receipt in the box shows the unit went through the custom.) On Digitech’s website, it is $50 to transfer HDX 1000.


A-110 Sheet Metal Thickness: 0.061"

However, the thicker sheet metal and the larger total metal surface area on the HDX 1000 case can definitely help to transfer the heat out of the box faster. Thus, the heat accumulated in the box during the long-period-of usage will be reduced and the life of the components in the box will be prolonged. Here is a testimonial for HDX 900 on Digitech’s website: “Leaving both the players turned on for nearly 6 hours, the Popcorn Hour is almost scorching hot to the hand test while the HDX 900 felt warm; it is still cooler compared to the Popcorn Hour.” Although the testimonial is for the previous generation machine, there is not that much change between the generations. It should still be true for the HDX 1000.


HDX 1000 Sheet Metal Thickness: 0.095"

There is one more finding I want to mention about the HDX 1000 case: the paint material they use on the case makes it easy to collect finger prints. I don’t see the same thing happening on Popcornhour A-110.

Interface Options

Two models offer similar sets of the interface options. They all have HDMI 1.3v output for HD content playback and the component video and stereo audio output for analog content. The minor differences are: the Popcornhour A-110 has two USB ports (HDX 1000 has only one) and a S-Video output (HDX 1000 has none). The HDX 1000 has a 3-in-1 card reader and an optical audio output (A-110 has none).


Popcornhour A-110 Rear View

In addition, the A-110 has put one of its two USB ports at the front panel for easy-external-HDD-connection. The 3-in-1 card reader of the HDX 1000 is located at the front panel so that users can easily plug in their SD memory from their camera so that they can share the pictures with friends on the big screen.

AC Power Adapter

Here is my favorite part. I have worked for a power supply company for almost 10 years now so I can really go on for 10 pages describing my findings. However, I don’t think that will excite anybody…:)

Both Popcornhour and Digitech are out-sourcing the AC power adapter. In the below picture you can see the AC power adapter of the A-110 on the right hand side. It is bigger in size and uses a three prong power cord. Both AC adapters are rated to provide up to 12V, 3A output. They can accept a wide-range 100VAC ~ 240VAC input. If you can find a plug adapter, both units can be used overseas.


HDX 1000 (left) and A-110's AC Power Adapter

After some further checking, I found the AC adapter comes with the A-110 is more efficient. At nominal load condition, it is 86% (comparing to 82% of the adapter from HDX 1000). It is an expectable result because it has a bigger footprint. Usually, a larger AC adapter can cope better with the heat generated and lose less power inside the adapter. It is just interesting to see that Popcornhour decided to use a larger footprint AC adapter with their relatively smaller sized A-110 and Digitech does the opposite.

The only potential issue I see with the A-110 AC power adapter is the high ripple and noise sitting on the output. In the computer world, we usually expect to see the ripple and noise amplitude to be limited at 1% of the rated output voltage. The bad news is, I see a 120mV ripple and noise on the A-110 power adapter’s 12V output while it is running in full load. It is right on that 1% limit. Maybe, on the A-110’s PCB, there is another stage of the on-board regulator or filter, to filter out the noise. However, higher ripple and noise usually tends to shorten the life-span of the parts inside the adapter. (On the HDX 1000 adapter, the highest noise I can see is 30mV.)


The 120mV noise sitting on the 12V output of A-110's AC Power Adapter

Read the #3 Part of the Popcornhour A-110 Review

Popcornhour A-110 Review #1 - A Bad First Impression turns out to be OK

Introduction

The Popcornhour A-110 provides almost the identical functions and features list as the HDX 1000. I will focus on the unique things I discovered on the A-110 and run through a comparison between the A-110 and the HDX 1000. If you are interested in the A-110’s basic functions / storage options / web services information, you can click on the listed hyperlinks. The links will point you to the related review sections of the HDX 1000. As I mentioned at the beginning, they work almost identical in these areas.


Popcornhour A-110 Front View

Waiting Period for my Popcornhour A-110

I placed my order at the Popcornhour website around October 30th. How soon did I receive my A-110? In about two and a half weeks. Compared to the ridiculous waiting period it took to get the previous version: A-100, the order fulfillment speed was actually very impressive at this time.


Popcornhour A-110 Rear View

Many Networked Media Tank sellers, including Popcornhour and iStarHD, have a bad reputation of charging customers’ credit cards first and delivering machines a month later. One reason that I know for this to happen is they don’t have enough capital to buy materials up front. If you are lucky to place the order at the time when they have already gathered enough orders / money to do a production run, you might be able to get your NMT player soon. Otherwise, you might need to wait. The other reason is those Asian sellers are more like “a manufacturer equipped with an e-commerce website” than a true marketing entity. Sometimes, they are not accustomed to demand forecasting. Sometimes, they simply don’t want to produce enough machines to meet the forecast because of the risk involved to keep a large quantity of stock on hand.

This is where AmperorDirect.com can help. Before NMT can get popular enough to be carried by BestBuy or Amazon, we want to become the place to stock enough inventory and be able ship units within 24 Hrs after receiving orders. We also have a phone number for customers to call to ask questions and will establish ourselves as the RMA and repair center if something within the unit goes wrong.

A Bad First Impression Turns out to be OK

I was not very impressed when I first received my Popcornhour A-110. It arrived by DHL , in a thin plastic bag similar to the below picture. It makes me wonder how my unit survived the international shipment.


DHL Plastic Bag

Inside the plastic bag, there was a box wrapped by a big black nylon-like cover. Usually, this kind of the cover is used on an idling device to keep dust away, not for protection purposes.


The big black nylon-like cover

Sure enough, when I pulled out the package, I noticed a dent on the box. My worries about receiving a damaged A-110 has climbed up to a sky high level.


This is the Condition of the Box I Received


Dents on the corners

When I opened the box, I finally realized the reason behind only using the DHL thin plastic bag for packaging. In the following picture you can see the built-in protection in the box (the white buffering section). Popcornhour must believe the box by itself is strong enough to survive international transportation.


Popcornhour A-110 in the Retail Box w White Buffering Section

I’m not here to complain. My A-110 did arrive without being damaged. However, it is just so different from the now-a-day standard online shopping experience. Pretend you are currently opening a delivery from Amazon.com. No matter how strong the product package is, you can expect to find it sitting securely inside another brown shipping box surrounded by bubble wrap. We customers have been educated so well by this scene that our brain can immediately release an anxiety relaxing signal after seeing it. Although we still have not physically finished tearing up the box, we can now switch our mind set in planning how to enjoy the product.


Shipping Method

Besides, the package itself is a part of the product. If I want to give this out as a gift, I would prefer not to see any dent on package.

Click Here to Read the #2 of the Popcornhour A-110 Review

Come Join the Holiday Giveaway for a free HDX 1000

We will have a drawing for a free HDX 1000 on 12/12/2008. Just go to this page, enter your name and email address, and tell us what you think the "X" in "HDX" stands for, you are in for the drawing.

Need hints?

It's not Xmas, although we people at AmperorDirect wants to say Merry Christmas to you.

It's not Xiphosuran. I don't know what this word means.

It's not X-ray. Why do you need to put a high definition X-ray in your living room? To point to your lousy neighbor?

It's not Xbox 360. HDX 1000 runs very quite, not like X-Box 360. Besides, you won't have chance to see RRoD on HDX 1000.

Just take a look at the picture gallery section of the product page on our website, you will know what X is.

Have Fun.

An Update for Establishing AmperorDirect as the HDX 1000 US RMA Center

In the previous post, I've mentioned that AmperorDirect.com is working with Digitech to establish itself as the North America support and repair center for HDX 1000. It turns out to be not easy to do - it is very difficult to track if the returned units are still in warranty period if they are not sold by us!


Open the HDX 1000 Box to change PCB

So, here is the revised proposal: AmperorDirect.com will offer repairing service to the units sold by AmperorDirect.com only. If you buy the HDX 1000 from us and experience issues in the warranty period, you can ship the unit back to us for repairing. The proposal has been deviated from our original plan to supporting all North Amperica market. But, without going through the hassle to gain cooperation with all other resellers in NA, we can at least help our own customers to save time and money to transfer units back to Digitech in China if their investment goes south.

Let's see if we can make this deal go through.

See us change the PCB in this post

Confused...???

Well, I'm pretty confused now. The store I used to buy my iStarHD 1.3 unit has expended to carry Kaiboer K100 NMT. Aren't they the iStarHD people? Is Kaiboer a brand from iStarHD? Or, is the iStarHD.com actually a middle man in US, but not the iStarHD's own employee?



I'm really confused. It makes me wonder if I bought the iStarHD 1.3 from manufacturer or from another reseller like us? If somebody knows about the inside story, please let me know.

HDX 1000 - 30pcs Arrived at our Houston Warehouse

Good News! The 30pcs HDX 1000 Fedex shipment has already arrived at our Houston warehouse. We did some incoming-material-exam. They are all good. We have put up the product page on our website. See Here. Please note that the price including shipping to US. And, we always have the 5% off coupon: alien, available for you to use.

We have already sold 3 of them. Therefore, there are currently only 27pcs left on our website. Our sea shipment should arrive here in 4 weeks. Hopefully, it can be here before Christmas time.





BTW, we are currently working with Digitech to establish AmperorDirect.com as the North America support and repair center. The way we envision the setup is: no matter where you buy the HDX 1000 from, if you are willing to pay for the shipment and can prove the unit is still in warrenty period, you can send the unit to us. We will do the basic diagnosis and change the PCB for you if it is needed. Sounds good, right? Hopefully, the deal can go through.

HDX 1000 - Factory Visit

Factory_Overview

We are so thrilled to know that our first batch of the HDX 1000 is ready to be picked up at Digitech’s factory. Therefore, we sent our best product inspector, Kevin, to check the products. The factory is around one and a half hours away from our Shenzen office by car. It is actually not very far away at all.


Testing_Video

Results? We are happy! We see our products sitting in the warehouse. We randomly selected several boxes to test out their performance. Pleasantly, we found that they all worked as they were designed to. We then had a chance to tour the factory. It is really a busy place. It appears as if the Networked Media Tank (NMT) Player is becoming more and more accepted by the market.


Testing_Audio

One more interesting thing to mention… Guess what? The production line is pumping out all kinds of NMT players. No kidding. This place is producing NMT players of other brands, too! This factory is really the mothership of NMT players!


Testing_Card_Reader

We have immediately shipped 30pcs HDX 1000 via Fedex to our US office early this week. We have selected the fastest transportation method (The shipping cost is so very expensive!). They could arrive at our Houston warehouse any time now.

HDX 1000 Review #7 - Known Issues, Workaround, Conclusions

Introduction

This is the 7th part of our HDX 1000 review. This part will first go over two known issues and the work-around. We will then deliver our final conclusion of this HDX 1000 review series.



You might be curious about why an important part of the review – content format compatibility test is missing. As stated in the first post of this blog: I’m still new in this HD digital entertainment industry. I have not collected my set of the content samples (in different codec / format). I’ll need to do this before I can start the compatibility test. Please send me the file through email if the file size is small. Otherwise, please send me a link to download the files. Your help will actually expertise my process to collect content samples so that I can come back to complete the review sooner.

Known Issue #1 – My Slave USB port on HDX 1000 does not Work

There is a USB slave port on the back of the HDX 1000. The design concept of having this port is to make your HDX 1000 work as an external portable HDD (if there is an internal HDD installed in the HDX 1000). Accompanied with the attempt to reduce the weight (see description here), users now can move the HDX 1000 around, connect it to the PC through the USB cable and transfer files between the two. If you are a person like me who is biased and thinks the file transferring via network is slower and unsecured, you can perform the transfer in this way.

This design looks wonderful on paper. However, when I first connect my HDX 1000 to my PC through the USB slave port, I can see the HDX 1000 trying to remove the internal HDD from the ‘Media Sources” menu (See the picture taken during the removing process at the end of this paragraph). But, my Vista notebook just cannot recognize the HDX 1000. After consulting with HD Digitech, they explained that when I first installed my internal HDD into HDX 1000, I formatted the HDD in EXT2 format. This is actually the default format the NMT application setup wizard will do, so more than likely you will have your HDD formatted in the same way. Furthermore, EXT2 is a Linux file system. This is why my Windows Vista notebook cannot recognize the HDD.



The application HD Digitech suggested for me to install on my notebook is Ext2Fsd. If you experience the same issue, you can go give Ext2Fsd a try, too. It did help me solve my problem. My notebook can now treat the internal HDD inside HDX 1000 as a removable HDD. The only caution to the Vista user is that Vista has a very restricted user account management system. You need to use your administrator account to sign in before you can use Ext2Fsd (or your Ext2Fsd will not find any HDD attached to your PC at all).

Known Issue #2 – My HDX 1000 Freezes

Depending on the content format you are trying to playback, you may experience a “freezing” up of your machine. You will need to reset the box to get back the control. I think it is an issue on Syabas NMT player software. All media streamers (Popcorn A-110, iStarHD Mini HDMI 1.3 NMT Player…) using the same solution should have the similar symptom. I’ll give you some examples below.

• I tried to use the HDX 1000 to access the Bluray ROM on my computer. I was hoping this setup could be a cheap Bluray playback solution. The result was not good. It would freeze my HDX 1000.

• I tried to rename a .dat VCD format file to .mpg and used my HDX 1000 to playback the renamed file. This action froze my HDX 1000.

• I tried to use the HDX 1000 to playback a comic clip I downloaded from the Internet. It froze my HDX 1000.
  

As you can see in the list, the HDX 1000 tends not to be happy when you try to get it to perform some weird actions of which it is not designed to do. In addition, it is better to download the contents with high user completion number or contents from well known sources, to help you filter out bad formatted contents. There are a lot of contents which are coded improperly on Internet. If you feed your HDX 1000 one of these contents, you might need to hit that reset button very soon.



Conclusion

I found the HDX 1000 is stable enough to perform the main task – playback contents stored in your PC on TV – what it was designed to achieve. The various storage options and services has broaden the experience and makes the operation easy. The HD playback capability is also a plus. Although I have stated several suggestions all along the review, I still found the benefit of having the HDX 1000 out-weighs the disadvantages. As long as you can operate the HDX 1000 in the way it is designed to, you can limit the chance of having issues. Besides, comparing to many other solutions from big name networking equipment companies, the price of owning a HDX 1000 is reasonable. If you are an early adopter like me and have the need to playback downloaded contents on TV, you should consider to give HDX 1000 a try.

Go to the HDX 1000 Product Page at AmperorDirect.com

HDX 1000 Review #6 - Comparison

Introduction

This is the 6th part of our HDX 1000 review. We are going to compare HDX 1000 with its previous generation: HDX 900 and one of its competitors, iStarHD HDMI 1.3 Mini NMT player.

HDX 1000 vs. HDX 900

Function-wise, the HDX 1000 works almost identical as the HDX 900. The major change on the HDX 1000 is the adoption of the HDMI 1.3 standard. (According to Wikipedia: the single-link bandwidth to 340MHz (10.2 Gbit/s) is the HDMI 1.3 version). It will supposedly enhance the performance of the HDX 1000. However, I have not learned a quantitative way to test the results yet. I can only say, judging from my eyes, the content playback is a little smoother on the HDX 1000. But, again, the “smoother performance” can be no more than a illusion generated by my brain after learning the difference between HDMI 1.1 and HDMI 1.3 on Wikipedia.



The most significant change to the HDX 1000 is on its design and the output interface. A picture with HDX 1000 and HDX 900 placed side-by-side is present above. The right one is an HDX 1000.

• You can see the size of the case has shrunk. The trim down of the metal used on the case has lowerered the weight of the machine itself from 3 lbs. to 2.2 lbs. This will help users to save on the shipping costs.

• The sharp corner of the HDX 900 case has been redesigned to an oval shape. Compared to the HDX 900’s industrial equipment appearance, the HDX 1000 now looks more like a consumer electronics product of which you would have little objection to placing on your home entertainment rack.
  

• The VGA display output on the HDX 900 has been removed and replaced by a coaxial and component output. Now you don’t need to have a HDTV to use the HDX 1000. It can work with an analog TV, too. I guess HD Digitech has listened to customers’ suggestions.

• The SATA port (data only) presented on the HDX 900’s back panel has been removed on the HDX 1000. The SATA connector without the power portion can be a headache to users because they need to go find a power source to power the HDD they want to install on the HDX 900. The SATA port has been moved inside the case on the HDX 1000. It is a complete connector with data and power ports provided. It is also safer to have the HDD placed inside the case, thus reducing the chance of having the HDD electronics components exposed to users.

• The power hard-switch on the HDX 1000 has been moved to the back panel. (I like it on the front panel better, for easy-access purposes.)

• With the HDX 900, there is a chance of having the VGA connector head / SATA connector head / HDMI connector head interfere with each other. In other words, you might need to unplug one of the connectors in order to have another connector plugged in. This is not an issue any more in HDX 1000.

• A card reader is installed on the front panel of the HDX 1000. Please see the below picture.

Overall, HD Digitech includes several design changes to the HDX 1000, which have been requested by real media streamer users. It indicates that they have a good attitude of listening to customers and trying to provide what they need. I certainly appreciate this attitude.

HDX 1000 vs. iStarHD HDMI 1.3 Mini NMT player

HDX 1000 and iStarHD HDMI 1.3 mini NMT player are based on the same media receiver solution: Sigma 3865 chipset + Syabas NMT player. Hence, they perform very similar functions. The differences are in the design, cooling and output ports selection.

• In the picture below you can see the box size comparison between the HDX 1000 and the iStarHD 1.3. The latter is almost half in size.

• The most significant difference between the two units is the case material. The HDX 1000 is made of aluminum and the iStarHD 1.3 is made of plastic. Thus, the iStarHD 1.3 is a lighter product.

• On the other hand, the aluminum case material enables the HDX 1000 have a better heat transfer characteristic. That is why the iStarHD 1.3 needs to install a Fan inside the box, but the HDX 1000 does not. This allows the HDX 1000 to perform with less acoustic noise. In theory, the cooler operating temperature will help components to achieve a longer life. However, this needs to be verified with the HDX 1000.

• There is a card reader on the HDX 1000, but not on the iStarHD 1.3.

• The SATA HDD connector is located outside of the iStarHD 1.3 case. Therefore, the “internal HDD” needs to be installed outside of the iStarHD 1.3 box. With the HDX 1000, the “internal HDD” needs to be installed inside its box.

• HDX 1000 provides more options regarding output interface.

It is a classic trade-off situation. The iStarHD 1.3 offers a cheaper solution while the HDX 1000 provides more value (card reader, aluminum case, more output options…). You can make your own decision to see if the price difference for the HDX 1000 is really worth the money.

More…

At the time this review was written, I had not yet received my Popcornhour A-110. After I receive my machine, I’ll add a HDX 1000 vs. Popcornhour A-110 section to make this review more complete.

Read the 7th part of the HDX 1000 Review - Known Issues, Workaround and Conclusions

Go to the HDX 1000 Product Page at AmperorDirect.com

HDX 1000 Review #5 - Services

Introduction

In this 5th part of our HDX 1000 review, we are going to go through the services it provides. The services can be categorized into two parts. The first part, “Web Services” are pre-installed in the HDX 1000. In other words, users can enjoy the benefit of using the out-of-box HDX 1000 to browse some pre-selected video / picture / news sharing websites. The second part of the services will be available when an internal SATA HDD is installed. It includes functions of file transferring and BitTorrent downloading.

Web Services

The “Web Services” are described in the introduction section. The browse-able websites are listed below in four categories. The link to each websites is also provided for preview purpose.



1. Video (21)

• Youtube
• Veoh
• Videocast
• DL.TV
• Cranky Geeks
• Blip.tv
• Podfinder UK
• Vuze
• Break
• Revision3
• The Larry King Podcast
• Anderson Cooper 360 Daily
• The CNN Daily
• In Case You Miss It
• Meet the Press
• NBC Today Show
• CNET TV
• CBS Face the Nation
• NBC Nightly News
• Mevio
• Mediafly
  

2. Audio (8)

• Live365 Radio
• iPodcast
• Radiobox
• ABC News
• BBC Podcast
• CNN News
• Indiefeed
• Jamendo
  

3. Photo (4)

• Flickr
• Picasa
• Pikeo
• 23
  

4. RSS (7)

• Bloglines
• Yahoo! Weather
• Yahoo! Traffic Alerts
• Traffic
• Cinecast
• Yahoo! News
• MSNBC News
  

As of today, Oct 22, 2008, the total number of the browse-able websites via HDX 1000 web services is 40. Syabas is in the process of adding more channels to the list.

HDX 1000 Works as a NAS (Network Attached Storage)

You can setup your HDX-1000 (with the internal SATA HDD installed) as a NAS device and move contents in or out of the HDX 1000 from your PC. The way to do so is shown below:

1. Access the HDX 1000 by IP address.

• Go to your HDX 1000.
• From Root menu page, click on “Setup” at the left-hand-side navigation bar.
• Click on “Network” on the left-hand-side navigation bar.
• You can see the current ip address on the screen.
• Go to your PC. Click on Start\Run in a XP machine and type “ \\(Your HDX 1000 IP address)“. (If you have a Vista machine, please go to Start and type “ \\(Your HDX 1000 IP address)“ at the Start Search Box.)
• Enter the User name and Password, you can login to your HDX 1000 from your PC. (Default user name is “nmt”. Password is “1234”.)
  

2. Map the HDX 1000 as your network drive.

• Right click on the “share” folder. You can see one option as “Map Network Drive”. Left click on that.
• Select the drive label you want to assign to the “share” folder, and click “Finish”.
• The mapped drive should appear in “My Computer” for easy accessing.
  

Access HDX 1000 via FTP Service

When installing the NMT application package on your HDX 1000 Internal SATA HDD (See the procedure here), by default you are adding a ftp server onto it. Later on, you can access HDX 1000’s internal HDD via FTP Service.

You first need to have a ftp client application installed on your PC. I recommend to use FileZilla (download from here). It will make the ftp tasks much easier.

Type the following server / login information into FileZilla site manager, hit connect, you should be able to access to your HDX 1000 now.

• Host: “HDX 1000 IP address”
• Port: 21
• Username: ftpuser
• Password: 1234
  

myiHomeLite Server

When installing the NMT application package on your HDX 1000 Internal SATA HDD (See the procedure here), by default you are adding the myiHomeLite server onto it. You can do two things with this service:

• You can playback content stored in HDX 1000 on your PC. However, I cannot make this function work on my system. Since I usually need to stream the content in the opposite direction, from my PC to my HDX 1000, I don’t care if this function works or not.

• You can upload a torrent file onto HDX 1000 and let the HDX 1000’s built-in BitTorrent application download the file for you. The downloaded file will be stored in the HDX 1000 Internal HDD.
  

The way to access the myiHomeLite server is to open up your browser and type “http://(Your HDX 1000 IP address):8088 in the URL box. You should be able to see the myiHomeLite welcome page display. The rest of the operation is intuitional.

Conclusions

The services listed above have added convenience when using the HDX 1000. I’ve found the NAS service extra helpful in transferring files in to and out of HDX 1000. The BitTorrent downloading service is also a plus. With this service, I can use my HDX-1000 (with internal HDD installed) to perform the download task and leave my PC to rest at night.

As to the web services, I have mixed feelings. The service can definitely do the job and it offers a good variety of channels to see. However, I just don’t like to use the limited buttons on the remote control unit to navigate. Imagine you are using your cell phone key pad to browse the Internet and do any necessary search key-in. This is exactly how it feels. In addition, there is also one thing you need to know when using the HDX 1000 to perform web browsing: on a PC, you will receive a buffering message warning when the PC is retrieving data from Internet; on the HDX 1000, you will just experience a pause during data retrieving. Please go watch the following video clip. You can better understand the scenario. This is not a bad thing, but is something that may take getting used to. Usually, this pause only happens when you first try to load the media.

Read the Part 6 of the HDX 1000 Review - Comparison List

Go to the HDX 1000 Product Page at AmperorDirect.com