First of all, let me say that I am not normally a person to bitch on the web about how much something sucks. Sure, I do it all the time in person, and in chatrooms, but usually this is just temporary dissatisfaction which shouldn't be on permanent record. The situation with Syabas and in particular their Popcorn Hour product is horrible enough for me to make an exception to this rule.
I had a problem with my unit which I noticed a while after buying it. The problem was that all of the I/O on the unit is exceptionally slow. For example, downloading a file over FTP (through the 100Mbit interface) goes at speeds of around 2MB/s (or around 18Mbps). SMB is even slower. This wasn't my main problem though. The bigger problem was that both the attached USB drive and the (compatible) SATA HDD which were installed were providing similar throughputs of around 2-4MB/s. Obviously this is a problem if you're downloading something and you want to watch 1080p content.
I logged a case with PCH Support on the 8th of February, explaining my problem. Their response was that these values were within the norm, that it was normal, and that I should expect no more of my A-110 unit. Okay, fair enough, I have no basis to call this a defect (well, they did tell me it had a 100Mbps network interface, but I can understand if it goes a bit slower). They referred me to their network performance test page which shows:
Not wanting to trust a Wiki page, and not satisfied with their answer, I went around trying to find some numbers in relation to what the A-110 should actually be capable of. Enter Popcorn Hour A-110 Product page [image]. This page makes the following claim:
Aha, so it supports "high bitrate video formats" and "at least 40Mbps". Because I'm no video boffin, I referred to Wikipedia's entry on H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. According to that page, H.264 HP@L4.1 can have a maximum bitrate of 62.5 Mbit/s. Because I'm no video boffin, I decided to go with the lowest value stated there, which is 50Mbit/s. This would be the "target."
As said before, my drive was doing 2-4MBps (which is 16-32Mbit/s). Obviously not enough to play 50Mbit/s video streams, and not enough enough to play the "at least 40Mbps" streams. This shows that there is a problem, right?
Not according to PCH Support. I believe they were trying to confuse me by throwing around technical terms and explanations they themselves barely understand (I've noticed this behaviour before in untrained and unskilled "senior" support staff- try to baffle the customer so that he assumes you have all the knowledge and you are right about everything). This was not a problem, and obviously I was misunderstanding the claims for support, I was misunderstanding the way video streaming works (because the demuxing was done in software), and I generally had no clue about anything.
While it is certainly true that I don't have much of a clue about video files, processing, demuxing, compression, etc, I can understand the basic premise of feeding a high bitrate file to a decoder in order to have it displayed on my TV. To speak in GLaDOS terms: "for speedy thing to come out, speedy thing must go in." So before the demuxer and decoder can process my 50Mbps video file it must get its data from somewhere at at least 50Mbps. This, to me, seems painfully obvious.
Unfortunately, I kept trying to explain this to PCH Support and I wasn't getting anywhere. They insisted that I was doing it wrong, and somehow they managed to keep referring me to the "real world" where apparently processing a 50Mbps stream does not require a 50Mbps stream. The only possible explanation I can come up with for this is that they pulled an assumption that I was talking about 50Mbps peak rates in VBR streams out of ... well, let's say thin air to keep it civil. How the software demuxer has anything to do with that is still a mystery to me.
So, after a while of pointless back-and-forth arguing, I decided to post the whole thing on the NMT forums, hoping that maybe someone there would understand that for speedy thing to come out, speedy thing must go in. Was I ever wrong. The first one to respond (a moderator on the board) claimed I was mixing up my bits with my bytes. A fair assumption, given the knowledge of most users, but no. By now I can tell a bit from a byte with my hands tied behind my back, blindfolded, while being lowered into a pit of frickin' sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads. So that's not it.
The second user to respond (another moderator) managed to claim that I got it all backwards and that 50Mbps was the output bitrate rather than the input bitrate. Now, like I've said before, I'm no video boffin, but a quick calculation (1920*1080*30.1*24) shows that the output bitrate should in all cases be approaching 1.5Gbps. So that's not it either.
There was one user, however, who actually managed to understand that this was a problem. He asked me for some details on the chips used on the A-110 so that maybe he could find one that was known to have problems. Elated with this show of support for my cause, I looked at all the chips on the board, wrote down their part numbers and posted them. Unfortunately, some of the chips were missing so they had to be on the underside of the board.
Armed with my trusty 5 euro screwdriver set, I then proceeded to take apart the entire unit (which is a whole 4 thumbscrews and then another 7 once you get inside). I noted down the part numbers and posted them. Then I put the whole unit back together and decided to run a few more tests.
Huh, what now? The drive is suddenly doing 12-14MBps. More than enough to handle the 50Mbps streams. I tested the USB drive and suddenly there I am also seeing around 10-12MBps. I'm still not 100% sure what caused this, but my best guess is that the board was off a by a little bit, causing a poor connection with the drive. This would be either a design or a quality issue.
Problem solved! Kind of. The network is still performing at under 20Mbps, but I don't want to go through this whole thing again. Thinking I would let support know of my dissatisfaction and demonstrate the proof of the problem by the solution of the problem, I dropped them a note in the case. Hurray! They finally admitted there was a problem in their product! They are even "sorry" for the "quality issue." Wow. So all you need to do to get them to admit there is a problem with a single unit (because they're still not admitting this may be a wider problem), is find the problem, completely troubleshoot it and then fix it by voiding your warranty.
The best part is that at no point during any of this has anyone (with the exception of a lone forum poster) admitted that there was any sort of problem in general, or with my unit specifically. I had no option to get an RMA. There was no support to speak of. Not a single troubleshooting step or test has been suggested. There was no explanation of why my performance expectations were wrong (other than "you are misunderstanding this"). Nothing. If I hadn't fixed it myself, by mistake, I would have been stuck with a 200 euro box which can just barely manage to play Youtube-quality videos.
In short: my advice is to buy any other brand of NMT. The support can't possibly be worse than Popcorn Hour support. An alternative may be the Egreat line of NMTs. I have no idea if they suck as well, but at least it looks like better value for money.
If you did make the mistake of buying a Popcorn Hour, don't be as dumb as I was and try to explain your problem if you have one. You could be creative and break it in such a way that they can't trace it back to your actions, and then maybe, just maybe, they'll accept a return shipment.
