I think homebrew is mainly meant for the tech-savy user, not the regular “I just want to watch movies” user.
It’s not just that you need to be “tech savy” – I’m at least as tech savy as they come, and I don’t want to mess with it either, mostly because I just don’t have the time in life to download a lot more tools to do something that I want my media player to do right out of the box.
For me it’s the whole movie info display thing that the Popbox does (hooking itself directly into IMDB). Yes, I think I could make my own skins and find my own thumbs (which I already do), and even if the B-Rad software had the ability to add metadata to each file I just don’t want to spend the time in some external editor doing it. I want the solution to be as painless and easy as possible.
And third parties can still add functionality to the PB AFAIK, with the plugin approach – I’ll feel a lot more comfortable installing something like that then completely flashing my unit’s firmware.
Whether the Popbox actually delivers on all this still remains to be seen, but I’m going to at least see .
I think homebrew is mainly meant for the tech-savy user, not the regular “I just want to watch movies” user.
It’s not just that you need to be “tech savy” – I’m at least as tech savy as they come, and I don’t want to mess with it either, mostly because I just don’t have the time in life to download a lot more tools to do something that I want my media player to do right out of the box.
For me it’s the whole movie info display thing that the Popbox does (hooking itself directly into IMDB). Yes, I think I could make my own skins and find my own thumbs (which I already do), and even if the B-Rad software had the ability to add metadata to each file I just don’t want to spend the time in some external editor doing it. I want the solution to be as painless and easy as possible.
And third parties can still add functionality to the PB AFAIK, with the plugin approach – I’ll feel a lot more comfortable installing something like that then completely flashing my unit’s firmware.
Whether the Popbox actually delivers on all this still remains to be seen, but I’m going to at least see .
Of course I do understand your point, but the reality is that the WDTV just doesn’t have the functionality ‘right out of the box’. if the Popbox does have it, then it will be a (very) serious competitor. But I think if there’s one lesson to be learned in media player land, it’s that ANY new player comes with tons of bugs and I’m afraid the Popbox won’t be much different here. I guess we’ll know in 2 weeks
LOL – I agree completely. I’m sure the PB will have tons of problems – my hope is that (like the Live) the issues will be with more esoteric and/or less vanilla setups than I have . Other than the thumbnail issue, I’ve never had one problem with the Live I couldn’t easily resolve.
If nothing more it will be an interesting comparison between the two (aside from Netflix – and I have to say, right now the Plus unit I have is doing nothing more than acting as a Netflix box, and it does it very well indeed).
Doesn’t flashing b.Rad’s firmware void the warranty?
I’m not even sure, but it probably does. If you are worried about it, then it’s indeed best to stay on the stock FW. However, the WDTV has (by far) the biggest homebrew community of all mediaplayers out there and development there goes way way faster than at WD HQ While you guys are still waiting for native framerate playback, a ‘goto’ function, NFS shares, good DVI support, skinning, volume control and wmapro audio, ‘we’ already have that
For me personally that homebrew community was and still is the main reason I’m using the WDTV and without the above functionality, I wouldnt enjoy my WDTV half as much. But I do see your point and I think homebrew is mainly meant for the tech-savy user, not the regular “I just want to watch movies” user.
I was kind of looking at b.Rad’s firmware, but to be honest I got caught up in messing around with my Archos 7 and dicking around with Android framework to see how it worked =P
I think I will try his latest firmware on one of my WD Live Plus boxes and check it out this weekend
While you guys are still waiting for native framerate playback, a ‘goto’ function, NFS shares, good DVI support, skinning, volume control and wmapro audio, ‘we’ already have that
Wow, if WD could get you guys to build the boxes, too, they’d be all set!
In terms of Apps – at launch the box will contain the following Apps that can be installed:
Funspot Games Picassa Livestation YouTube Blip.tv Next New Networks Channels.com Photobucket Twitter ShoutCast Weatherbug Revision3 MediaFly Clicker Video Detective MotorzTV
Although this is the “at launch” list of Apps, _ we want to make it clear that the PopBox that ships is, TODAY, capable of supporting all foreseeable App partners in the future WITHOUT requiring a hardware upgrade, and, although we can’t name names, we continue to work on finalizing software development with additional content providers. This version of the PopBox does contain the required hardware security and other mechanisms to fulfill premium content providers application requirements in the future. _
I think that the italics indicate that this box is Netflix capable.
Or at least contains the hardware for satisfying the Netflix people.
The consensus on the Popbox forum is the reason for the shipping delay (the official date has been announced as July 23rd) is not for any firmware or hardware revisions (because apparently that’s already set in stone) but to allow the software necessary for Netflix to be installed. IOW, I think Popbox wants to ship with Netflix up and running, but needed another couple of weeks to make it so.
The software (as opposed to firmware) is the “app” that makes Netflix work – the paradigm for Popbox is a “real” computer that has applications running on top of its firmware, and thus changes to the system don’t always (ever?) require firmware upgrades. They’ve already spoken about not wanting to get into a firmware upgrade cycle where the time tables always seem to be longer.
That all seems like good news (how it plays out remains to be seen) but there’s at least some bad news for those of us looking at better implementation of net share info displays. While it WILL treat both local and net share data the same (i.e. none of this WD ■■■■ about not being able to have net share data in a media library) at least as it ships the only thumbnail information that can be displayed is that found in IMDB.
At first glance that doesn’t sound all that bad – you don’t have to create your own thumbs, the IMDB info is much more comprehensive than most folks could or would ever put together themselves, and it’s all basically a no-brainer (it does a filename lookup for you). However, what if the movie isn’t found? What if it’s your own video, or you just want a custom image for it? None of these things can be accomodated – it’s the IMDB lookup or nothing.
I don’t know if this is a deal breaker for me – while I’m used now to setting up things the way I want them, the tradeoff of not having to deal with duplicate thumbs versus taking what I’m given may not be horrible. Besides, it’s not as if I can choose what image is on my blu-ray disc box or anything. So I’m going to suspend my displeasure and at least check it out (by the end of the month, apparently :>)
There were two major issues – but one was the deal breaker. First, you have to use the IMDB thumbnails with no chance of using your own. This isn’t *horrible* but certainly not to my liking.
But the real problem (and the reason I cancelled) was that you can’t divide nor search your movies by genre. IOW, they are all one big LUMP of films. With over 500 movies this was intolerable.
The PB people “say” that this feature will be coming “sometime after launch”. Yeah, right – they end up saying lots of things, and my momma didn’t raise no fool. I’ll definitely keep an eye on it, but the luster of it has worn off for me (but everyone’s mileage may vary and I’m sure for some it will be exactly what they want).
I just ended up re-ordering one, even WDTV Live doesnt have a feature for searching by genre, but after finally hearing from tech support on my Netflix issue (not loading at all and erroring out) they determined it was defective already, so I put it through Amazon’s return and am sending it back today, ordered my Popbox last night and its coming on Tuesday, I’ve heard some issues with it as well, but I like the interface and the other features it has, but I’m not putting anymore money into WD except for their hard drives, almost 2 weeks to get an answer through tech support and their Live Plus giving up the Ghost on Netflix within a week has sealed the deal on not buying a Live again
At least the Live allows you to ORGANIZE your movies by genre - I have different folders for my various ones. The PopBox does not – all movies will be in one big lump (and that’s unacceptable, at least to me).
And the Popbox doesn’t have Netflix so that’s a null issue for returning your Live – but I do hope you’re happy (I know I am – with my present Live/Plus units).
Well I wasnt too happy with the WD interface, it worked fine and its better than others but I really like the popbox’s, I wasnt too concerned about Netflix as I have a PS3 and a 360 that play it fine, I only ordered the Live Plus because it was new and thought why not have Netflix too (that wasnt the reason I was purchasing a media player), so I’m going for the one I wanted originally since the Netflix went bad in the Live Plus almost right away, I’ve already seen someone else exchange one through Best Buy with the same problem and they got another one that did the exact same thing and since WD isnt talking much about anything related with the Netflix issues other than “we are working on it” I’m just returning it outright
I think the Popbox has potential as a low-cost platform and I like its apps-oriented architecture (wonder it there’s any synergy with what Vudu has been doing with their downloadable applets):
Seems like a bit of a rough start, will be interesting to see where things are in a few weeks. I bet the PCH dev team will be working long hours and their pizza delivery vendors will be happy
I think the Popbox has potential as a low-cost platform and I like its apps-oriented architecture (wonder it there’s any synergy with what Vudu has been doing with their downloadable applets):
Seems like a bit of a rough start, will be interesting to see where things are in a few weeks. I bet the PCH dev team will be working long hours and their pizza delivery vendors will be happy
Well, it seems to be buggy like hell, just like I expected. Probably will take a few FW releases before this thing becomes interesting. I won’t switch anyway, pretty happy with my WDTV.
Yes, it won’t surprise me if it takes at least until the end of the year to be a viable alternative to the WDTV (and by then who knows what tricks WD has up it’s sleeve).
I have to admit the whole attitude of the Sybase (sp?) people turned me off – if folks think WD doesn’t have much of a presence on this board, they will be amazed at the lack of official support for the Popbox. What looked like a slick interface is being sabotaged by wrongheaded choices, IMHO.
I read the reviews on Amazon of the popbox. WOW! Talk of a company getting a product out in Alpha stage. Makes the issues of Plus unit + Netflix pale in comparison. I am glad I am sticking with WD units. Never failed to play the absolute majority of what I throw at it.
Here is a product slogan of the popbox (based solely on Amazon reviews): Popbox, THE Cinderalla of all products!
Yeah I am confused as to why Syabas released their box when it was obvious that it was no where near ready? I don’t buy the whole “the product slipped through customs a week early” excuse the Popbox Team gave … Well, the box looked neat, but wow, what a total train wreck, ha ha! I am still looking at a Boxee Box, hopefully it won’t have as many issues as PopBox did when released.
While you guys are still waiting for native framerate playback, a ‘goto’ function, NFS shares, good DVI support, skinning, volume control and wmapro audio, ‘we’ already have that 