I own a Syabas PopBox v8 (http://www.popbox.com/). This device is the greatest disappointment I have ever experienced from an electronic device. I also developped a plugin for the PopBox. This mediabox is complete trash, unusable! Some reasons:
wlan performance is ridiculously slow, even a 700mb movie starts to lag after a while
the firmware provided is so faulty, the PopBox doesn’t even shut down properly
the promise a whole lot from their app store, but in truth they only have 60 apps available
communication / support from syabas doesn’t exist at all
the popbox has random crashes and reboots whenever it feels like it
the overall performance feeling is like driving a tractor on a formula 1 track
the only thing I like about the Popbox is its remote
Therefore I want to replace my mediabox with something better. It has to have an open api so that I can develop a plugin for it so that it works with the vera. Can you recommend any mediaboxes? I had a LaCie Mini Media Bridge, worked absolutely great, but has no open api or any advanced functions. I also know the AC Ryan Veolo, I don’t like its UI, you just see on the first look that it was made for smartphone’s and not for tv’s.
Please let me know about the mediaboxes you use, and what you like and dislike about them. I googled and compared all kind of mediaboxes, and then did the great mistake on deciding on a PopBox v8. So I don’t trust the tests on the net anymore and I am hoping to get some hints from you.
I have been using XBMC for years. You can pick up a small computer for a few bills with an amd fusion cpu that would work with out a hitch using XBMC. You can also look into getting a raspberry pi board and run the XMBC build that they have ported to it.
That sounds interesting, especially since I know that there is a plugin in development for xbmc. Thanks for your input.
But I am not yet convinced, for example I want have a standard remote with it. It doesn’t have an IR receiver, so I can’t use the SQ Blaster on it. Since it doesn’t have that, I will have to use the wake on lan plugin to turn it on, but that means again I can’t use it on wlan. It just isn’t an out of the box working media player.
I have to read a little more about xbmc, but I don’t think that’s the solution I am looking for.
There are several remotes for the phone that work great and there is one from xbmc.org for Android. Most of them have wake on lan support. I find that the all in one boxes never meet all of the requirements and lack in features. You can also have a look at the boxee box which is based off of xbmc.
What do you think about this? Enough Power? How about compatibility? It’s all in german, but when you click on “Details” you see the technical specifications.
Is nvidia or ati prefered for xbmc? I have never ever owned an ati, complete nvidia freak. But I like the Idea of buying and amd cpu, feels like going back to my water-cooled-overclocking-times when I was 16
Thanks for your feedback, I am now creating my dream-multimediabox 8)
thanks for the hint, would have ordered something quiet stupid if I wouldn’t have checked the ssd’s again after your post.
I can not say anything about availability in netherlands. here in switzerland they are available for order, but not in stock yet, so I don’t know how long it will take until everything gets delivered…
