The latest media player from manufacturer Syabas, Popcorn Hour C-300, which is from 12 december in the Netherlands to purchase. The player is powered by a 800MHz cpu Sigma Designs and offers space for both a 2.5″ and a 3.5″hard drive
Syabas used for the C-300 have the same Sigma Design SMP8647-cpu as for the recently announced A-300 player. This cpu includes 256KB l2 cache and runs at a clock speed of 800MHz. The chip is paired with 512MB of ddr2 ram. According to Syabas should this combination be powerful enough to play almost all files with bitrates up to 100Mbps.
The housing is largely derived from that of the C-200. The tft display has a diagonal of 2.5″ and is square instead of rectangular. The buttons on the front are gone, and in place thereof are two usb ports come. The player is also somewhat higher, that is because above the 3.5″bay there is also space left for inserting a slimline blu-ray player. Internally, there is still space for a 2.5″hard drive.
At the rear is the C-300 with s-video, hdmi, and component outputs for the output video. Audio digitally can be transmitted via coaxial or optical connections, or analog stereo audio via two rca male connectors. Further to the back two usb ports and a gigabit ethernet connection.
The firmware of the box can handle a large number of combinations of containers and codecs, including mkv files with 3d-video. Further, the player can handle iso-files, the avchd format and the dvd’s. Also, there is support for simple blu-ray navigation”. Subtitles can automatically be downloaded without the intervention of a pc.
The C-300 also has an Apps Market, which at the time of writing, approximately 80 applications, of which a part is paid. Furthermore, the box bittorrent and usenet clients built in, and can also act as a nas server. The C-300 should be 379 euro is going to cost you.
