So, Myka. Remember what it does? Right, it’s a little set-top-box that plays high-def videos on your [presumably larger than your computer monitor] TV; it can download using BitTorrent right onto its built-in hard drive. That, or you can manually load previously downloaded videos onto it via a thumb drive or through a network. Oh, and now it plays “independent, foreign and cult films you can’t find in video stores” from EZTakes‘ 5,000+ movie library. Neat-o, said the cow. Then he mooed, powerfully.
Right, so the Myka box itself doesn’t ship till later this month, but at least it’ll launch with a legal source of videos of which to tap into; can’t go around saying, “Hey, load up all those Blu-ray rips you downloaded from The Pirate Bay!” in the marketing materials, now can you? (Yes, even if that’s what’s implied here—this video that I’ve embedded shows a THOR-encoded version of some dumb Star Wars movie. THOR is the progenitor of ESiR, if I’m not mistaken.)
A quick look at the specs show that it’s not too shabby at all. It’ll play h.264-encoded MKVs (the popular high-def format “available” online) right up to 1080p; HDMI; 802.11n, etc. So, a fairly capable home theater PC, then.
My one concern: its internal hard drive only goes up to 500GB ($389), which is a little on the small side in these days of 1080p Blu-ray rips. The smallest one is 80GB ($279).
Looks neat, yes. If I had money I might even consider buying one, seeing as though I’m big on watching movies I find here and there. WINK WINK!
Looks like an interesting little device. I will probably stick with its legal cousin VUDU.
I wonder what the quality of movies from eztakes is on the actual box. I can’t really find anything better than HDX on VUDU.
Just perused the EZTakes site and I am going with no. No mainstream movies.
Have you seen this?
http://www.popcornhour.com/
[]s!
I heard that BitTorrent wouldn’t license this box but I didn’t believe it.
I do now that I can see there is no logo on the box
On the site it says EZ Takes is the first to many partnership deals. I’m thinking theres some good stuff on the way. I just checked out EZ Takes too, there are actually a couple of main stream movies, certainly worth watching.
I wouldn’t worry about download torrents straight from the box, trust me, it works ;) And well I might add. Who needs the pc?
If your worried about space, why not buy the 1TB developers box? Words out the developers case is almost identical to the consumer box.
Although, I would trade the 1TB for the Black Widow Version any day!
Joe, how the heck can you report that device works well when only 2 or 3 test devices have been made so far? The consumer units haven’t shipped yet and no-one who has handed over money has received their device yet!
I suspect you are a Myka shill and that disappoints me greatly
Well, I haven’t tried a Myka so I don’t know for sure. I do have a popcorn hour. I’m more so convincing myself that its going to be good. I’m not saying my popcorn hour is bad, but it has been a bit disappointing in ways. Just for example, if you turn it off the only way to turn it back on again is to unplug it from the wall.
As for torrents, transmission has been compiled to work on it (by some users over at networkedmediatank.com). Since I know it works on my popcorn hour, I’m almost positive it will work on Myka.
Essentially Myka, the popcorn hour, HDX, the egreat, they are all the same with different cases. The PCH, HDX and egreat even have the exact same interface. Myka seems to be the only company stepping it up, with for example, EZ takes, and building their own interface. To be that shows comitment.
P.S. I didn’t know about how they had taken orders and disappeared before I ordered one, but as far as I can tell everything is on track. Should I report back when I receive it?
In their forums MykaGuru stated that the developers box was similar to the consumer (originally the developers box was going to be clunky)