The Popcorn Hour- A110

The popcorn hour or NMT (network media tank) is a great product for anyone willing to put some time into configuring devices. I have the A110 model. Once I got the popcorn to see my HDMI input on my TV, it was pretty easy to view web content from sites like YouTube and Google Picasa through it's web services.

After connecting a harddrive, the possibilities opened up to bit torrent and media file playback. You don't need a hard drive to playback media, but it makes it easier to see your digital media and it makes the popcorn hour portable. This device can handle about any video file you can throw at it. So far, success has come with .vob files ripped from DVDs, H.264 quicktimes and xvid avi files. Audio stayed in sync and picture quality was excellent, but this depends on the how your files are encoded. As I test more formats I will post the results.

Click on NMT for all supported file formats.

The popcorn hour is not for everyone. There are some things I need to work out like static IP vs dynamic IP. The popcorn seems to have a hard time establishing a connection to my PC for services like PlayOn (used for Netflix and Hulu). I will talk about this two services in another post. For example, I fire up my PC, well my daughters old PC, she is going to start charging me rent soon!

Ok, I make sure the PlayOn service is running then fire up the popcorn hour. I watched a few episodes of Fringe (gotta love J.J.Abrams, bring back Alias please!) then decide it's time to head over to get my dreams interpreted on Medium. But when I navigate back to another TV show folder, the popcorn hour looses connectivity to the PlayOn server running on my PC. I have to reboot the popcorn hour. Hopefully a firmware update can fix some of my issues so I can keep my wife happy and the tech funds rolling in!

In all, I highly recommend this device and I would love to see more companies like Netflix open up more source code for developers to write APIs to work on the popcorn hour.

How to Change User Name Information in Microsoft Word

Today, my Microsoft user registration decided it wanted a new owner. After going to help and selecting About Microsoft Word, I found a different user name registered. I only checked because I want to make a note of my product ID number from my LEGAL copy of Microsoft Word 2003. Well, my name was no longer assigned to the software. I was evicted. How could it be? I will get into how this happened in a later post.

There are two ways to fix this. Option 1: Quick and Easy or Option 2: Geek and Tech. If you like tweaking code like I do, then Option 2 is right up your alley. However, do not blame me if your computer crashes into the tech abyss. I gave you an out! Also, see Microsoft’s notes on this process. Help and Support

Option 1 (Quick and Easy)

This change can be done in one Office program to take effect on the entire suite.

On the Tools menu, click Options.

Click the User Information tab.

Type the user name information in the Name box.

Click OK.

Option 2 (Geek and Tech)

So, to fix this problem I had to change the Microsoft UserName registry file. If you are not comfortable going into the registry stop reading now! If you have no idea what the registry is, read this. Windows Registry

Then, if you are feeling brave, continue reading below.

Click START/RUN. Type in regedit and press enter. Go to this path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\UserInfo.

Double click on user name.

On the right side you will see the current user name. Each letter in the name will be followed by a period. Make sure to keep the periods. Delete the letters you don’t need. When you are done, click OK. Go to File, Exit to quit the registry.

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