Hello All,
This is just a heads up for anyone that has been trying to find a way of watching high definition on their 1080i@50z Panasonic CRT TV. Mine is a TX-86PW200A.
It is not about Windows MCE, but a help for anyone who has been struggling to get MCE to work with their Pana 50Hz only TV at HiDef, and is wanting to give something else a go.
I have been trying to get a PC to work with it, using Powertsrip and a Crescendo Systems tri-level sync VGA to component transcoder - with very little success.
I took a gamble and purchased the Popcorn Hour (
http://www.popcornhour.com/ ) and to my amazement it works perfectly at 1080i! I've played movies that are 720p, and 1080p, even 60hz movies, and they appear wonderfully smooth and high clarity! The beauty about this unit is that it supports 1080i@50hz, and you can lock it in at that. Besides making this setting, I did not have to adjust anything else to get this to work.
The Popcorn Hour cost me just under $AU250 delivered, and supports a huge range of formats. My x264 MKV format movies played without a hitch too! (Except for movies with DTS. The Popcorn Hour does not internally decode DTS due to licensing issues, so you need to attach it to a DTS decoder, or you need to convert the DTS stream to AC3 using a PC beforehand).
I paid more than a few thousand dollars for my TV a few years ago, and can now finally use it to its full potential by watching Hi-Def movies on it.
