With support for Blu-ray 3D-Video, Full-HD video, several audio and photo codec’s and web content, users can experience their digital media how they want. The Syabas Apps Market, containing over 90 free and premium TV apps, gives users a broad selection of additional entertainment via the web.

The Popcorn Hour A-400 will include some exciting features to enhance the media playback experience. In addition to video metadata and posters, users can now download subtitles directly from the web without having to use a PC. Users can also select 1 of 22 different languages they prefer the information and subtitles to be downloaded in.

The Popcorn Hour A-400 can be upgraded with an internal 2.5 or 3.5-inch hard disk which can be mounted in a HDD quick dock, turning your Popcorn Hour into a
network attached storage device. Users also have the option of using the built in 10/100/1000mbs Gigabit Ethernet port or they can purchase a Wireless N Wi-Fi
dongle. SD card reader, HDMI1.4 connector and eSATA interface are also included.

The innovative products by Syabas enable consumers to enjoy a wide assortment of content including home videos, photos, music and online movies. With access to the Syabas Apps Market, users can also enjoy all the latest content on popular services such as YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter, Howcast, Weather Bug and more.

3D Blu-ray Ripper 20% Purchase Link (Valid till Sep 20, 2012)

What does a 3D Blu-ray Ripper do:
It lets you gets Blu-rays off the disc and turn the movies into free videos, so that they can be streamed by NAS devices (like Popcorn Hour A400) and played on HD media players.

Apple TV firmware update News from Engadget:

Second and third generation Apple TV boxes have a new software update to keep an eye out for, and now that the changelog has been posted for 5.0.1 we can see what it brings. According to this screen grab from Apple’s support page, the update adds HD previews for TV shows and movies in the iTunes store, and fixes issues affecting AirPlay, Home Sharing, Netflix and more. Of course, FireCore warns jailbroken fans to stay away from the update button for now, all others should get a prompt on their hockey puck sooner rather than later.

Related Post:
Get Blu-ray into iTunes for Streaming to Apple TV 3 with 5.1 sound
iTunes 10.6 brings 1080p movies- equal to Blu-ray image quality?
Review: Apple TV 3rd Generation and 1080p movies playback
The New Generation Apple TV (ATV 3) does 1080p Streaming and Playback

System Requirements for ripping Blu-ray to iTunes and streaming 1080p to Apple TV

• Windows 7 or Mac OS X 10.5/10.6/10.7/10.8
• Compatible Blu-ray Disc Drive
• Blu-ray Ripper software
• 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo or faster processor
• At least 2 GB of RAM
• iTunes 10.6 or later
• A video driver that supports HDCP for Windows PC
• A display that supports HDCP with a screen resolution of 1280 x 800 or higher
• Apple TV 3rd generation

Step-by-step guide for ripping Blu-ray movies for Apple TV 3  with 1080p HD quality
1. Make sure your Blu-ray Disc drive is well connected with computer, and put a source Blu-ray Disc to the BD drive. Mac is lacking of Blu-ray support and you need to add an external BD drive that is compatible with Mac.

2. Have Blu-ray Ripper installed on your computer. Pavtube is recommended.
Download link:
Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper for Windows (Windows 7, Vista, XP compatible)
Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper for Mac (Mac OS X 10.8, 10.7, 10.6, 10.5 compatible)

3. Run the Blu-ray Ripper. Press “Load Disc” icon to import Blu-ray movie. The software requires network connection to decrypt Blu-ray so keep your network wired.

4. Select main movie from file list, and set subtitles and audio language for export.

5. Set iTunes compatible 1080p format from the drop-down list of “Format”. Either “iPad 3 Full HD Video (*.mp4)” format or “Apple TV Full HD Video (*.mp4)” works well in iTunes. Both encode Blu-rays to 1080 MP4 with higher bit rate and exports better quality than iTunes movie downloads.

6. Press “Convert” to get Blu-ray Ripper start compressing Blu-ray to iTunes friendly videos.

7. When conversion completes, press “Open” to find compressed 1080p movie and add it to iTunes movie store. Open up iTunes and follow “File>> Add file to Library…” to sync ripped Blu-ray 1080p movie to iTunes.

Now you can enjoy the Blu-ray movie with iTunes freely and stream the 1080p movie to 3rd generation Apple TV.

One thing that has really been disappointing Mac users  is the missing of Blu-ray support.  Two years passed since Jobs said NO to Blu-ray that “Bluray [Dsic] is looking more and more like one of the high end audio formats that appeared as the successor to the CD – like it will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats.” iTunes Store videos jumps from 720p to 1080p, but Blu-ray is still unavailable to Mac users.  Apple threw Mac Pro owners a bone in 2011 when they added Blu-ray authoring and burning support to Final Cut Pro X, Final Cut Pro 7, and Compressor 4. But that’s not enough for authoring Blu-ray on Mac Pro. To have your Mac burn and play Blu-ray disc, it still  requires some more devices and applications.
How to turn your Mac Pro into a Blu-ray Disc Burner:

Add a compatible Blu-ray Disc drive to Mac Pro (MCE 12X Blu-ray Recordable Drive recommended);

Author/burn Blu-ray Disc with proper editing/burning software (e.g. Final Cut Pro X, Compressor 4, Roxio’s Toast 11 Titanium Pro, etc).

How to turn your Mac Pro into a Blu-ray Player:

1. Add a compatible Blu-ray Disc drive to Mac Pro (MCE 12X Blu-ray Recordable Drive recommended);
2. Download and install an universal media hub for playing unprotected Blu-ray contents (PLEX recommended).

Commercial Blu-ray Disc is still unavailable to Mac. If you want to play commercial Blu-rays, you need to get a workable Blu-ray Ripper application that can crack BD protections and back up Blu-ray to Mac HDD first (Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper for Mac recommended).

Review: MCE 12X Blu-ray Recordable Drive

Review: Top 3 Mac Blu-ray Rippers

If you’re more into video quality, an advice here for you is to rip the  Blu-rays by yourself, and encode movies at higher bitrate. And better still the rip is DRM-free and can be transferred to an Android tablet like Asus Transformer Prime and Galaxy Tab 10.1. (Read more for how to rip Blu-rays to Full HD 1080p MP4 files that play even sharper than the iTunes 1080p downloads. )

How does AMD APP stack up? You might have been impressed with its clear video playback and fast game play and realistic physics effects. But wait, there’s still something you should have a try with- the AMD APP accelerated encoding. Let’s explore how effective AMD Radeon HD graphics are when it comes to video transcoding:

Test 1. AMD Radeon HD6370 (GPU)vs. AMD Dual- Core E2-3200 processor(CPU)

Test 2. AMD Radeon HD 5800 (GPU) vs. Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K (CPU)

Test 3. AMD Radeon HD 5750 (GPU) vs. Asus i7-860 (CPU)

A Summary to GPU Encoding

Overall, we get faster transcoding speed when turning on AMD APP accelerated decoding, and see clear differences between hardware-accelerated decoders. The AMD Radeon HD6370 brings much better result than that with the other two Radeon HD graphics cards. The suggestion here is that you’d see better results if you were stuck on an older machine with a slower processor and modern graphics card (AMD Radeon HD 6000 series and later models).

While working with video clip, we noticed that our files weren’t all the same size. Not only do two different cards not output the same data, but one card isn’t guaranteed to give you the same result from run to run.

Compatibility and Usage

Users will be able to take advantage of AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) Technology when transcoding video contents on systems equipped with ATI Stream-enabled GPUs. It is also required that you have an AMD APP based video converter software and transcode video streams into H.264 video.

Multiple video encoders are out of there for your choice. The free ATI Video Converter enables basic GPU transcoding of HD video streams. For more advanced transcoding functionality CyberLink’s MediaShow Espresso video converter would be a nice pick. When it comes to transcoding DVD and Blu-ray contents, Pavtube Blu-ray Video Converter Ultimate is the only program that would accept protected Blu-ray movie, DVD as well as HD videos. In other applications, we were prompted with audio codec errors, as none recognizes TrueHD.

If there is a best HD media player for 2012, it must be the Apple’s new released 3rd generation Apple TV (known as Apple TV 2012).  The real reason to get excited about the new Apple TV (and to read this overview, frankly) is to find out how Apple’s 1080p content looks. We’ve been Blu-ray fanatics since the early days and for years have had a hard time enjoying non-disc movies owing to the constant distractions posed by bad picture quality. Vudu’s HDX titles have always been the exception, along with Zune Video on the 360. So we’re happy we now have another choice for high-quality, full HD video.

We rented a few 1080p movies and the one that really left an impression was Inglourious Basterds. Having watched it on Blu-ray more times than we care to admit, we didn’t hesitate to rent it for $3.99 from Apple ($1 less than Vudu’s HDX) and switch obsessively the HDMI inputs our Blu-ray player and Apple TV was connected to. Watching a number of familiar scenes on both and sitting unusually close to our 60-inch 1080p Pioneer Kuro, we were hard-pressed to spot any differences. Most impressive was the lack of noticeable compression artifacts in the background of dark scenes, or during, say, explosions.

This is no small feat for a 1080p h.264 stream that Apple claims requires at least an 8Mbps internet connection. Blu-ray can do it no problem, thanks to its 40Mbps of throughput, but keep in mind that both Apple and Blu-ray use very similar codecs. You will notice some compression artifacts from time to time, but not to the point of distraction. And while the video quality is comparable to Blu-ray, there is a noticeable lack of detail in certain scenes, as well as some judder during extreme pans, which we attribute to the movie being encoded at 1080p24 when the Apple TV only outputs 1080p at 60 frames per second — do the math and then search for 3:2 pull-down.

Unfortunately not all the clips we sampled left us impressed. In fact we rented The Invention of Lying and every single scene was plagued with dancing backgrounds and compression artifacts everywhere else you can imagine. Hard to know who’s to blame, Warner or Apple, but we have certainly never seen a movie on Blu-ray look that bad. This does give us pause when renting or buying a title, not knowing which level of quality we can expect, though.

Apple’s store isn’t the only source for 1080p, though — you can also use AirPlay to stream 1080p video clips from your new iPad or iPhone 4S (mirroring is limited to 720p). In addition, we’re sure it’s only a matter of time before a 1080p profile is added to your favorite encoding software. We were able to use MKVTools to change the audio codec and container of a sample clip in the amount of time it takes to copy a file and found that, contrary to Apple’s declared specs, the Apple TV easily handled 1080p H.264 High Profile 5.1.

Feel like enjoying Blu-ray movies with the 3rd Gen Apple TV (2012)? Get below a Blu-ray to Apple TV Converter software that rips/converts Blu-ray movies into 1080p HD  MP4 files for airplay to Apple TV 3:

• Blu-ray to Apple TV 3 Converter Mac (Mac 10.8, 10.7, 10.6 and 10.5)
• Blu-ray to Apple TV 3 Converter Windows (Windows 7, Vista, and XP)

2012 Best Blu-ray Ripper Side-by-Side Comparisons and Reviews

Top Blu-ray Rippers Ranking and Review:

No. 1 Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper – Excellent

The good: Not any other Blu-ray Ripper can do with all kinds of BD/DVD sources: protected and unprotected Blu-ray Disc, BDMV folder, BD ISO, physical DVD, VIDEO_TS folder, DVD ISO and IFO file. Using the “Full Disc Copy” feature, you can preserve the Blu-ray’s original file structure. Insert the Blu-ray disc, click on the “Full Disc Copy” button, and select a folder to copy to. While Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper also supports conversion to popular device formats, it takes longer. When converting Blu-ray to 1080p HD video, Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper gives pretty much indistinguishable image quality from the original Blu-ray Disc with Dolby Digital 5.1/AAC 5.1 audio as a plus. If you enjoy having everything organized and save memory space while keeping the original quality of your HD movies and videos then THIS IS WHAT YOU WERE LOOKING FOR.

The bad: It lets you trim a specific duration from a movie, but not allows you to split movie/divide a movie evenly into multiple segments. It rips 3D Blu-ray Disc to 2D only.

The bottom line: With decent decrypting capability, high quality video output and considerate backup solution and specific format templates for versatile PMP devices (iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, Xbox, PS3, Android tablets and phones, etc), Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper ranks top on the Blu-ray ripping application list.

Editors’ note: Pavtube provides excellent customer support service, including lifetime free upgrade of product and technical support. Users can contact the support staff via email for help and suggestion.

Trial Download:

• Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper for Windows (Requires Windows XP, Vista or Win7)
• Pavtube Blu-ray Ripper for Mac (Requires Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), Snow Leopard (10.6), Lion (10.7), Mountain Lion (10.8))

No. 2 DVDfab Blu-ray Ripper – Good

The good: When it comes to decrypting/hacking Blu-ray discs and DVDs, DVDfab is about as good as it gets. DVDfab Blu-ray Ripper well deserves its high reputation in decryption, and it handles not only AACS, BD+, Region code restriction, but also Cinavia protected Blu-rays. By taking advantage of CUDA accelerating, the conversion time is greatly shorted. If you want to rip a Blu-ray to MKV and keep 2 audio language and external subtitles, DVDfab would be your choice.

The bad: It is lacking of DVD ripping feature. It does not support AMD APP encoding. The interface is not very intuitive. And DVDfab Blu-ray Ripper costs more than its alternatives.

The bottom line: DVDfab Blu-ray Ripper decrypts and rips Blu-ray title to various video files playable on next generation consoles like PS3 and Xbox 360, HD player like WD TV Live, or mobile devices like iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc.

Editors’ note: DVDfab has a comprehensive forum where you can communicate with other users and get helpful advices. There’s not support email but you can submit your problem to DVDfab.

Trial Download:

• DVDfab Blu-ray Ripper for Windows (Requires Windows XP, Vista or Win7)
• DVDfab Blu-ray Ripper for Mac (Requires Mac OS X v10.6/10.7,1 GHz or above Intel® processor)

No. 3 Leawo Blu-ray Ripper – Good

The good: Leawo Blu-ray Ripper comes with the popular feature to convert 2D to 3D for users to enjoy the popular 3D effect and exports various HD and popular common video formats (M2TS, AVI, MP4, WMV, FLV, MPEG, MOV, MKV, RMVB, etc). Leawo Blu-ray Ripper has stunning trim and crop feature- it trims movie more accurate and crops video more considerate than its competitors. It can load multiple Blu-ray and DVD movies at a time. If you have tons of movies waiting to rip and feel like having a Blu-ray Ripper queue them several movies for running overnight, Leawo is recommended.

The bad: Not recognizing Blu-ray ISO or forced subtitle (if there is). GPU encoding is restricted to Nvidia’s CUDA only. There’s no backup option for keeping original movie quality.

The bottom line: Leawo Blu-ray Ripper is a nice tool for DVD and Blu-ray ripping. There may be some improvements for Leawo to make but it already performs well enough for average users to convert/put Blu-ray and DVD movies to iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, Wii, etc.

Editors’ note: We noticed that audio quality is noticeably degraded when ripping Blu-ray with Leawo Blu-ray Ripper.

Trial Download:

• Leawo Blu-ray Ripper for Windows (Requires Microsoft® Windows NT4/2000/XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7)
• Leawo Blu-ray Ripper for Mac (Requires Mac OS X v10.5/10.6/10.7, 1 GHz or above Intel Processor)

No. 4 Aimersoft Blu-ray Ripper – Fair

The good: By taking advantage of AMD APP, Intel® Quick Sync Video and NVIDIA® CUDA™ technology, Aimersoft Blu-ray ripper converts movies faster and saves your time. It rips Blu-ray/DVD into almost all popular video formats (MP4, AVI, MOV, etc) and features versatile format templates for smartphones, game consoles and MP3 players. Its “Backup” function let users envelop a whole Blu-ray movie into a MKV/DVD into VOB without quality loss. If you’re looking for a way putting movies onto a HTC, Samsung, LG, Sony, or Motorola smartphone, the Aimersoft Blu-ray Ripper is worth checking out.

The bad: It does not support Blu-ray ISO or BDMV structure. There’s no option for preserving only forced subtitles. Most Blu-ray Discs are not loading to the software.

The bottom line: Aimersoft Blu-ray Ripper handles DVD ripping as good as any other rippers, but the company really needs to work hard and step forward in Blu-ray Disc cracking. Other than that, Aimersoft Blu-ray Ripper is impressively fast and helpful.

Editors’ note: It seems that Aimersoft does not handle Blu-ray AACS and BD+ encryption properly and the software keeps popping up a message that we should contact customer support during our testing- the customer support staff offers but apologize though.

Trial Download:

• Aimersoft Blu-ray Ripper for Windows (Requires Windows XP 32bit/Vista 32bit&64bit /Win7 32bit&64bit)

No. 5 Xilisoft Blu-ray Ripper – Poor

The good: Xilisoft Blu-ray Ripper can convert both standard Blu-ray videos and 3D Blu-ray videos to SD and HD video formats such as MKV, AVI, WMV, TS, etc. And it can preserve 3D effects when your source is 3D Blu-ray movie. NVIDIA CUDA and AMD APP graphic acceleration technology has been introduced to bring faster conversion experience.

The bad: The app does not decrypt Blu-ray protections and requires AnyDVD HD to be installed in advance for Blu-ray ripping. DVD ripping is not supported.

The bottom line: Xilisoft Blu-ray Ripper does not rip movies from Blu-ray Disc, but if you have had the Blu-ray cracked and saved onto computer hard drive, this tool would be helpful and useful for you to enjoy movies on iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PSP, Xbox, Zune, NDS, Wii, and 3D smartphones.

Editors’ note: This tool is not recommended unless when you want to convert 3D Blu-ray and keep 3D effect.

Trial Download:

• Xilisoft Blu-ray Ripper for Windows (Microsoft® Windows XP (SP2 or later), Windows Vista, Windows 7)

It looks like we were blind-sided a little by that decidedly iPad-esque invite, because Apple has something more for us — it’s just announced the latest iteration of Apple TV and it can do 1080p video. The new UI inches slightly closer to iOS territory, with a splash of new color and a whole range of third-party apps willing to play with the new box. This includes access to Photo Stream alongside old favorites like Netflix, Flickr and YouTube. Expect improved connectivity to the iCloud (including your movie content) and better integration of your iTunes playlists directly from the refreshed UI. The good news: the price is going nowhere — the new model matches the 2010 version at $99.

Pre-orders start from March 8, 2012.

Source from: http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/07/apple-reveals-new-apple-tv-does-1080p-video/

Overall, the PlayStation Vita is not only the most advanced portable gaming system ever made, but also a great media player. Its  dazzling 5-inch (960×544-pixel) OLED touch screen delivers stunning image quality. You can display lists of music, image, and video files stored on your computer and transfer the files to your PS Vita system. You can also transfer music, image,Copy music, images, and videos to your PS Vita system from a computer (Windows® / Mac) . Follow the guide below to copy music and movies to PlayStation Vita and fro.

Procedures for PS Vita file transfer:

1.On the computer, check that Content Manager Assistant is installed and started.

Windows®:
Look for the Content Manager Assistant icon in the notification area of the taskbar:

Mac:
Look for the Content Manager Assistant icon in the menu bar:

2.Connect your PS Vita system to the computer using a USB cable.

3.On your PS Vita system, tap (Content Manager) > [Start].

4. Tap either [ PC → PS Vita System] or [ PS Vita System → PC].

5.Tap [Videos], [Music] or [Photos] to select the kind of content to copy.

6.Select the checkboxes of the content you want to copy, and then tap [Copy].

This is an example for Music: