PopBox is out.. but maybe it should have stayed under wraps
After months of waiting for the PopBox Media Player
That’s the good news.
Unfortunately everything else appears to have been a complete disaster. One look at the Amazon product page for the PopBox media player says it all. Currently, there are twenty 1-star reviews of the unit, six 2-star reviews, two 3-star reviews, three 4-star reviews, and a lone 5-star review that no one believes in. Customers all over are panning the media player – complaining of slowness, crashes, and basically an unfinished product. Maybe Syabas should have taken the route of D-Link and postponed the player until it was really ready for primetime.
Although we didn’t pre-order the media player nor receive a review unit, we think the Amazon review headlines and comments pretty much describe the situation at hand. Here’s a list of quotes from the Amazon product page
“Further, the firmware is SO bad that sometimes the text input menu will just get stuck on the screen.” – Mark Twain
“Will be great in 6 months” – a guitarist
“NetFlix aside, the device is just unstable. I had it lock up frequently just trying to navigate back and forth from the settings, and when it locks up there is no way to fix it except to power-cycle it. “ – Gadget Freak
“Popbox – do you want to pay to be a beta tester?” – Jason M. Page
“Do Not Buy. Big Mistake purchasing this early” – Boyd Cartwright
“Well I tried to like it..” – Lewie
“Junk – missing features, lots of features just do not work” – Bob Julien
“Unless you want to play the role of beta tester, don’t buy” – Brandon Creek
“Buyer beware: Not ready for mainstream. Wait for improvements before you buy” – Tyler
“Is there an option for NO stars?” – RTR13
“Huge step backwards” – BattleGnome
OUCH.. I think you get their points right? Have a different experience? Please do let us know.. it’s a real shame the PopBox isn’t working out for so many people. We had high hopes for the player from our early look at it over at CES – but then again, we never did actually play with the unit.
Here’s hoping D-Link can execute on the Boxee Box. We’re fans of Boxee itself.. just hoping it can be delivered smoothly on a sub $200 dollar device.
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