Popcorn Hour A-210 network frustrations

For some time now I had a lot of issues with my PCH-A210.

When I power it on, I check the network settings and PCH-PopCorn Hour aquired an IP address from my router. No matter that I can ping it I am unable to access my PC (myiHome server running normally).

When I try to browse the PCH folder structure using UNC path I can usually start navigation, but after one or two subfolders it stucks with the network discovery line slowly crawling. After some time folder opens, if I try to go even deeper in the folder structure I usually get an error about ‘network path not found’.

I was not sure sure if this was related to firmware update (latest one) or this PCH-A210 is just one buggy device.

To fix this problem, I had to restart the damn device 5-10 times until I’m able to normally browse the folder structure and copy from and to the device. Unfortunately I haven’t received any help from Popcorn Hour forums so I was on my own. I’ve managed to find out the culprit of the problem that was located on my desk.

I was using a Netgear switch to connect my PCH to the router. Once I have connected the PCH device directly into the router, everything was fine. The big problem with this troubleshooting is that occasionally I had no issues even though PCH was connected over Netgear switch.

I wanted to share this article with you as someone could have the same issues and would probably blame Popcorn Hour for this.