Pogoplug has release version 2 of PogoPlug. You don’t have to buy a new one (although the new one has integrated 4 USB 2.0 port, saves you about $15 to get a standalone USB 2 hub) because your V1 Pogoplug will receive its update in firmware.
What surprised me was that after the firmware was upgraded, I could not see all my drives that’s attached. I have a WD 1TB My Book and a Drobo attached to it. I reset, detached the drives repeatedly but the Pogoplug was unable to see all the drives consistently.
Until I realized that the new firmware was generating previews and transcoding some of the video clips into a format that Pogoplug’s web player can use. While it doesn’t transcode the entire video clips, it does transcode a 10-15 sec segment of it. This process, depending on what you stored on the drives, can cause the system to be really slow.
I ended up stopping the scanning process to generate the previews of all the media on all the drives. PogoPlug then return to normal. The extra load in transcoding resulted in the Pogoplug being bogged down by the trascoding processes that prevent it from recognizing the new devices.
Being able to preview a segment of the video clip is good, but I wish Pogoplug can do it like the “Orb” network, which will simply become a streaming server to send the video clip across.
After the firmware upgrade, all my OpenPogo installed program still works well (I only installed the Samba server anyway). Heard that the new firmware does use more space, resulting in less ‘user’ space for custom installation of software.
Haven’t got too much time to play around yet… will report back later.
