I tend to believe that the major problem is that the pogoplug has less memory and processing power then most smartphones..... Think about transcoding, indexing or serving multiple files with 128M of ram.

transcoding seems to be necessary for the files to be streamed correctly. what i believe it supposed to do is convert your files into H.264 format-either on the fly or in the background. there is some debate about the merits of all this and whether the pogoplug actually does this effectively. as noted, the hardware is a little weak and the process seems to have some major issues. another thing to note is that in order to stream to a HTML5 browser from your pogoplug, it must be in MP4 format. that is a client issue and not necessarily a Pogoplug fault.

streaming is a little different than just simply loading the whole file into memory and playing it. streaming allows you to play your video files over lower bandwidth connections like through remote locations over the internet and over your 3g connection to your phone. not as big of an issue if you only play your files on your local network but necessary to prevent drop outs and over saturation of your available bandwidth.

think about it-you have a 500-1 gb video file and to download that to your phone assuming you even have the space would take about an hour over a 3G connection if it completes at all. with streaming, it sends over the data in little chunks at a time so in case you your connection degrades slightly, the file keeps playing.

what some of us have resorted to doing is just transcoding our files offline using a powerful PC and Handbrake software-for me it is to ensure the files are smaller and at the appropriate resolution to be watched on the intended device-in my case a cell phone in Standard def.

do you even want to be watching HD quality over a remote connection? with data caps on your internet, the data being transferred could cost you.