***** New To OCuK***** Patriot Box Office Media Player *****

Rob Will

Rob Will

Rob Will

Associate
Joined
5 Jul 2010
Posts
231
We had a sample unit of this product arrive today and there was a few things which instantly impressed me :-

- The size of the unit is very small and compact with a nice brushed aluminium finish. Woudlnt be out of place in any home and is not bulky and unsightly.

- How simple it was to setup we watched a trailer within 5 minutes of taking the product out of the box. As long as you have HDMI on your TV/Monitor you have all you need to get it the Patriot Box Office setup and will play a good range of media files.

Patriot Box Office Media Player @ £76.36 inc VAT

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The Patriot Box Office is a media player that frees your digital media library from the constraints of a PC and bridges digital media to your home entertainment system to bring your entire media library to the comfort of your living room. With support for the most popular media formats (H.264, ISO, VOB, DivX, xVid, MKV, MOV, MPEG and more) you can remove the limits of your media collection. Box Office offers a variety of ways to connect to your media library: 3 USB ports, internal 2.5" hard drive (not included), UPnP streaming, 10/100 Ethernet connection and optional WiFi USB adapter.

Reviews :-

Legit Reviews 'The Patriot Box Office has the ability to play virtually every multimedia file known, stream HD, and support an internal 2.5" hard drive. Combine these features and its low price, we recommend this media player over all others.'
Test Freaks 'The Patriot Box Office is basically the perfect media player, it's small and quiet and it plays pretty much everything out there. It has both HDMI and composite connections on it so you're covered for SD and HD Tvs, and the picture quality is outstanding'
Maximum PC: 7/10
TechSpot 'Where the Box Office stands up strong is in its ability to play virtually any media codec you are likely to come across, and do it well. Patriot's digital media player blows most budget players out of the water. We were amazed by the clarity of its 1080p playback. In the end that's what it's all about, being able to play all forms of media with good quality results and at this price.'

Features:-

- Works with any USB storage devices - Play content from most USB drives or any portable device that can be recognized as a mass storage device.
- Expandable internal storage - Use the internal 2.5" SATA drive slot with any SSD/HDD to increase the storage capacity for your expanding media library. Full HD video playback and navigation - Up to 1080p - Experience the highest quality HD video possible and crystal clear audio with Dolby® and DTS® surround sound. Use the included remote control to navigate and control your media collection with ease.
- Network Streaming - Stream media files through your wired or wireless (optional wifi adapter required) home network from desktop PCs.
- File transfer - Copy or transfer files between connected USBs, the internal hard drive (not included), network PCs or other network attached storage (NAS) devices. PC less download management - Download files via P2P sharing for easy access to media from the web. Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) - Support for UPnP streaming on UPnP cabable devices such as Sony Playstation® and Microsoft Xbox® Picture viewing.
- Create custom slide shows and add your own background music to create a truly unique experience. Zoom and pan on each image to view hard to see details. Movie preview and playback
- Quickly preview video files prior to playback. Once selected, control movies at your own pace... Fast forward, rewind, pause, zoom, and pan. Supports subtitles.
- Listen to your entire music library with fast forward, rewind, pause, and repeat options.
HDMI and composite video connections - The High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) port lets you connect to the highest quality HDTV or home theater. Additional composite (RCA) outputs ensure compatibility with virtually all television sets.

Only £76.36 inc VAT.

ORDER NOW
 
Hmm I'm intrigued as to how well this would play full length blu-ray movie rips as I currently have a Core i3 530 doing this and some films consume a solid 25-30% CPU!?

Also, does this support 5.1/DTS etc over the HDMI port?
 
Does this use a standard wireless usb dongle (unlike the play-on which requires a proprietary one)?

EDIT:

Found out from a review...

"Wireless adapter is proprietary and optional"

Meh
 
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& not that easy to get hold of either.....so far.

This looks like it could be good, if you stock the wireless dongle too.
 
Get the WD TV Live, blooming amazing bit of kit, handles all my blu-ray rips with much less fuss than my high end HTPC running XBMC does!
 
jayextreme said:
would be extremely surprised if this unit can really play 1080p movie without lag
Click to expand...

I have one at home and yes it really can play 1080p without lag and pretty much any file I throw at it for that matter. One of the beauties of this system is that it just works. No messing about, no crappy software that takes an age getting to work or configure. If you want a discreet media player then really is worth looking at.
 
For what its worth, they're right, usually these media boxes will play the most common file types, within reason, up to about 15mbps fluidly.
(They're basically using hardware rather than software decoding, supported at a relatively low level in the onboard SDK which is why they're able to keep up, so similar to how low end PCs these days are doing it with GPUs)

The trick comes in versatility.
New encoding standards can throw them until they recieve manufacturer support/firmware updates, support for additional features like subtitling/mkv chapters/ordered chapters etc is more basic than a HTPC, file support is often not quite as high as a fully kitted HTPC (although it'll cover the usuals) and they often don't deal with 'out there' encoded files as well as a HTPC.
On top of that, neither can they cope with the highest bitrate files;basically they're limited to a certain degree (although very few files just now will break that bitrate limit, as most blu-ray rips at even high quality are generally 10-30mbps)

What they do do for the cost though is very good, and obviously they're simple and come with a remote. Some of them are also passive. For a lot of users, they're perfect, especially given the cost.
 
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axer said:
Get the WD TV Live, blooming amazing bit of kit, handles all my blu-ray rips with much less fuss than my high end HTPC running XBMC does!
Click to expand...

My HTPC using onboard graphics and an Intel dual core handles 1080p's like Avatar (The 50GB version) flawlessly. It just depends what kit you use!
 
Loki said:
I have one at home and yes it really can play 1080p without lag and pretty much any file I throw at it for that matter. One of the beauties of this system is that it just works. No messing about, no crappy software that takes an age getting to work or configure. If you want a discreet media player then really is worth looking at.
Click to expand...

same here ... no probs with anything i throw at it.
 
would i be able to plug this into my network and stream from my PC? I have been looking at a few different media players but i like the look of this one.
 
Sayso said:
would i be able to plug this into my network and stream from my PC? I have been looking at a few different media players but i like the look of this one.
Click to expand...

Exactley that yes. It has hdmi out and network in. It,s quite small so would be discreet behind your tv. Plug in via hdmi ANC your away.

You then choose the network location of your movie/music/photos and you can then stream from those folders via Ethernet or with the wireless dongle
 
Loki said:
Exactley that yes. It has hdmi out and network in. It,s quite small so would be discreet behind your tv. Plug in via hdmi ANC your away.

You then choose the network location of your movie/music/photos and you can then stream from those folders via Ethernet or with the wireless dongle
Click to expand...

mmmm i see a xmas pressie on the cards :) and i have a small HD i could fit aswell.
 
Loki said:
No optical drives. It streams movies media. Upside is you can stream mKv's and because it has no optical it's quiet too :)
Click to expand...

So to watch a DVD I own I need to put the DVD in a computer, rip the DVD, encode it to a supported media type then copy it to removable media or stream it direct from a PC? (Which my XBOX allows me to do anyway)
Putting a DVD in a drive seems easier and quicker.
 
GoogalyMoogaly said:
So to watch a DVD I own I need to put the DVD in a computer, rip the DVD, encode it to a supported media type then copy it to removable media or stream it direct from a PC? (Which my XBOX allows me to do anyway)
Putting a DVD in a drive seems easier and quicker.
Click to expand...

Media players aren't everyones cup of tea thats for sure. If you just want to play DVD's then a DVD player is what you need not a media streamer. There is a big difference.

Conversely, what if you make a couple of home videos of when you have been on Holiday etc and don't want to watch it on your PC. You then have to download from your camera, rip to DVD then play on your DVD player on your TV. With the media player just download from Camera and stream to your TV
 
Loki said:
Media players aren't everyones cup of tea thats for sure. If you just want to play DVD's then a DVD player is what you need not a media streamer. There is a big difference.

Conversely, what if you make a couple of home videos of when you have been on Holiday etc and don't want to watch it on your PC. You then have to download from your camera, rip to DVD then play on your DVD player on your TV. With the media player just download from Camera and stream to your TV
Click to expand...

I guess, but my £30 DVD player will play back MPEG/DivX/H264/Photos from DVD/USB/SD Card.

Sure a DVD is considered a type of media?
 
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