Some of Customer Reviews Patriot Box Office 1080P High Definition Media Player PCMPBO25

• Awesome addition to my Home Theater System!, November 16, 2009

By J. “premiumSOLE” (M-town, CA)

I bought the Patriot Box Office and was very impressed as soon as I took it out of the box. This unit is equipped with a stylish brushed black anodized steel case, indicator lights with USB connector in the front and the back of the unit is complete with an 10/100 Ethernet port, USB port, HDMI port, optical (audio) port and composite ports (audio and video). I got even more excited when I discovered another box underneath the unit contained a complete set of accessories including:
- fully functional remote control (with batteries)
- 1 HDMI cable (SCORE!!!)
- AC adapter
- composite cable
- usb cable
- quick set up guide
- CD that contains the device manual

I immediately hooked the Box Office Unit up to my Samsung 46″ 1080P LCD TV using the HDMI cable, connected the Ethernet cable and powered up the unit. The built in GUI looked pretty mediocre yet easy to use and navigate. I’d rather have a simple GUI that does the job rather than a fancy looking one that takes a rocket scientist to operate IMO.

Configuring the settings was seamless and was very user friendly and self explanatory. It took me only a few minutes to get the Box Office connected to my network and immediately identified my PC’s media files under the UPnP menu. I was able to view the pictures, music and movies that were loaded on the Windows Media Player and was amazed how the Box Office played them without a single stutter or a “black cat deja vu” experience.

So far, I’m super impressed by the Box Office performance. The only thing that I was bummed about was when I was streaming my movies from my PC, the quality was sub-par and they came out slightly pixilated. That’s only because I was playing compressed movie files (designed to view on a 17″ notebook display) on a 46″ LCD TV display. I was eager to test out how the Box Office handles HD movies so I decided to download the Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 HD trailers from youtube and was I blown away!!! I am now fully convinced that my hard earned cash was not wasted on this product. *patting myself on the back*

I continued to test the Box Office and installed the wireless USB adapter (free during promo period) to the back of the unit but noticed that the USB plug would only go in half-way. The case of USB drive was hitting against the Box Office case preventing the USB from doing a full connection. So I decided to connect the wireless USB to the front of the Box Office instead and it fit fine. Again, set-up was super easy. The Box Office was wirelessly connected to my N-router in seconds after punching in the SSID and the WEP key. I began playing back the same movies from my PC and the video playback quality and performance were excellent as if it was streaming through a wired Ethernet cable.

There are several other features available on the Box Office including playback from a USB Drive, an internal 2.5″ SATA hard drive or SSD (optional), and access to the “NET” feature on the menu. I haven’t been able to figure out how to access through the NET because it kept asking me to enter my NET user ID and password which RTFM doesn’t help me either. I decided to post this on Patriot Memory’s forum and hope to get an answer from the members or from the technical support reps soon.

Here are the “pros and cons” summary of the Patriot Box Office

PROs
-High Audio and Video Quality streaming via wired and wireless connection
-Offers several ways to access your media files, physically and virtually
-Very User friendly GUI
-Super easy to configure and set up
-Fully Functional Remote Control (similar to most DVD remote controls)
-Stylish Design. A nice addition to your Media Center that won’t look atrocious or out of place.
-Comes with an HDMI cable!! Saved me a trip to the liquor store to get one
-Plays most or all media file formats including ISO (access to DVD menu screens)

Cons
-”NET” feature not compatible with Windows 7. Can’t bypass the NET login name and password
-I need another one for the TV in my bedroom. Too bad they don’t have a BOGO Free Sale.

• excellent, well buildd and well thought product., January 3, 2010

By michael

I bought this item and there are few to nothing that it can’t do. I upgraded the firmware and now everynthing I threw at it plays flawlessly. My main interest was Matroska MKV support, and eberything works great. I also needed DTS downmixing which this box has. I was scared by some reviews that claimed the image quality is a bit below the WD Live. I had both of them for a few days and I noticed that if the Box Office is set on the default image setting (something like HDMI select) in some instances it’s image might be different than that of the WD Live. However if I specifically select 720p/ 1080p based on what the file is encoded in, the images are absolutely the same. To be very sure of this comparisons, I projected the same stand still from a paused HD movie and phhotographed a portion of the images. I then loaded them in paint and compared them pixel by pixel. The diference, for the default setting of the Box Office, was very small, almost indiscernable, but I can definately say there was NO difference whatsoever between the HD Live and Box Office when the correct setting was selected for the Box Office. Other than that, after 2 weeks of heavy use I still did not encounter any bug in this little box


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