It’s right there in the name. Patriot Memory is a company that has largely focused on memory products in the past, loading up your computers with RAM, solid state drives, and positively massive USB flash drives. Well, it seems that Patriot has developed an interest in consumer electronics too.
Whether you’re loading up with home movies or you’re looking for a better way to enjoy the digital content that you download from the Internet, it is certainly more appealing to bring that multimedia goodness into your living room. This is where we find ourselves with the Patriot Box Office PCMPBO25 Media Player. This relatively simple device looks like a set top box for your television, but it does so much more.
Introducing the Home Box Office
Not to be confused with the premium cable television network that brought us The Sopranos and Entourage, the Patriot Box Office is a media player that connects to your HDTV, freeing “your digital media library from the constraints of a PC.” Your living room is so much more comfortable, after all.
The Patriot Box Office improves on solutions like the Xbox 360 Media Player by offering extensive file format support. This includes popular AVI and WMV formats, as well as FLV, RMVB, MKV, MOV, and more. It’ll do FLAC audio too.
In addition to regular USB expansion, you’ll notice an internal 2.5″ SATA drive slot. Other highlights include network streaming, on-board file transfer, PC-free download management, movie previews, and full 1080p HD video support.
What’s in this Box (Office)?
As with almost every other media player in this market, especially at this price range, the Patriot Box Office doesn’t come with any included storage of its own. It will be up to you to provide either your own USB external storage or a 2.5″ drive (HDD or SSD) to plunk into the internal slot.
Cracking open the cube-shaped box, we discover the metal-bodied Box Office itself, as well as a set of composite cables, USB cable, HDMI cable, wall adapter, remote control, AAA batteries, quick installation guide, software CD, and a set of hard drive screws.
Assuming that you don’t “invest” in some expensive Monster Cable product, it doesn’t take a lot of money to buy a generic HDMI cable. Even so, no other media player (to my knowledge) comes with a “free” HDMI cable. For that alone, Patriot has a better grasp on what consumers need. We don’t want to watch through composite cables, thank you very much.
Control in Your Hands
The design for the remote control is anything but inspiring, but I suppose it’s perfectly functional. If you didn’t know any better, you would think that you are either looking at the remote that comes with a TV or some generic universal remote.
It’s unclear why Patriot decided to include the digits at the top, because I did not encounter a situation where they were used. I also prefer a “five-way navigator” layout for the play, pause, rewind, and fast forward keys, which this remote does not have.
Connectivity Options
When I took a look at the original Seagate FreeAgent Theater last year, I was immediately disappointed to find that this so-called HD Media Player lacked HDMI output. It seems that everyone was listening.
The Patriot Box Office gladly boasts its HDMI port, as well as a port for optical audio. There is no component option, but there are the three RCA ports for composite video and stereo audio.
You’ll also find a mini-USB port, a USB port, LAN port, and DC jack on the back. I like the inclusion of the hardware power switch too, since it helps with the fight against vampire power.
There’s no eSATA port, like what we found with the Asus O! Play HDP-R1, but you do get another USB port in the front for external storage.
Installing the Internal Hard Drive
Even technophobes who know nothing about the internal workings of a computer will have no trouble installing a hard drive (or solid state drive) in this media player. By and large, it looks like an external hard drive enclosure, so you deal with a total of four screws. That’s it.
There are two housing screws that need to be removed so you can pull out the guts, and then there are two screws that will hold the hard drive in place. When you install a drive for the first time, the Patriot Box Office will ask you to format it.
In this way, you can’t put in a drive that is already loaded with content. It will all get erased during this process, which takes about five minutes or so, depending on your chosen drive.
BitTorrent Direct to Your Living Room
For me, one of the most appealing features of the Patriot Box Office is its integrated ability to use BitTorrent.
It’s not completely independent, since you still have to initiate the download process from a connected PC, but the download can finish on its own after it has been initiated. I would have liked to have seen an integrated interface for that on the media player itself, so hopefully that gets included in the Box Office 2.0 or a software update.
There is a small bit of software that you need to install on your chosen computer, but this largely leads back to a web-based interface for managing your BitTorrent tasks. The torrent file must be downloaded locally, but the Box Office can download on its own after you tell it where this torrent file is.
This does mean that you won’t be able to use any password-protected torrents, nor will you be able to use torrents that lead to RAR files, but this is still a huge leap beyond other media players. This is almost NAS-like functionality.
In order to use the BitTorrent function, you will need to install the aforementioned internal 2.5-inch drive. It is also notable that running BT (and thus keeping the HDD active) makes the Box Office run quite warm. Using a surface infrared thermometer, I got a reading of 39 degrees Celsius.
On-Screen Menu Interface
The main menu, shown above, is reasonably straightforward and easy to understand. There are just three available options for you at this point and it’s quite clear what each of them is supposed to do. No confusion here.
Diving into the file browser, however, you’ll soon see a user interface that is nearly identical to the one on the Asus O! Play. Did Asus and Patriot commission the same team to make its Linux-based operating system? Or is it just serendipity that they look so similar?
It is nice that you don’t have to be in “movie” mode in order to play your video files and in “music” mode to play your tunes. While in the “All” column, you can access all of these files and they’ll play just fine. The Music, Photo, and Movies columns are still there for improved filtering too, in case you want to only see one type of file.
When you have your selection cursor over a video file, a movie preview will automatically start playing on the right side of the screen. This can be handy for when you can’t see the entire file name or you are unfamiliar with which video is which. This can be annoying at times, but it’s largely useful.
It is a little unfortunate that the Patriot Box Office doesn’t really do music with ID3 tags, so you are left navigating through the folders. It wouldn’t take much to code up a better media player for music management.
For Your Viewing Pleasure
Naturally, your mileage will vary based on the native quality of your video files, the speed of your chosen drives, the power of your HDTV set, and number of other factors. Speaking for myself, I was pleased with the video quality that the Box Office was able to provide.
Most videos were clean, crisp, and clear. I had occasional choppiness on a couple of sample videos, but those may have been the result of the video files themselves rather than something to do with the Patriot machine. Having the volume control in the media player is quite nice too.
Closing Thoughts
To some extent, you can tell that Patriot Memory is still a company that is focused on components and internals rather than consumer electronics. The user manual was riddled with typos and grammatical errors, and the on-screen instructions for file copy weren’t exactly clear. Some work is definitely warranted in the user-friendliness department. The PC software is cumbersome at best and the remote control could use some redesigning as well.
All this said, the Patriot Box Office is a terrific freshman outing for the company. It takes everything that we like about other media players, like HDMI-out and extensive format support, and it adds features that make it so much more powerful. The BitTorrent function is so convenient, as is the ability to stream content over the network from your computer or NAS. Having the ability to install a 2.5-inch internal drive is pretty handy. Many users would have greatly appreciated integrated Wi-Fi, but at least you can use a USB adapter if you need some wireless access.
With a retail price of about $130, the Box Office from Patriot is a little more expensive than some of its counterparts, but it makes up for this with the added value of more features and functions. This sure beats watching videos on a small laptop for sure.
Pros
- Impressive file format support
- Built-in BitTorrent client
- Takes an internal 2.5″ HDD
- Support for USB Wi-Fi adapter
Cons
- Cumbersome PC software for BitTorrent management
- Laggy user interface can be slow
- File copy utility could be more intuitive
- Needs more venting, runs quite warm
Overall Rating: 9.0/10.0
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Patriot Box Office All-In-One HD Media Player Photo Gallery
