Patriot Box Office Media Player Review

Conclusion

Before we begin we would just like to say that all of the RealTek-based media players on the market offer an amazing bang for your buck and even as little as a year and a half ago the amount of flexibility, performance and value seen here would have been unheard of in the HTPC market. Will any of the various low-priced players on the market give results as good as a properly set up dual core HTPC? No, they simply cannot compete with the image quality, processing power and scalability a $600+ setup can. However, to get all that horsepower a true HTPC needs for is expensive both in terms of power consumption, space, setup time and overall price. For most people, the Patriot Box Office is going to provide results that are perfect for their wants and needs in a package that is truly plug and play. For that alone, this tiny media player deserves a ton of respect.

One of the strongest features the Box Office posses, is its simple and easy to navigate menus which will not be confusing to anyone while offering a straightforward interface that is near-perfect. The learning curve needed to get up and running is not much more than plugging in the drive with your data, setting things up and then sitting back to enjoy. We also love the fact that this unit comes with the possibility for both internal and external data sources. With a good sized hard drive running inside of the enclosure, there is a good chance you will have all your media right at your fingertips after a few USB file transfers.

When it comes to networking abilities, it is hard to beat the Patriot Box Office in its price range as it offers wired and wireless network capabilities. This is tempered by the fact that both wired and wireless implementation leave a lot of room for improvement and the wired capabilities are an add-on feature that will put you back some money. As we saw in the testing phase, only having 10/100GB/s wired or 54GB/s (802.11G) wireless capacities does make for a less than optimal solution to say the least.

However, one of the main weaknesses the Box Office has is its inability to up convert standard definition media to high definition and as such its overall image 1uality does suffer when playing 480P on HDTVs. This does put the Patriot Box Office at a distinct disadvantage when choosing between it and a more powerful (but complex) HTPC setup. However, the Box Office’s abilities to play nearly every possible media CODEC out there and do it without the need to update anything is a powerful argument in its favour over a more complex HTPC. Things are not so clear cut when compared to Western Digital’s latest offering: the WD TV Live, which is also plug and play, similarly priced and can up-convert video in a limited fashion.

With all that being said the Box Office is not going to be the perfect media playback device for everybody and if you are a hard core A/V aficionado you probably won’t be satisfied with its performance. The GUI on the other hand is a no frills approach but there are pauses here and there and it lacks a real sense of responsiveness. However, these small issues we have mentioned can be overlooked since this unit is inexpensive good enough for all but the most demanding user and small enough that will make a wonderful addition to most entertainment centers. For most people, the simplicity of taking a USB drive with video files from their computer and playing them on the Box Office without many issues will be like a dream come true. With this in mind, we are pleased to honor the Patriot Box Office with our Damn Good Value award.


Pros:
- Decent IQ
- Comes with HDMI cable
- Plays everything we could throw at it (except Blu Ray ISOs)
- Metal case
- Internal cooling fan
- Internal storage capable
- Optional Wifi capable
- Easy to use


Cons:
- Internal Fan is louder than a passive cooled chipset
- Full size remote’s layout is overly complicated
- Does not up-convert video
-Slightly behind the competition when it comes to Firmware updates
- Wifi is 802.11G
- GUI can be less than responsive at times
- Odd audio issues requiring it to be in LCPM and not RAW to get audio output