Patriot Box Office Media Player Unboxing Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,323 words · ~6 min read
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so it seems like everyone's coming out with one of these media extender devices
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these days and we have a really intriguing one today from Patriot it's
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called the box office and I'm going to have the cameraman have a look at the
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side but I'll give you a couple key specs of this guy right off the bat
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first of all you've got rmvb support just like the ASUS oplay and it is using
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the same chipset if you want to check out my unboxing on the oplay uh you
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should click the link okay so other features that it's got it has Network
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support but and let's start getting this thing open here you've also got support
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much like the popcorn hour to put a
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drive inside so you can actually open up the unit itself and pop in a 2 and 1/2
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in drive so that means that you can store media on it you can store media on
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a USB device and plug it in or you can store media over the network and play it
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that way now this is a pre-production sample so it's not going to be perfect
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in terms of the retail packaging and I've been informed that they actually
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may be changing the finish on the top to more like a matte finish instead of a
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brushed finish but let's have a look at the unit itself anyway so I want to
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compare it quickly in size to the wdtv so it's a little bit bigger it's a
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little bit wider uh but it's about the same height and it's kind of it's
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overall I'd say similar in size once you put it on your shelf so at the front
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we've got the USB port we've got the IR receiver for the remote which is
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actually really impressive more on that later then we've got a USB and hard
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drive signaling lights power and the land signal this is a full HD device so
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it supports 1080 that means MKV all that
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good stuff but you should probably have a look at uh the side of the box you can
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just pause and read that if you so desire okay so on the back we have I'm
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assuming these are composite but until I get this off I won't know for sure yes
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we have composite video output and audio then we have optical audio out we've got
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HDMI supporting 5.1 or 7.1 audio we've
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actually got a power switch and a lot of these devices don't have a power switch
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if you want to turn it off you have to just unplug it here is a USB plug now
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this is different from a normal USB plug in that you can actually use this device
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as an external 2 and 1/2 in hard drive so that means you don't actually even
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have to have a network attachment to it you throw the hard drive inside you plug
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into here and then you can just drag and drop files from your desktop onto the
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hard drive inside now this one is for an external hard drive that plugs in that
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you would put next to the unit this is a 1000 land port and then you've got your
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power port so you know what let's uh let's really quickly take out the take
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off the cover here and I'm going to show you exactly how the hard drive goes
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inside now I haven't seen this yet so
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this may be a bit of a surprise for me also this is a Pick Quick screwdriver if
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you want to see my unboxing for it click the link yeah that's right you can watch
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other videos of me unboxing stuff as well so let's see how this works oh
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there we go that was easy so here is the inside of the unit
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so first of all we've got what appears to be a 40 mm cooling fan so that's
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going to be cooling the chipset which is underneath there as well as some of the
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power delivery circuitry we can see you can see at the front we've got our uh
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our infrared thingamajiggy we've got our USB and then there's all of our
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indicator lights up here you can see we've got what is that so that's some
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kind of that's must be the power input right there no no it's not what is that
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H well I'm not going to guess here's the power switch though so there you go
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there's the wiring for that and then here is your SATA interface so this
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accepts a SATA 2.5 in drive and you just
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put four no two screws in the sides one here and one here and then you seal it
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right back up it's just two screws to pop the unit open that is pretty cool
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okay so now let's have a look at the accessory package that comes with this
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media player I'll just pull the box out here all right so accessory
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package first of all you'll notice it comes with a 6t HDMI cable that's a
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pretty good add-on actually I like to see that because a lot of these devices
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are only coming with composite and component cables speaking of composite
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there it is you got a composite cable as well then you have a USB cable so this
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is the one that you're going to need it's USB a to mini B that's what you
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need to just plug it into your computer and drag and drop files now you've got
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some batteries they are ignite hopefully they don't
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ignite it's not very funny actually uh then you've got a power
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brick okay pretty straightforward and that brings us to the remote actually
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this remote is very impressive compared to some of the other remotes we've seen
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in a similar price point so you've got full number pad you got your power
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switch home button apparently Patriots actually done a lot of work on the
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firmware with this device compared to sort of the stock units you can buy um
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you've got all of your uh volume control
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pause play all that kind of stuff you can navigate the menus here and then
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you've actually got a bunch of really cool stuff down here instant replay
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repeat angle copy so that's uh I'm not
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100% sure what that's for but either way it looks like a pretty fully featured
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remote and I'm really glad to see that especially on such a lowcost device next
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we've got screws so these are for attaching the hard drive and then
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finally at the bottom we find the quick installation guide so that basically
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shows you oh okay so it starts on the
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back side okay so first of all you got your package contents which we already
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saw we've got the device layout which we've already seen and then it basically
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shows you connect the media to your TV initiate the media player okay and then
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plug in the USB external hard drive or flash drive to the media player okay it
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must be pretty simple to set up or I'm thinking they would have a more detailed
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quick start guide so there's your full user manual you can always throw that in
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your computer if you're having trouble thank you for checking out my video blog
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on the Patriot box office