The Patriot Box Office Review: A Portent of Great Things to Come
by Alan Lueke on February 16, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Gadgets
- Home Theater
- Media Streamer
- Patriot
- HTPC
Testing - Great Over Wired, Iffy Over Wireless
For me, the holy grail for this type of box is to be able to stream the full uncompressed video and audio from a Blu-ray movie. I have a vast DVD and a growing blu-ray collection as I imagine many home theater enthusiasts do. The amount of storage needed to house these movies cannot be found on a single 2.5” drive, nor on an external USB drive. With that in mind, I decided to look at files in a few different formats and bitrates to see what the maximum bitrate was I could play over each type of connection supported by the Patriot Box Office (Wirelss, Wired 10/100, USB and SATA).
I started by producing an .mkv of The Dark Knight including the unaltered VC-1 (a Microsoft developed WM9 derivative) movie and Dolby digital core audio only. I also made an .mkv of Zombieland containing only the untouched AVCHD video which is a high def H.264 encode and the DTS core audio. These will be my highest quality videos, weighing in with an average bitrate of around 26 Mbps. I now have two .mkv files containing the two most common Blu-ray video types and core audio types. From here, I encoded these into smaller files and tested to see where the video playback began to stutter based on connection type to the Patriot Box Office. During the encoding I used .avi, mpeg2, m2ts, and WM9 formats.
Before testing these files I also attempted playing back a small .m4v file from iTunes and a few .vob DVD rips, as well as music from my mp3 collection and looking at jpeg, .png, and .bmp files from my camera. All files types were streamed over wireless and played without difficulty. Even both my high end .mkv files and subsequent encodes were recognized and displayed on my TV. The Patriot Box Office did, as advertised, play back everything I threw at it, and with impressive picture quality, although not always without issues as I will discuss in the next section. Below is a picture of the full bitrate Dark Knight .mkv played off my external USB drive. Nice!
Over the wireless G connection I maxed out at an 8.5 Mbps file before the video playback began to stutter. It even stutters a slight bit during .vob playback of ripped DVDs. That's not the most encouraging result. I was only able to pass 30% of the bitrate needed to play back a full Blu-ray movie. Your mileage may vary depending on the state of your wireless network. In this case the Box Office was a mere 5 feet away from the D-Link DIR-825 access point.
As long as both my source PC and the Box Office were on wired ethernet I could play full bitrate Blu-ray on the Box Office over the network. However with my PC on wireless in the other room I noticed some stuttering. Given the high bitrates of most 1080p content you'll want to consider how robust your wireless setup is before relying on it for any sort of HD streaming.
Over a USB external HDD or an internal HDD all files played without stutter. I also tried playing back an .iso of The Dark Knight and was rewarded with seamless playback by the Box Office. Not that the .iso has a higher bitrate, it should be the same as the .mkv I made, I just wanted to ensure an .iso would be recognized for those who like their Blu-ray rips complete with all the extras. Switching the audio track during .iso playback with the remote to the True-HD track gave an Unknown Format message. But it was easy to switch between audio formats and subtitles with the included remote. That March firmware update adding hi-def audio support would add even more value to this device.
So this device will stream my music, videos, pictures and standard def movies over the network, as well as 720p encodes of Blu-rays for $100. It will even play the uncompressed Blu-ray movies if I put them on the device’s hard drive or on an external USB drive. What else could I want? What about the ever growing area of internet based media content you say? Is there any help there?
It does support a bittorrent client which allows you to download torrents to the local (internal) HDD of the Box Office only. You’ll have to add the seed via PC, similar to the function of NAS bittorrent solutions. It also supports UPnP, which can be used with programs like TVersity to stream content from Hulu or Youtube onto the Box Office, which is great. Again, you’ll need a PC to set up the media server. This whole process can take a bit of tweaking to get working, but it can be done. In testing out the UPnP it can take a bit of time for TVersity to prepare some of the Hulu queue files for playback, making watching internet based content feel quite sluggish.
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ajlueke - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
That really seems to be the route the industry is pushing the desktop into. You have a large home server that contains your storage space, and then modular devices to tap into that content, like a media box, and a notebook for productivity etc.I don't think Boxes like this are meant to replace an HTPC as the hub of the home entertainment network.
For me personally, most of these boxes lack enough internal storage space to hold all my movies, music pictures etc, so I need to have a desktop or server for that anyway to stream off of. I really like the 360s capability to stream my media center interface and watch my recorded TV, a feature I think I will use more with the launch of the Ceton cable cards next month. http://cetoncorp.com/products.php">http://cetoncorp.com/products.php
But it lacks support for .iso and many other popular movie formats. Boxes like the Patriot are able to play just about all of my local content but cannot play my recorded TV. There always seems to be something missing so in the end, I just hook up the desktop directly to my receiver and call it good. The I also have easy access to Hulu, netflix and Boxee on the PC, and if you have an Iphone you can use an app like Hipporemote to control the various programs(love that app!)
What Boxes like this are useful for, is streaming content for the main home theater to a bedroom television or something of that nature. The living room is currently the center of my home entertainment experience, with movies, music and games ampily supplied by a PC. But for $100 a box like this a great way to get some of that content into the bedroom or a game room etc.
Pjotr - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 - link
I use Windows Home Server in a smaller ATX box that fits, with an extra 3x5.25" enclosure that fits 4x3.5" HDs, a total of 9 HDs. I buy 1-2 new drives each year and retire the oldest smallest drive at intervals. Windows Home Server is superb in the way you can just keep adding storage seemlessly.I use a PS3 to play my media, using the http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com/">http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com/ to repackage and/or recode on the fly from the WHS based on format. It handles every format I've ever tried (it can also serve XBox, mobile devices etc!). The PS3 sees the WHS/PS3MS as a media server and I just play from there.
snKorst - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
none of them have VGA or DVI outand none of them can at least read if not record DVB-S.
Why would i need this box, when i need another box playing real time TV and switch for them? Just another useless device built in huge quantities around some new multimedia all-in-one chip.
strikeback03 - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
Umm, for a media player device HDMI seems to be a perfectly reasonable connection.chdude3 - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
Not to mention that with a physical adapter you can connect HDMI to DVI... Essentially, anything with HDMI *does* support DVI.taltamir - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
I am talking from experience here, wireless g is unacceptable for movie streaming.Only wireless N can stream movies.
wired naturally works well. Although its better to have the files locally.
This thing could really use an open source OS (which means it will get upgrades even when a newer version comes out) and netflix streaming.
ajlueke - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
In regards to the open source OS, you can download it here...http://patriotmemory.com/products/manuals/boxoffic...">http://patriotmemory.com/products/manuals/boxoffic...
legoman666 - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
Indeed. I've found that I can stream up to 100mb/s on my wireless N connection, which is more than enough for any HD movie.JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 - link
So I have to ask: what sort of router do you use for you 11n network? I've gone through a LinkSys, a D-Link, and now I'm on a TrendNet. Granted, all are "Draft 2.0" 11n routers, but I'm not sure if the finalized spec would help or not. My problem is this:From my home, I can see at least five other networks. My local WiFi is the best signal, and the others are secured, but they seem to cause a lot of interference. If I enable the dual-channel 11n support in my router(s), I get regular drop-outs of WiFi, and the only recourse is to reboot the router. So, I've now dropped down to 20MHz 11n/11g and it doesn't crash as much. If I really want it to stay stable, I need to run in 11g only mode.
Now, with 40MHz dual-channel 11n, I can transfer at up to ~9MB/s (close to 100Mbit Ethernet), but that's only if I'm transferring wired to wireless; transfer between two laptops and the rate drops to about 2-3MB/s.
In short, 11n WiFi has been hugely disappointing to me. I'm trying to determine if it's my neighborhood, router, or a combination of those. If you've had a lot more success in a neighborhood with several visible WiFi networks, like I said, I'd love to know what router you're using! (And let's not even get into my 2.4GHz wireless landline phone blasting away my network.... Gotta upgrade that for sure!)
therealnickdanger - Thursday, February 18, 2010 - link
I use the D-Link DIR-655 and consistently get real-world transfer speeds of 25MB-33MB/sec (megabytes) over the wireless anywhere in the house (two stories) or out in the seperated garage with my N-devices. My G-devices are always maxed out. I even let my next door neighbor leech off me. It sits in the basement under the kitchen floor (centrally located).I loved it so much that I bought for my parents and installed it in their house. Same results. We each run Atom 330 Windows Home Servers and use them for backups and streaming. I can stream Blu-Ray rips effortlessly to multiple devices at once.
It was on sale for $85 on Newegg last week, I think. I highly recommend it.
Oh! One thing to note, you have to go into the settings and double the rate from 20Hz to 40Hz in order to get the higher speeds. Also, I run mine in mixed mode. Good luck!