First week w/ Office Bundle

[dijCicOvHy]

Hi there. I bought my Patriot Office Bundle a week ago and now think about switching to another, similar media player.

It seems for me that Patriot does not really "think" about some really easy but useful things. What I think is really annoying:

*You cannot turn of Bittorrent and Samba seperately. Activated BT has the effect that on each mounted device, a "BT" directory is created.
*Subtitles seem to be enabled by default.
*Scenario: Box has no power but it's switch is "on". When you switch the power strip on so that the box has power, it immediately boots into linux, instead of remaining in standby.
*"poweroff" doesn't have any effect? telnet shuts down, but the box does not. How would I turn it off via telnet?
*You cannot add media from removable devices to your playlist.
*Old software - why not a recent busybox and so on?
*File browser is quite annoying if you have a bigger movie collection.
*How do you umount mounted USB devices? I have some bad experience with unplugging mounted NTFS devices…

Last but not least: 1080p-Playback doesn't work smoothly sometimes. Ok, I understand that these "1080p 40MBPS"-Demos might not work, but even some of the bigger mkv videos are a little bit laggy.

So as you can see, I'm not really sure whether to like or dislike the box.

Are there similar ones, that do not seem that "abandoned"? If you have comments to my issues, please let me also know :)

regards

[aasoror]

Welcome to the PBO forum,
Just to put my replies in proper context, I don't know how much you have paid for your PBO, but the PBO is currently selling for $55/$65 (after $35 MIR) in Canada/USA, which makes it by far the cheapest media player in its class (unlike Europe the PBO class here is 4~5 more players).


*You cannot turn of Bittorrent and Samba seperately. Activated BT has the effect that on each mounted device, a "BT" directory is created.

This is a chipset limitation, its setup that way on all other devices running the RT1073/1283 chipset (O!Play, PlayON!HD, Xtreamer .. etc)


*Subtitles seem to be enabled by default.

There should be a subtitle setup option in the setup menu, if its not there the custom firmware have it.


*Scenario: Box has no power but it's switch is "on". When you switch the power strip on so that the box has power, it immediately boots into linux, instead of remaining in standby.

This isn't so uncommon for devices in standby mode, I had noted the following devices when my power went down last week : 2 PCs (S3 standby), 2 PBOs (standby), 1 NAS (running), router (running), air purifier (running). When the power went back on here is what happened automatically, 2 PCs (running), 2 PBOs (running), 1 NAS (standby), router (running), air purifier (standby). If you want to shut it down and keep it shutdown just use the back switch (infact PBO is favored by many because it actually have a physical power switch).


*"poweroff" doesn't have any effect? telnet shuts down, but the box does not. How would I turn it off via telnet?
poweroff indeed send the PBO to a shutdown (standby or soft shutdown whatever you want to call it), its equivalent to sending a "shutdown" command via telnet.

*You cannot add media from removable devices to your playlist.
True, though I think its common with the RT boxes as well (not sure though).

*Old software - why not a recent busybox and so on?

Common users shouldn't be concerned with what version of busy box is loaded on their boxes, asking for an updated GUI is more appropriate (latest firmware was released couple of days ago by the way), that said thanks for the more knowledgeable members here, there is a step-by-step how to load the latest busybox on your PBO.


*File browser is quite annoying if you have a bigger movie collection.

Again thats how the reference firmware that RT supplies work, there is lots of other browsing options if you go the custom firmware route.


*How do you umount mounted USB devices? I have some bad experience with unplugging mounted NTFS devices…

Was that experience with the PBO ? you can simply unplug the USB device or issue "unmount" command from telnet.


Last but not least: 1080p-Playback doesn't work smoothly sometimes. Ok, I understand that these "1080p 40MBPS"-Demos might not work, but even some of the bigger mkv videos are a little bit laggy.

Do you care shedding some light about this issue ? size is irrelevant here, can you post the "media info" output of those files and how they are being played (local, USB, network -wired/wireless-), 1080p playback should not be problematic if the file is within the capabilities of the box.


Are there similar ones, that do not seem that "abandoned"? If you have comments to my issues, please let me also know :)

Abandoned or not, this is as good as a sub $100 will get (all the RT based ones are the essentially the same beneath whatever GUI they are running, Sigma based devices like the WDTV has its own set of problems as well).

I would still recommend leaving this class of devices all together for anyone who are looking for real upgrade, PCH A-200 seems to be best option currently (haven't learned enough about the Popbox yet to start recommending it to others), note that though its conveniently prices at $185 CADs here, this is 3 times what the PBO is currently going for in Canada

p.s. if you aren't familiar with the custom firmware referenced above, check the "makeover" link in my signature.

[dijCicOvHy]

Thanks for your comprehensive answer. I bought it for ~85€, which is about 110$, but that's its price here in europe and the others you mentioned are in that price class as well.

Basically I think about switching to Asus' O!Play, as it seems to be more feature-rich. But you're right, it's still a good device. I'm just annoyed if I see the tiniest lag on my screen… ;)

Just for example, some excerpts from "mkvinfo" of mkvs, that are flickering or lagging (a little bit):

| + A track
| + Track number: 1
| + Track UID: 1
| + Track type: video
| + Enabled: 1
| + Default flag: 1
| + Forced flag: 0
| + Lacing flag: 0
| + MinCache: 1
| + Timecode scale: 1
| + Max BlockAddition ID: 0
| + Codec ID: V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
| + Codec decode all: 1
| + CodecPrivate, length 32
| + Default duration: 41.708ms (23.976 fps for a video track)
| + Language: ger
| + Name: 9.5 Mbp/s AVC MPEG-4
| + Video track
| + Pixel width: 1920
| + Pixel height: 800
| + Interlaced: 0
| + Display width: 1920
| + Display height: 800

… I'm still searching for more advanced media info

[aasoror]

… I'm still searching for more advanced media info

Here u are. (http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en)