Xbmc software media player

[Nugpot]

Did you mean the PBO fan ..?! If so then thats not true. Disconnecting, oiling or even replacing the whole fan was in accordance to Patriot support team instructions.

I wont be so sure about that, personally I don't see a Forum comment as official Patriot support team instructions. But if you want to believe this, then you will sleep better tonight . I just found out Patriot wont send me my MIR for the PBO because I gave them the original slip in the mail and not a copy of it... now that is smart intelligent support... HA! You can expect the same on your warranty.

[outatouch0]

Now for tpublic's, let me congratulate you for such a wonderful post, I think this deserve to have a separate locked sticky named "read first before posting" Yes you first need to be clear about the facts before starting to dream on. But lets think rationally, and I am not about to flame Patriot, I proudly consider myself an early adopter and one of the active contributors on this board, I have compared PBO to other media players numerously in my posts and that was typically in favor of PBO, but I am afraid not this time.

We should be clear about what is Patriots position in supporting the PBO, they do have a product that has lots of potentials, so what are they going to do with it ? will they be "just another distributor" ? At first (with Patriots presence on the AVS forum) it seemed that there will be an active support for this product, now it turns out to be that there are several "Box Office"s out there, each with different logo on it, it seems that the only customization done is sticking the name on the metal frame and the logo on a startup screen (not to mention the screen saver). I am sorry to say I am really disappointed, I am starting to question my believes about the efforts the Patriot is willing to invest in this product.

Checking the manuals of the clone, turns out that they all have the "very same UI", which leads me to believe that Patriot wasn't involved in designing the GUI, why should we ask them to change this or that and add this or that if the GUI isn't theirs to start with ?! OK, Patriot was kind enough to open this support forum (as a channel for customers to help each others), but (and I have read almost every post made on this forums) there were no promises made about any bugs reported or any wishes. Even the beta firmware no one exactly knows what bugs did it fix in the initial firmware and what recognized bugs remains to be fixed, this is left for the users to find out and inform each others about. !! Any one remembers the "boot loader" ..?

That said, I really find no problem in the PBO being another clone, and in Patriot being just another north american distributor, I simply require to be informed about that, I need to know that there is no chance for any updates coming from Patriot unless that original Designer/Manufacturer releases one (and in that case such updates will be also available for all the other rebranded players). I need to know I shouldn't run to Patriot with the news that Realtek has released an updated SDK because they don't have the resources nor the interest in recompiling the kernel and releasing an updated firmware.

If Patriot decide to take that role (being another distributor) then I think there is no point in having a wishlist or a buglist for that matter, instead the forum should be several "How to" threads, there is nothing wrong with that. Patriot can thankfully then act as a channel between the actual development team of this player and the PBO buyers. Once we clear about that every one is going to be happy and I imagine no more pressure would be placed on Patriot asking for updates and mods.

On the other hand, if Patriot decided to invest in this player, then there is some major issues that need to be addressed ASAP, first (and before any fancy UI) the player need to function properly to keep everyone happy, if the PBO is equipped with a 10/100 LAN then I expect to see 100 mbps (or close) transfer rates. If the PBO comes with a G adapter, then I expect to see 54 mbps (or close) transfer rates.

Again, the last thing I intend with this post is flaming patriot, but if they plan to stay in competition then need to get their act together. You can check that thread about the clones and see how posters are showing interest in a clone that has a 3.5" drive bay, which makes sense if you ask me .. if it looks, runs and has the same advantages and disadvantages of the PBO why don't I go for a different design that would suit my needs better ? PBO needs to distinguish iteself and it needs to do so fast.

One more thing for those bragging about a semi-baked $120 toy and saying we got what we paid for ... Asus O!play R3 is currently on pre-order here (Canada) for $129 CADs which is the same price of the WDTV live here, Asus O!play R1 and WDTV is about $90 and most importantly Xtreamer is available at ebay and amazon resellers for around $150, if Xtreamer can find official redistribution channels (which what they will do sooner or later), they will be bringing down the cost to around $120. So again, there is now lots of other options around the same price tag of PBO, PBO needs to set itself apart, Patriot exceptional support is whats currently setting PBO apart, but customers are expecting "Development" support not just "distribution" support.

Thank you tpublic for bringing this up, thanks Patriot for a product that has lots of potential and for excellent support.

Happy new year everyone.

Perhaps, instead of making my statement as a disagreement with nugot, I should have been more clear that I strongly agree with this poster's points. Particularly the concise summation shown red above.

I could really care the least about a fancy looking GUI. In fact, at this point, if it had one it would piss me off. Or worse, they come out with one before mending some of the functionality and bugs in the unit.

[pmcd]

This is interesting. I have been using XBMC and the GUI isn't all that nice. Maybe better than PBO at this point but my experience tells me it is buggy and doesn't play everything that the PBO plays now. I have bluray MKV's that studder on XBMC but play fine on the Patriot Box Office. I suspect the gui on the PBO will get better, not sure if XBMC will ever be Prime Time. I like the gui on Windows 7 Media Center but that doesn't play everything as well as the PBO and it's running on a high powered processor. So, everyone has different experiences but mine on the PBO is outstanding.

I have XBMC/Plex on a Mac Mini (09) and seem to be able to play anything. The interface can be made to be whatever you want and the scrapers are great. That said, I still prefer dedicated media players and the Box Office is an excellent choice. Now if only I hadn't had the fan noise issue.... Does anyone really have a silent BO?

philip

[pmcd]

Well, in my case it was even more. I had to pay $140 for the PBO (don't think I will ever get the MIR) And then I bought a 500GB 2.5 seagate momentus 7200 drive on special for another $140. This brings my total cost to $280. Yes this was new stuff. I might as well bought my self one of those small netbook eee's. Brand new for $299.



Remember, the moment you touch your fan, your warranty is a gone.

You'd have to buy a remote for the netbook and an ir receiver. You do appear to be paying a premium for your equipment, but nevertheless $280 is not unreasonable for what you get.

I won't be touching the fan as I will not use a media player that is noisy. When there's is some evidence that I can't hear a PBO from 6 feet then I will haul it out again (and I don't mean silence hidden by some rock band). That is my main concern with the PBO. I just don't believe it can be silent. The same goes with the Xtreamer, MVix Ultio (which I also own). My Apple TV has a fan and it is dead silent. Same with my Mac Mini. There is no room for fan noise in a home theatre system. That is my main objection to your idea of putting some hideous piece of junk in the living room. At least a nice netbook with xbmc would be a better idea than a craig's list used pc with fans blowing all over the place.You would still have the ir problem though and perhaps an hdmi one too.

philip

[Nugpot]

You'd have to buy a remote for the netbook and an ir receiver. You do appear to be paying a premium for your equipment, but nevertheless $280 is not unreasonable for what you get.

The remote might give you a TV feel, but theres lots of other options. The most recent one I used was my phone (normal cheap phone, not a smart phone). Using blue tooth I was able to manage my computer just fine, Media player and Winamp as well... And of course this is a free solution. If I wanted to I could program my PC from my phone, but that was more a party trick than something I would really do, and the nice thing is my phone was always around. Then of course you can get a wireless mouse keyboard etc for really cheap.

And if you really really want a remote, then you can get one for your PC as well (http://www.pcremotecontrol.com/solutions/solutions.htm). But I am not that into remotes.

[lewis26]

At this point, with no updates on GUI improvements, I am seriously considering selling my Box Office and moving to a Boxee Box.

Out of the gate, the Boxee has a much better GUI, and better internet media support, downloads DVD covers and metadata for disk isos automatically, and the support community seems downright better, for not that much more money.


To the patriot rep, when and what can we expect in the lines of a GUI improvement? I really would like to keep supporting this product, because so far it has been great, but without some big improvements, it will be left in the dust.

[scboley]

Now about the lan speed.....this is a bit of misinformation being said....100mb or even 1000mb is the max rate set for the standard and no adapter manufactured will achieve that rate. Best case is usually about 60% of the rating so 60mb and 600mb would be the best case scenarios you would see and with G wireless you'd be hard pressed to ever get 30mb at max because the overhead with the router itself is huge.....a good tip is you can go to a good 2nd release N router and the G throughput goes up and latencies go down so much better performance.

Now the downside is that the realtek chipset and firmware are running at the bottom of the barrel for subperformance on both the 100 and G levels and I'd recommend that you find some way to hardwire it or get a N type bridge you can plug the cat5 into and you'd see a lot better throughput than you'd ever get with any of the realtek based usb adapters due to the sub performance of the drivers in the firmware.

It's a sad fact that the kernel in the realtek sdk is 2.6.12 based and currently we're up in the 2.6.3x and soon 2.6.4x range of kernels so the drivers are very old to say the least.

So short of it is that native wireless within the PBO blows and if you expect to stream anything quality give it up it won't happen unless you use the cat5 based port and go hardwire or a wireless N bridge.

[outatouch0]

Now about the lan speed.....this is a bit of misinformation being said....100mb or even 1000mb is the max rate set for the standard and no adapter manufactured will achieve that rate. Best case is usually about 60% of the rating so 60mb and 600mb would be the best case scenarios you would see and with G wireless you'd be hard pressed to ever get 30mb at max because the overhead with the router itself is huge.....a good tip is you can go to a good 2nd release N router and the G throughput goes up and latencies go down so much better performance.

Now the downside is that the realtek chipset and firmware are running at the bottom of the barrel for subperformance on both the 100 and G levels and I'd recommend that you find some way to hardwire it or get a N type bridge you can plug the cat5 into and you'd see a lot better throughput than you'd ever get with any of the realtek based usb adapters due to the sub performance of the drivers in the firmware.

It's a sad fact that the kernel in the realtek sdk is 2.6.12 based and currently we're up in the 2.6.3x and soon 2.6.4x range of kernels so the drivers are very old to say the least.

So short of it is that native wireless within the PBO blows and if you expect to stream anything quality give it up it won't happen unless you use the cat5 based port and go hardwire or a wireless N bridge.

lOOks like a job for the Custom FW Club !!! Given all that has been achieved already I would bet the drivers for this could get upgraded too ???

[scboley]

Yes they could but its not as easy on linux as it is windows type drivers. The kernel source for 2.6.12 would have to be patched with a newer version of the realtek driver code and then compiled with mips code compiler and then the modules would have to be swapped out in the image. Since it's the network modules it's ugly if the new module doesn't work because then you have no network access to the box to troubleshoot or fix it.

[Indo57]

I bought my PBO 2 months ago because I really didn't want to move my PC into the living room and the cost of buying another one plus a big box and mouse and keyboard seemed just not practical compared to an HD sized box that wil "do it all".
It installed instantly, I hooked up an external drive and I was watching 1080p videos within 5 minutes. I had a small number of mkv files which seemed to lock it up but after installing rev 2 firmware they all played. I have since got 1 mkv file which won't play, but I have more DVD's which give problems in my DVD player, percentage wise it is insignificant.

It has played every video format I have put in it but I only bought it for 1080p so my format of choice is mkv with DTS audio and it performs 99%+ for this purpose.
I have rarely if ever got a piece of equipment which offers so much for such a small price so I really think that all the complaing is a bit unrealistic.
If you want top quality audio/video gear your looking at more like $1,000 not $100 so all things considered I think this is a groundbreaking bit of equipment for a very low price.