Patriot PBO Alpine review!
Here is my initial review of the PBO Alpine.
Below is a picture of it on the old PBO as well as a picture of the remote. The Photos aren't Great but you'll get the idea. The picture may not illustrate it but they are lined up to the back right corner.
Alpine:
Remote:
The build quality:
Patriot stepped away from the aluminum enclosure of the PBO for a plastic design which I think we all knew and that doesn't really bother me. The remote just doesn't cut it, it is just small and cheap feeling and is missing 0-9 number pad. Thankfully I have a harmony One but for those who use it, it feels awkward and to small.
The software:
I had Extremely high hopes for this media player as I LOVE android on my phone and tablet and maybe with the new firmware coming out and some tweaks I will love this too.
First I set the date and time manually and while testing I turned it of a couple times. both times when I turned it on (all while plugged in) it didn't keep the date and time. the first time it went back to the 10th and skipped ahead ~3 hours and the second time I turned it off and back on the date stayed right but kipped ahead ~5 hours??? I am not sure what to think about that. Today I went out and got a patriot wireless USB adapter and it now keeps the right time but still when I turn it off and back on the time is wrong and it takes 10-20 seconds for it to update to the right time.
Browsing through my media seemed to be a challenge, on my old PBO I was running medebo and I could punch in say 400 and it would skip to the 400th file or I could skip page by page if I so chose. With the Alpine and the limited remote with no number pad I have no way of just skipping to a file and I tried every button and there was no skip page by page. Holding the down arrow also does nothing you have to manually hit the down button 600 times if you want the 600th file. Maybe I am missing something or maybe they just need to add some flexibility in this department because it just feels very restricted and slow trying to brows through a bunch of files.
On to playing a movie, fast forward goes up to 64x which is nice and id does so quickly, and if you leave the movie and come back to it it has the resume feature but again the lack of the number pad is a problem for me on my old one I could just skip to a point say 45 minutes in and now I have to sit there and just fast forward. it also seems to have a problem playing MP4s out of the 5 I tried two weren't synced with the audio while I know they both worked on the old PBO, two basically crashed the box, it would go straight back to the home screen and the last one I tried worked fine so there seems to be a problem here. So far MKVs seemed to work fine.
Youtube seemed to work flawlessly, this is a nice addition and when you chose a video you are prompted to chose which resolution you want depending on what is available for that video. It would be nice you have the netflix app preloaded also.
My Asus Wireless USB adapter didn't work at all so I had to go out and buy a Patriot one. Being constructed out of plastic it would have been nice if Patriot would have added WIFI internally though. I think a 10 dollar price increase it would have been well worth it and a good selling feature too.
Another problem I encountered was twice now I lost all audio both playing movies and in Youtube requiring a reboot to solve it.
I also Miss being able to display information for every movie like I had with Medebo. but seeing the post below me from patriotben it looks like something nice is coming down the pipes in this regard.
I Know it is a brand new device and most or all the quirks will be ironed out but so far I am quite disappointing in this product which has so much potential running android. Hopefully Patriot will come out with an update soon because right now it is basically a $100 youtube player. for now I will stick with the old PBO but I still have my fingers crossed that this will be my media player of the future.
Update: so it still seems they rushed the product to market with little to no testing and it seems I'm not the only one with issues. I still have believe that with the new firmware it can still be a good media player. I do have some good news though now. I just got my mini wireless keyboard. The Rii Touch N7 and I must say it has improved my life in the alpine house. youtube is much easier to type in and navigate. The browser is also much easier to use however without flash I feel like I am in apple land and the pesky onscreen keyboard still showing. It also makes navigating through my vast amounts if files easier with the scroll feature unfortunately the scroll is a little sensitive but I still like it.
Here is a picture:
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and more importantly gotto use my PBO Core remote to overcome all the issues related to missing and nonfuncting features.
Originally Posted by Geil
