Legit Mods and Ends Reviews
Patriot Box Office HD Media Player Review
| Manufacturer: | Patriot Memory |
| Product: | Patriot Box Office (PCMPB025) |
| Date: | Thu, Nov 19, 2009 - 12:00 AM |
| Written By: | Ken Brown - |
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Patriot Box Office – A Look Inside
Like many of the under $200 media players hitting the market today, the Patriot is designed almost exactly like other media players on the market. The Box Office is based on a Realtek 1073 chipset that powers not only the Patriot Box Office, but also other media servers such as the Asus O!Play and Xtreamer.
This third-generation Digital Media Processor (DMP) SoC from Realtek features a 400Mhz RTD1073DD processor and 128MB DDRII SDRAM and 256MB of Flash ROM memory. The “DD” version of this chip can decode AC3 and DTS audio. The Box Office also features a 10/100 Ethernet port, and support for HDMI 1.3a and output resolutions up to 1080P.
What is nice about this particular unit is that you can add a 2.5” SSD or HDD for local storage. With the price of hard drives continuing to drop, this is an excellent way to store and play your favorite media and not rely on a network connection or big enough portable drive.
Another unique thing about the Box Office is the included fan. Patriot chose a Power Logic axial fan model that looked to be about 47mm x 10mm in dimension. By the model number, this 12V fan has Sleeve Bearings and rotates at “low speeds”. When we looked at the Western Digital TV Live (WDTV2) media server, its chipset only had a large heatsink for cooling. We thought that seeing an active fan inside was pretty innovative. Hopefully, it’s not too loud.
Here you can see the Box Office's PCB and layout:
Below, you can also see the Hynix Flash Memory (Hynix NAND HY27UF082G2B). We can confirm that this NAND series has 256 MB x 8-bit with spare 8 MB bit capacity which offers a low-cost but efficiently powerful solution for HD decoding. If we look to the left of the Hynix chip, we can see one of the Nanya DDRII SDRAM (Nanya NT5TU64M16CG-AC) modules.
Finally, we wanted to show you exactly what all this processing power will get you. Below you will see a chart with all supported Picture, Audio, and Video formats.
| Video Decoding (Movie) | MPEG-1 | MPG/MPEG/DAT Support up to 1080p |
| MPEG-2 | MPG/MPEG/VOB/ISO/IFO/TS/TP/M2TS Support up to 1080p | |
| MPEG-4 | MP4/AVI/MOV Support up to 1080p | |
| DivX3/4/5/6,Xvid | AVI/MKV Support up to 1080p | |
| H.264, AVC | TS/AVI/MKV/MOV/M2TS Support up to 1080p | |
| WMV9 | WMV Support up to 1080p | |
| FLV | FLV Support up to 1080p | |
| Real Video 8/9/10 | RM/RMVB Support up to 720p | |
| Audio Decoding (Movie) | Dolby Digital, AC3, DTS (Not Pass through) | |
| MPEG-I Layer 1/2/3,MPEG-II Layer 1/2, Real Audio, AAC, WMA, LPCM | ||
| HDMI RAW/SPDIF RAW output to Amplifier to decode 5.1/7.1 audio channels | ||
| Audio Decoding (Music) | WMA, MP3, Real Audio (RA), WAV, OGG, AAC, FLAC | |
| Picture Format | JPEG, BMP, PNG | |
Next Page - Patriot Box Office – Setting Up
| Review Index |
|
Page 1 - Patriot’s Box Office - A New Player in the Game
Page 2 - Patriot Box Office – A Look Inside Page 3 - Patriot Box Office – Setting Up Page 4 - Patriot Box Office – HD Performance Page 5 - Using an SSD with the Patriot Box Office Page 6 - Final Thoughts and Conclusions |
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