Box Office Core in Action

During the boot-up process you are greeted by a branded PBO logo. Booting up is not terribly fast, but does not take too long either.

Main Menu

Once booted one thing I noticed is the fairly low resolution and number of colors. This seems to be something plaguing many media players of this type. Graphics come across as flat and simple, which is something that "full" HTPCs can easily trump, but those systems also cost three times as much as the Patriot Box Office. The four menu points are faily self-explanatory except for the last one: Browser, Setup, File Copy and IMS. IMS stands for Internet Media Service.

Settings Menu

The settings menu gives you plenty of options for Audio, Video, Network Setup along with a slew of system specific points. One thing I changed right away was the HD setup to 1080p, which resulted in much clearer graphics.

File Copy

Since the PBO has its own hard drive, you may copy files to and from it. This is easily done with the File Copy menu. It also allows you to manage the files on the box and even lets you pull files from the network to the internal drive.

Flickr & Picasa

This menu gives you access to the two online image hosting services with the Patriot Box Office. You may take a look at your own Flickr or Picasa albums, or search these two services for specific images. You are shown the results in a simple interface, which makes navigating the results with the remote control quite easy.

IMS

The IMS menu is quite simple and does not offer an elaborate interface. With it, you can access web based videos and audio streams (podcasts), along with various informational tools - all connected to the Internet.


These services include news, weather and stock market updates. Once set up, you can get a quick start in the day for example, so that you can wear proper attire for the temperatures, or maybe go ahead and jump off the next bridge if your stock portfolio crashed while you were sleeping peacefully. (I kid, I kid!!)


Podcasts work just as you would expect them to, nothing much to say here, besides: it works. Don't ask me why ESPN is shown during the review. These were there by default, but I cannot tell you why.


Same goes for the video news. These are snippets from various notable news sources like CNN, ABC or MSNBC to name a few. As you can see there are a full ten pages, so you should always have all the news you can handle at your fingertips.

Alternative OS

Last but certainly not least, Patriot allows the user to mod the OS or update the firmware of the PBO with a different one. By offering such an open platform, the user can expand the functionality freely or just download one of the many different variations out there. I just went ahead and downloaded one such alternative firmware. Flashing the drive is quite simple: just make sure the right files are on a USB stick, plug it in and power the PBO up. Then you are ready to flash the device.