Performance

Theater Performance

After going through the player's features, it was time for the Patriot Box Office to shine. Once we powered it up, it took the Box Office about eight seconds for it to reach the home screen; not the snappiest but definitely not the slowest. To start off this round of testing, we tested its audio playback abilities. WAV, OGG and MP3 files all played without any issues. One thing of interest was that we kept searching for playback options such as repeat under the various submenus, only to find the option was assigned a unique button on the remote itself. So oddly, you won't be coming across the repeat option in the submenu itself.

Next up is of course the most important aspect of a media player, its video playback performance. We like the fact that the Box Office offered the option to display the video preview of our video files and that the Box Office plays most of the popular video formats. RMVB and other video formats didn't deter the Box Office from completing its task. Following that we tested the high-def capabilities of the player and the trailers we played did not stop the Box Office in its tracks.

Functionality-wise, the player provides options for you to ‘fine-tune’ your subtitles, such as adjusting the size or changing the color of the subtitles. The player also allows zooming of videos from 0.9x to 8x. We did find the overall functionality for video and music playback underwhelming, but at least the Box Office does the job without presenting any problems; it was more of a no-frills attached experience. Though the video performance did not falter, the UI itself was a bit on the slow side. And similar to the Seagate GoFlex TV, the remote was a bit on the ‘selective’ side; we had to point it rather close to the IR port, anywhere else and the player might not respond.

So that's where the repeat option was - on the remote. You can see the option toggled on/off visibly onscreen with the remote, but you won't find it in the playback options within the player's menu.