Patriot Box Office Media Player

[Bobby]

Anyone have any experience with the subject box?

Reviews look good and the price is OK at $130-$30 rebate.

I am getting itchy to buy one, although I will have to face the problem that my TV doesn't have any more available HDMI inputs.

[Dave McElderry]

Is this basically the same thing as the HP unit that you posted about several months back? I never hear anything about these in the mainstream, but the price is right and it seems like it might be useful. You'd probably have to have a hard wired network connection to stream HD video wouldn't you?

[Bobby]

I think the prior unit was the WD (Western Digital) unit. I had heard that a V2 was supposed to be coming out on that, but haven't seen it.

The Patriot seems to be getting a lot of very favorable press, with the biggest knock that it is kinda techie in its interface, but very powerful in its ability to play almost any file format with high quality.

It has a wireless capability (optional adapter) but it is G technology only and probably not optimal for streaming HD video. I don't have an Ethernet wire to my entertainment center, but it shares walls with my PC system and so no biggie to run one. Being a retired network kinda guy, I have the cable, connectors, and boots in stock.

On the other hand, I do run my Netflix box on my G network and it runs fine, albeit not full HD.