Testing/In Use
 |
 |
I’ve been using the PBO Core as the daily family playback unit for over a week now. I tested some of the more common files I had to hand or could get hold of and was pleasantly surprised right away when I started out with a small test clip in 1080i of I, Robot. I had issues with this clip for years, with the interlacing being just woeful and very distracting until Vector Adaptive interlacing and Cyberlinks PowerDVD came along. These days, Media Player Classic and any recent AMD or Nvidia card can handle it no problem, but I honestly thought that the PBO Core wouldn’t do a decent job if it. But it did. It’s really good at it actually. No hideous lines in the bubbles during the intro sequence, you can clearly see the one blade fan on the ceiling, it just works pretty damn good. Any normal person who actually watches films rather than examines the playback wouldn’t be able to tell the source file is interlaced. The source by the way was an MPEG2 in a TS container at 1080i. I also tried some low resolution interlaced files from Nvidia from years ago, and again there was no hint of interlacing to be seen.
DVD playback from a folder works well too. You get all of the menu’s and items you would expect and you wouldn’t know it was playing back from a hard drive at all. At this point I should also mention that the PBO Core appears to be capable of playing a DVD via an external USB DVD Drive. I don’t have an external DVD Drive though. However, I think it has to be unprotected DVD’s in the external DVD USB Drive. I don’t have a lot of those either.
720p and 1080p MKV files with AC3 or DTS surround sound all played perfectly as well. The only trouble I had was trying to play a 1080p file via WiFi. Despite being N, I just wasn’t able to get a completely smooth experience, with a lot of stuttering during heavy action sequences and fast forward/rewind was a bit of a mess too. However, playback of 1080p via the Ethernet port was perfectly fine. 720P content, and indeed any lower than 1080p resolution content was up-scaled nicely.
The one file I couldn’t play was (Elephants Dream) ED.AVI, which is an MPEG4, 10.5Mbit video at 1080p in an AVI container. Everything else I threw at it, the PBO Core played well. A 1080p MOV file of the The Dark Knight trailer played without issue, as did various WMV’s at 480p, 720p and 1080p.
I’m not a Torrent user, but the PBO Core does also have a Bit-torrent downloader, which requires you to have an internal Hard Drive installed. However, I have to say, even if I was a torrent user, I’m not sure I’d bother with it. From what I understand you have to find the torrent via a browser on your PC, login to the PBO Core via your browser on your PC, upload the torrent and then the PBO Core will download to the hard drive. I think I’d just as soon use a PC Bit-torrent client, and transfer it via network later. Still, the option and ability is there out-of-the-box, which is nice.
Final Words
If I’m being honest, whilst I do use Windows Media Center on a daily basis, I’m not over enthusiastic about the setup. I do however like the simplicity, and with plugins like Media Browser I can display my media in the way I want. The easily matches and surpasses the 7MC experience in my opinion for basic operation and looks, as well as set up, but the one thing I did miss was the ability to use libraries; i.e. to take media from different locations and display them all in the one library so you don’t even see (or care) where the actual media file is or what drive it’s on. All you see is a nicely displayed list of your Movies. This is only functionality I get in 7MC via a plugin (Media Browser) however.
I also missed the nice way Media Browser displays my TV Shows; By show, season and then episode, with an image and info on that episode. But let’s face it, this is a $90 HD Media player (with a rebate to take it down to just $45! at time of writing) and it does plenty, right out of the box. If my HTPC was to break down beyond repair, or at least where the cost of repair was prohibitive … I honestly think I might consider a full time over building a new HTPC, especially when weighing the costs involved. I would miss the TV Show displays you get with other HTPC Media software like XBMC, Media Browser for 7MC, Media Portal, MeediOS etc, and many of those have extended displays for Movie information too.
That said, I like all that flashy info display. To that end, I’ve been reading in the Patriot forums. The PBO Core has a big following, and the users there have been extending the capabilities of this little box for quite some time. Whilst you will likely invalidate your 2 year warranty, you can get some of that display capability through custom firmware and other mods/hacks. Patriot themselves are quite active in the forums when it comes to official business and information which is nice. So there are plenty of things you can play about with if you’re brave.
The then is a small, simple and easy to use HD Media Player that will likely play all the media you have. It’s supported well, by both Patriot and by end users too who have found ways of making the support options it doesn’t out of the box. Out of the box the is no slouch when it comes to playback support with an impressive list of media formats. And it does it all from a user friendly interface.
As a devout believer in the HTPC, I was really quite surprised and taken with the . It’s the simplicity of it that I liked. You get nicely displayed media in an easy to use interface, playback of even HD Media formats (not Blu-Ray obviously) and you don’t have to mess about with extra codecs or plugins for software. So if you can’t be bothered with an HTPC, don’t want to pay out for an HTPC, but actually wouldn’t mind an HTPC, the is for you. If you want a better media player than the one your TV has built in, the is for you. If you’re a devout HTPC user looking for simplicity in your media playback, the might surprise you.
Questions? Comments? Talk to us in the Forums.
