Patriot Box Office

Patriot Box Office Netbox as Myth FrontEnd

The Patriot Box Office (PBO) will NOT run mythfrontend software. That said, it comes with a uPNP client interface and enough network connectivity to use as a small, HD compatible, frontend for your Myth system. Note that you cannot play nupple video files on it. If you record from PVR-250/150/500 cards, from HdHomeRun or from PCHDTV or anything else that produces mpeg2 files you should be good to go. HD-PVR recordings play fine on the PBO.

Basic Configuration

1. Unpack the PBO, attach to your TV and your network. It uses DHCP by default -- you probably want to change this.
2. Go to the setup screen, select the 'Network' category. Verfy DHCP is on and gets an address.
3. make sure your Myth server is up -- including the uPNP feature.
4. Now use the left/right arrows to go to the 'Browser" screen
5. scroll down or up to the uPNP option and select it.
6. you should see your myth box there. If you select it you should have the videos/music/recording items listed. Choose recordings.
7. now choose any subcategory (like "By Date") and select it. Should show you the recordings of that date.
8. Choose any recording and select it. Should show in the preview pane on the right. If not it may not be a standard format -- nupple video will not work!
9. Hit the Play button. Should start playing.

Problems seen so far

• when backing-out out of playing a show, the uPNP browser is empty. Either restart the PBO (hit power button on remote to turn it off and then turn back on again) or browse all the way back to home (try the upper right "home" key on the remote). Then go back into the browser/uPNP/MythName/Recordings area and see if your shows are again listed.
• If I rip a DVD ISO with Myth, PBO plays it torn up. If I rip individual vob files, they play great.
• Only one device at a time can be "connected" via uPnP. I have an ASUS O'Play and PBO if either one is browsing recordings, the other does not show the myth uPnP server.

Tips and Tricks

• PBO Support forums. Lots of information can be found here [1]
• To have superior jump forward/backward in video (and many other features) use the AC Ryan firmware, Refer to [2]
• Firmware Updating. Put the install.img file on a USB flash drive. Go to the setup screen, System category. Choose update system. The update may take a couple of minutes or more -- be patient!
• telnet into your PBO: username is root, no password. (You need to know its IP address for this, you can set a static IP address with the Network configuration screen under Network). You get a pretty complete busybox session.
• Static NFS mounting of media on your backend. Login to your PBO as root (see above), change to the /usr/local/etc dir and edit the "rcS" file with vi. Add this to the end of the file (you need to replace the names and the paths with entries appropriate for your network). Content is this file is preserved across PBO restarts:

mkdir -p /tmp/ramfs/volumes/NAS_Share

sleep 10

mount -t cifs //NAS_IP/NAS_Share_Path /tmp/ramfs/volumes/NAS_Share -o user=REALTEK_guest,password=Realtek_pw

umount /tmp/ramfs/volumes/NAS_Share

mount -t nfs -o nolock,udp,rsize=32768 NAS_IP:/NAS_Share_Path /tmp/ramfs/volumes/NAS_Share

after this the mount point should show up in the PBO browser under the USB category (go figure)...