Patriot is a company that has built a reputation on PC memory, as well as USB drives and SSDs. It may then come as a surprise to some that Patriot has entered into the ever more crowded market of all in one media players. If you’re anything like me, you probably already have some sort of setup allowing your media to be played on your home theater equipment. Patriot hopes you’ll decide that having their tiny little box in your living room is a better way to go.

And little it is. Measuring a mere 5.5”x5.75”x1.5” (LxWxH), the Patriot Box Office is smaller than many external hard drive enclosures. For $99 you’ll get the Box Office itself, composite video cables, an HDMI cable (5’), the remote with the required batteries, and a USB to mini-USB cable. Including the HDMI cable really is a nice touch, and quite unusual for media players at this price point. The Box Office has one set of composite video and audio output jacks, an optical SPDIF output, 2 USB and one mini-USB connection, an HDMI port and a 10/100 ethernet port. It also has an internal bay for a 2.5” internal hard drive. The entire design of the unit speaks to the fact that this device was created by a company that had to this point focused on computer components and not consumer electronics. Everything is black with small understated icons. No sharp edges, engravings, paint or emblems, everything here favors a strictly utilitarian look.

The remote follows suit with a lack of backlighting and has about as generic a styling as one could imagine. This can be a bit of a problem, as the remotes utter lack of backlighting as well as the similar shape and color to all the buttons can make it difficult to discern where specific buttons are at a glance. It does include buttons for most of the commonly used features in a device like this, even if the display of said buttons is not the most elegant.