Peekton PeekBox 264 HD Pro

Important note: the HD TV tuner in this media centre is a DVB-T tuner rather than a DVB-T2 tuner. This means it cannot pick up HD Freeview channels in the UK. It should, however, have no problem picking up HD channels in other countries or SD channels in the UK.

With its Peekbox 264 HD Pro, Peekton is giving us a digital HD media centre at quite a low price (under £100) considering this model can also house a hard drive. But what is actually behind its aluminium shell? We put it through our usual battery of tests to find out. Here's what we discovered...

Design and build: too sketchy, not quite there

This model is entirely in aluminium. The glossy black shell rapidly accumulates finger marks and dust. More seriously, the paint is easily damaged when you bang it. At the front, a small VFD display shows the time played on a video. It doesn't allow you to navigate the device when the TV is turned off however.


The remote - delivered without batteries! - is made up of good quality plastic and sits nicely in the hand. Certain buttons however, which are neither fluorescent nor backlit, are poorly positioned.

A small fan cools the various components, including the internal hard drive - 3.5-inch format only. The noise generated by this fan is quite noticeable in a calm environment. The installation of the hard drive is pretty easy - sliding drawer - but does require you to fix four screws.

The navigation interface holds no secrets for us as it's identical to the one used for the Storex MediaZapper HD and StoryDisk Ultimate. The idea's simple: the decoding chip used is the same on the various devices - an Mstar MSD 7828 - and the chip manufacturer supplies the graphics interface. Storex, Peekton and the other manufacturers who use this chip simply add their logo and any new icons.


You therefore get the same problems as on the competition models. The graphics is very austere and suffers from a good deal of latency. The main problem comes from the fact that videos which aren't standard height (576p, 720p or 1080p) are systematically stretched vertically. This means that all videos that are re-encoded without black bands will display a stretched image.

MP3 audio track data is recognised and correctly displayed. Album covers are not displayed, whether external or integrated. The photo module does however allow you to display a mosaic of thumbnails (8 per page).

Compatibility: the Peekbox 264 HD Pro's Achilles heel

As we said, we've already come across this decoding chip. We can hardly say, therefore, that we were surprised to see its very reduced multimedia compatibility capabilities.


Looking at audio first, it only plays MP3 and WMA files. When it comes to Dolby Digital and DTS, things aren't much better. DD (including DD+ found on HD TV channels) can be decoded (except for DD True HD). There's no DTS support and you'll therefore need an external amp for decoding (bitstream). Only standard DTS and Dolby Digital formats can be sent and not their HD variants.

Apart from the problem of vertical stretching, the video out must be set at 1080i to limit any problems. This interlaced display can lead to a lack of precision in the image.


Nor is video compatibility the best either. First of all, you can forget about DVD and Blu-ray backups. There's no ISO support and only RIPs play. Even then, with Blu-rays, you'll have to do without the menus, you won't be able to change the audio track and there won't be any subtitling. The same issues come up with DVDs and added to this is the fact that the IFO file (a sort of reading list) isn't recognised. You'll no doubt want to reorganise them in the right order before beginning playback.

Connectivity: no network but USB ports

The connectivity at the back is pretty standard all-in-all, with an HDMI, a composite as well as optical and coaxial outs. Two USB Host ports allow you to plug in USB keys and external hard drives.

Note the system's two following limitations however: firstly, you can't copy the files from one USB peripheral to the hard drive and vice-versa. You can however link the media centre to a computer via USB. Another limitation: you can't easily go from the internal hard drive to the USB peripherals. You need to navigate using a specific menu, select the source you want, wait quite a few seconds and finally return to the home page to consult the media you're looking for.

Lastly, there's no network support at all, whether via ethernet or wi-fi.