Official Ceton Echo Extender Info Thread - Page 6  

All I saw was a mini jack for audio, didn't see an optical port. If it's coax digital out from there, that's fine.

The backdoor I'm thinking of could be a simple 'advanced mode' setting (either hidden or not), which would enable tuners and WMC plugins to be installed. This would definitely be unsupported by Ceton.

Holy crap, this is exactly what I was looking for.

So, this will be able to play live tv from my HTPC (if i add a ceton tuner) as well as play recorded material from said HTPC, right?

If so, it might help me make the jump to get rid of those cable boxes!

Excellent, that's good news. Thanks for the info.



Agreed. As I said, It's a balancing act for Ceton or any company that caters to our crowd.

Ok, that's enough OT for me!

All i want is an extender that has support for as many codecs, formats, extensions, or whatever natively without transcoding as possible. Anything after that is a bonus for me.

So is this thing going to be locked down, and only allowed to run binaries signed by Ceton/MS?

In other words, say I innovate and develop a super fancy new app for it which provides functionality neither Ceton nor MS provides.
Will I be able to compile, install, and run the executable / driver on this box? Somehow I highly doubt it.

I can tell you that I for one would like to be able to use my HDHR ATSC tuners on this box, which would require installing the SD drivers.
Maybe also a NFS server since SMD does not always cut it.

Here's a video from thedigitallifestyle.com with a cool demo of the units:

http://thedigitallifestyle.com/w/ind...indows-8-apps/

Can't wait for these to come out.

I would like to have a link on the Echo into my MediaBrowser on my HTPC, so I can play my DVD and BR rips on the Echo. If I cannot, it really does me no good.

Eric/Ceton,

It's probably too late in the design phase, but one thing a lot of SageTV Extender customers requested from SageTV was a port on the extender to run an external IR reciever, so that you could mount the extender out of the way (eg on the back of the TV) and just run the reciever out into the room so you reduce clutter.

The HDMI CEC would work for those with newer HDMI sets (assuming it works and I've heard very mixed reports on how well that works) but not for those with older sets.

That looks pretty sweet, here's hoping they come up with a solution for us Cable-haters (aka D* subscribers)

Thanks for the link, looks great.

That's actually solved quite easily. An IR extender "eye". It has an eye on one end and a stick on emitter on the other end. Just stick the emitter on to the Echo's IR front (on top of the glass works just dandy), and extend theeye whereever you want. It can go up to almost 300ft.

Kinda like how the Harmony RF extender works.

Except last time I looked at IR extender systems they were quite costly (on the order of an extender's cost) if they were any good, and way, way overkill for just one device.

Agreed.........nice demo!

For me to get the Q it will have to either, have an integrated ATSC tuner or support for an external tuner(s). I have cable, but every time I look at that damn bill I get disgusted. I want ATSC to use as the primary due to its better image quality and cable when I run out of OTA tuners or can't get the channel on OTA.

I sure would hate to have a cable only box, which would become worthless as a DVR if I decide to cut cable. If the Q won't cut it then it will be a PC and hopefully, the Echo.

What I need:
- ATSC support
- good format support from the Echo

Maybe Silicon Dust or others will come out with their own stuff!

I agree I need to play my DVD/BR rips, if it can do this I'm in.

+1. the remote ir receiver is great on the hd-300.

another wish along the same lines would be the ability to turn off all the leds. I have to put electrical tape over the leds on the sage extenders because they light up the room. the flashing ethernet activity light was especially annoying...

I wonder if you could get away with just using a standard Windows ir receiver that connects via USB? The Q has USB ports (not sure about the Echo, can't seem to find a pic of the back), so all they would need to do is include the basic MS driver.

On a similar note, it would be nice if the Echo had VESA mounting holes on the bottom for easy installation behind a TV.

Basic extender support plus the ability to play DVD/Blu-ray rips would be killer. I wonder if MyMovies plugin is going to work or even media browser. Hopefully adding Echos to my setup won't require hours of work on the back end making everything compatible.
Currently I use a Linksys DMA 2100 Extender on one of the TV's in my house. It's ridiculously slow but it's quiet and I velcroded it to the back of a wall mounted TV with the unit peaking out just a bit on the bottom. It's mostly hidden and the IR works fine. It does lockup and freeze on occasion requiring the power cable to be pulled, then it works fine again. It will be so nice to have some more modern tech in an extender. I've tried my old XBOX 360 which works better as an extender but sure won't velcro to the back of the TV and it's too loud. Looking forward to the Echo's release.
I tried the tuner sharing too but I don't like to dedicate a tuner to lets say the office computer. I'm not in the office a whole lot but it is nice to have live TV in there once in a while without tying up a tuner all the time. I'd definitely be in for 2 Echos but I can think of at least 2-3 more places in my house that could use additional Echos.

This.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm looking into an HTPC build, with a 360 extender for now (but interested in the Echo).

To use live TV with an extender, doyou have to pre-assign a tuner from the main unit to it? I thought you could just "grab" one on the fly when using the extender?

No, you are correct, extenders will just grab an available tuner not currently in use, then automatically release that tuner if you're not watching live TV.

Dedicating networked tuners are for PCs only.

I had originally setup my office PC to share one tuner from my HTPC in the family room. I didn't like losing the use of that tuner in the family room when the office PC wasn't being used. The extender model is much better. Grabbing the tuner with an extender temporarily for the couple of minutes or hours I'm in the office would be ideal. This way when not in use in the office the tuner could record shows in the family room where most of the TV watching happens.
I don't see why another PC couldn't be used as an extender for live TV rather than having to dedicate a tuner to it? I can see Ceton creating an extender application for us to use on our PCs to avoid the dedicated tuner issue. Would be even better if it was a media center plugin. All it would have to do is stream live TV since I have no issues with streaming any other media to my other PCs in the house. The only issue is a dedicated tuner vs extender borrowing a tuner model.
And for those of us early adopters it would be nice to get a little future product discount coupon from Ceton for paying the early adopter premium on the InfiniTV cards. The price dropped to $300 pretty quickly after I received my 2 cards at $400 each.
That said I still love Ceton - they're listening to us and doing the best they can to bring our community what we want while still working with the restrictions placed on them by other sources. I'm confident they'll get there. They should be admired in the industry. It's rare to find a company that listens. Thank you Ceton Corp!

Sort of, but, well lets just say I'm not comfortable with the HDHR's conflict arbitration. The way I understand it works is every configured app/computer thinks they are always available. Tuners are doled out in a first come, first serve basis.

This means that if, using S1's example of a PC in the office, if you start watching something live on that PC, that tuner is now locked and can't be overridden. This could cause a missed recording because the main HTPC can't override. It seems up to the app how to deal with that, and I don't know of any DVR app that's really set up to deal with HDHR's built in locking well. So you'd have no indication that another box wanted to do a scheduled recording.

I suppose it's better than the way it originally was where I think whoever asked last won.

Sigh...Softsled...where art thou??

I doubt this will be possible, but since it supports MoCA, it might be nice to reconfigure the Ethernet port to a bridge mode, to be able to connect Internet to a newer TV or gaming console. Wishful thinking though, I'm sure.

Pretty stoked about the news of this Echo device. I've got a PC running the InfiniTV 4 with 2 extenders (Xbox) in the house. I've been absolutely thrilled with it but the Echo could make it so much better!

Dear Ceton,
If the Echo can:
1. Allow me to do Netflix/Hulu/Youtube
2. Natively support MKVs and many other formats
3. Pop a blu-ray into the host PC's blu-ray drive and stream it to the Echo
I'd buy one for every TV in the house and every TV in all my friends', families', coworkers', and strangers' houses.

Thanks,
Mike

I think that 1 and 2 would be simple enough? 3 would be great but I'm not sure if it'd be possible. I just want to play a DVD/Blu-ray from the host's drive on my extender! I refuse to pay for Live Gold to do Netflix currently since I don't game. I've also tried a few Netflix plugins but they don't seem to work anymore; same with youtube plugins. Regardless of what the outcome is of the Echo, it'll hopefully ignite the media center platform and help propel it past it's previous state.

Suggestions - Focus big on support like netflix, hulu, MLB.TV / Sunday Ticket on the go(ps3 has it) NBA NHL etc etc.

Based on the demo video that was posted previously, the ethernet port and MoCA adapter are modular components that are swapped out of the same location. So you can have one or the other but not both at the same time, at least on the extender.

Thanks for the explanation.