Official Ceton Echo Extender Info Thread - Page 147

Yes, I do on my Sony BD player. DTS-HD MA 7.1 without problem.


No, I'm not and found this codec/splitter mess nothing but headache. Hence I go with whatever works in the simplest form. Currently Echo is not my primary streamer because it won't do HD audios. My BD player from Sony is. So, I would go whatever gives me the result I want. That means streaming within WMC is not my priority. Outside of WMC is.

Interesting. You seem to be suggesting that Ceton is going to support those containers from within the WMC environment. The only way I can think of to do that would be for Ceton to create their own Media Foundation splitters for use with the Echo. Am I interpreting that right? That would be nice. Now, I realize from discussions with babgvant that that isn't exactly ideal- and that splitting on the Echo would result in better seeking within a video, but I'd still like to see that.

I basically assumed once the Android announcement came out that they wouldn't try to get things like high-bitrate video working from within the extender environment, and they'd instead deal with it in the Android environment. That would be OK, but it's nicer to have recorded TV and movie/TV rips more tightly integrated.

It shouldn't take too much effort, but I wonder if they can write their own splitter or use an open source one under the GLP (or whatever its called) GNU/GPL license so that they don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Edited by Sammy2 - 12/13/12 at 2:51pm

But what about on your HTPC?

I have that working quite well now with LAV after pulling my hair out mucking with codecs and spliters until I had a headache!

Do these exist? Not yet, right?

That's correct.

We're talking about the same guy who wrote YAMMM, he obviously likes to rip movies and watch them from within Media Center. If it's possible, no reason to think it won't happen.

And a few more usefull apps.

http://mikinho.com/projects/

Pull mode is better, push (via MF) is probably easier.

I'm sure that someone will do it now that MCX are worth the time.

For my own curiosity, why is it that the chipset of the echo couldn't support the container(s) natively. I would assume a next-gen chip would come armed with the capability? There are a lot of disk players/streamers in the echo class that do this today, no?

My mind is thinking this -->http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mediatek-mt8530-is-worlds-first-divx-plustm-hd-certified-chip-to-power-blu-ray-discr-players-65974057.html
Edited by mariob33 - 12/13/12 at 5:15pm

I could really careless whether or not my HTPC can play HD audio. I thought I already made it clear before that don't use HTPCs and I don't let any PC near my TVs. I really don't want to pull my precious few hair out Everything non-PC just so much easier to setup and use in HT.

Container support isn't usually baked into the SoC it's handled by the media SDK or some other SW element on top.

Nothing intrinsically blocks it. The limitation is in how WMC works.

Maybe, but there are many media experiences that people value that can only be done on a PC.

For example?

Good to know. that's a much better approach IMO. At least now ,with my windows 8 WMC host, I can play with settings now

Okay. So now that that's beat into me with a 2x4 I can see where using DivX MF for the extender works for you. I don't pull my hair out because my HTPC works perfectly connected to my AVR via HDMI which in turn is connected to my HDTV via a 25' HDMI cable. I need my HTPC to bitstream HD Audio and it does.

Is there an expectation that Echo will support native WMC movie library that contains DVD and Blu ray (unconverted) i.e VIDEO_TS and BDMV?

Is there any way to make the WMC guide on the Echo larger? I've got a fairly large margin around the guide now and its making the text a bit touch to see from long distances.

Hey guys, been following the thread after getting my Echo a week and a half ago. I'm stoked to hear that the 1080p issue for WMX is working. That's most of what I wanted this device for.

However, I can't get the plugin to show up in WMC, for the life of me. I have followed the generic instructions of uninstalling it, making sure the Echo and WMC are off, and reinstalling ... but still no luck. Perhaps more interesting is that - in my last iteration of this - I finally selected to "manage" the extras, and I could see that "Echo" was listed but not selected to be enabled. So I enabled (and disabled all of the other stuff, like Solitaire) and it still does not show up.

Also, with my current FW (1202), the web page the device has does not have anything useful ... just links to Ceton's website. Are there more features enabled in later firmware?

Thanks.

Hmmm. I set one of my three Echos to follow the Beta firmware channel in the About box. I did this about a week ago- I also installed the latest plug-in in my WMC. I restarted it then. I restarted it 3 times tonight- and it's not pulling the latest firmware. Am I missing a step to get the update? Thanks...

Go to the setting screen that shows the firmware, highlight the firmware number and click on it, that should then show allow you to update to the latest beta...

Well, doesn't it seem plausible that they might decide its either easier or better to do it as an Android app rather than build it into the MCX environment?

Not if Android is going to be accomplished by dual-booting. And if they wanted to accomplish it via Android, there are already lots of media players that will play most movie files. And unless they put a lot of work into a custom UI for Android, it probably won't be much more then a trivial function to play around with (IMO) because stock android on a TV won't be that user friendly (again my opinion). Even Google TV's various UI aren't that good.

+a lot

Custom Android launchers probably aren't that difficult to write (not that I've tried). So I've absolutely been expecting them to write their own launcher that is remote-friendly, as well as some remote-friendly video library and player apps.

At this point its pretty clear WMC is a dying platform. I don't know exactly what Ceton has planned, but I have to think they're looking to that Android environment to open up new doors to them. Maybe we'll see XBMC on it. Maybe MediaPortal will write an extender app. At this point, who knows. But if Ceton doesn't at least make that environment remote-friendly it's going to be a huge failure.

And, by the way, my experience with Android video players hasn't been great. DicePlayer is really the only one I've used that seems to play back everything smoothly. MX Player has certainly improved over the last year, but it still struggles with some of my H.264 High Profile encodes from Handbrake. And I'd be a little surprised if hardware acceleration worked in either Dice or MX Player out-of-the-box.

Sounds like the Echo is getting pretty close to the Xbox 360 in it's capabilities. Besides using the 360 as an MCX, we are streaming low to medium bit rate compressed movies and t.v. shows. Most are AVI or MP4 compressed with Xvid OR Divx with MP3 or AAC audio. Some of the shows are using H.264 instead of Divx-Xvid. The files play fine on both the HTPC (Win7 x64) and 360 within WMC via Media Browser. The 360s are set to output @ 720P on these smaller T.V.'s Does anyone have experience streaming these types of files to the Echo and can comment on how well they work?

Are you looking in the extras menu on the extender? The Echo settings won't be in the extras menu on the PC.

With the latest beta firmware you can change the audio/video settings, update channel, and do firmware updates from the device webpage.

Is the margin any different when it's viewed in Media Center directly on the PC?

That was it- thanks! I was expecting the same experience as the 12-02 update where it updated itself on (re)boot...

http://community.mediabrowser.tv/permalinks/7529/how-do-i-fix-the-blue-borders-on-an-extender