Official Ceton Echo Extender Info Thread - Page 174  

So I guess only fan boys should post here, and speak nicely of the great new product. My comments have nothing to do with money, I am not looking for anything to be free. There have been many others posting about cost. Mine have been about my experience with Ceton and the Echo beta.

I think the fan boys need to RELAX and take everyones comments for what they are, opinions and some fact. BTW, comments here are NOT stopping anyone from doing there job.
Edited by skybolt - 1/24/13 at 10:01am

I prefer to look at what it does today rather than look back at what an epic fail the beta was. There's no reason griping about that anymore. Mine is working great right now and that is all that matters... Of course mkv's could be better but I can play TV shows and the like that have been converted to mkv right now. It is the HBR stuff that still needs work and I realy think that it is a limitation of extenders on WMC but the android solution will work around this. I think that ceton is looking into launching an android player from within WMC on the extender but they don't really want to do that. They may have to though because their hands are tied by MS; we will see.

Based on your remarks, I am super excited for this one to hit the beta channel! My picture on both Pioneer panels is very good but sounds like further improvements have been made.

Can't wait!

Stability and audio improvements. It seems to have fixed the issues I was having. I sent ceton about 10 diag logs on Monday and they were already working on this f/w improvement at the same time.

Sammy, just got my Echo the other day, hoping to set it up this weekend. I had a question about the MKV file compatibility. Would you say that someone who's library of movies was mainly uncompressed DVD rips with AC3 audio via MakeMKV or some similar tool that simply re-containers the video will work for the most part? I am wondering if its mainly user created MKV's using things like Handbrake are what causes issues. HBR mkv's and DTS would be awesome, and i don't care how they figure it out so long as it happens eventually.

Also for those of us who merely re-container and not re-encode movies is there a format that works better? WTV, MKV or m2ts?

DVD rips work well for the most part for me but I don't have many of those. Most of my library is Blu-Ray rips with HD Audio. The echo doesn't support HD Audio or dts in any form right now. I think re-encode or down muxing will cause issues if it isn't a quality re-encode. WTV and MKV work if they aren't VBR or HBR from what I can tell. I have not had an m2ts play. It locks up the echo to where it needs a soft-reboot with the echo. I did test some of these last night on the latest f/w and there is no change there as would be expected; the changelog didn't indicate anything about it.

If I were you, I'd install the echo and put it on the beta channel for f/w and the settings app. BTW, make sure you instal the settings app with WMC closed on the host machine and the echo off as well.

I more or less agree with that statment. It's more then just false promises however, it's how issues are handled, or just ignored which still exist.

I guess if my results were more like yours, I would be silent, but based on posts here it looks split. Some are happy and some are not. Most of the happy ones are willing to "live with" some issue that other's are not, or have expectations not set as high as others.

I mean lets face it, releaseing a new extender in this market requires a knock out release. MS has pretty much secured third party failure, which is why no one eles is doing this. JMO.

Hmm, looking at the MediaInfo for just a random sample of 10 MKV rips, all seem to have a Bit Rate Mode of Variable. Guess i'm just gonna have to give it a shot as these make up the bulk of my library (300+ titles) that i'd rather not have to encode just to get them to play. Hope this isn't the case otherwise i'll just wait it out and keep using the 360 for my movie viewing.

Great suggestions, I will definitely do that.

Constant bit rate and under 20mbps with no DTS will give you 100% success on pretty much all extenders from what I see. Even compressing BD rips will play better. Variable bit rate is a killer here. MakeMKV works just fine as does HandBrake if it is setup right.

I have had limited success with M2TS.

I would go with WTV if for no other reason then it gives you full FF/RW capability. I haven't moved to the Echo (yet) but that is what I did with my 200+ movies and they play beautifully on my DMA2100/2200's through MediaBrowser.

Does MB display any metadata for these wtv files?

This is maybe a viable solution for someone starting out but I have 400 titles in mkv and am not going to re-encode them for playback on the echo. I have a test file of wtv that was created from a HBR/VBR mkv and is realtively large (20GB, IIR). It won't play well on the echo; it stutters and pauses.

I have a mix/match of mkv and wtv for TV series that are all co-located on a network share, some episodes of the same season/series will be one flavor, some the other. I do use metabrowser to grab metadata, so am not certain how well mediabrowser's metadata stuff would work. I use media browser to browse everything, and wtv looks like mkv so far as meta data goes. If MB doesn't get you the metadata you need, I'd think yamm (or metabrowser like I use) would be fine to populate the files MB looks at.

Media Browser works fine with metadata, it's getting some of the non-free plugins that is the trick. Ther is a plugin that displays the media infomation on the screen with the fanart.


Edited by skybolt - 1/24/13 at 10:39am

I use MediaCenterMaster and SB for metadata for TV shows, not MediaBrowser's scraper. My TV shows are in mkv. I don't use metabrowser or mediabrowser's scraper. I converted an mkv to a wtv for testing with the Echo. MCM would not pick up metadata for it and mediainfo does not show anthing either but the native windows right click > Properties does.

I am sorry if I wasn't clear. I was just wondering if you can see the MetaData for wtv in MediaBrowser or mediainfo for that matter.

So how does one request to be on the "omega" list? I always like the "bleeding edge" stuff!

I use Diamond, a free plugin, and I get metadata but for a Bond Movie converted from mkv to wtv it isn't showing it. That may be the issue.

I think I am in it because my echo is a beta unit since October, but not all beta echos are in it. It is by release and by MAC ID. The whole purpose of omega is to limit the number of units exposed to the f/w if it does bad stuff.

Who said anything about being a fanboy? All I'm saying is - again - RELAX and let Ceton do their job instead of yelling and screaming about them not doing it fast enough. I certainly hope that my experience with the Echo improves as well. There are certainly things I would like to see come about, but you don't see me in here ripping the developers up one side and down the other. Patience is a virtue. Report your findings, list your hopes, discuss the product, but I find little need for (pardon my paraphrasing) "This product sucks! The XBox is so much better! Why don't the people at Ceton just fix it?! Why haven't they fixed my specific bug yet?! This is outrageous! I bet they just punted this product!" etc, etc, etc, ad infinitum.

I've had my share of issues. My echo worked well in mid-December and then a couple betas later it was toast all through January until just last night basically. We will see if it has stability on this release..

VBR files don't work? Are you sure you don't mean VFR (variable frame rate)? I thought VBR files were (sort of) working as long as the bitrate doesn't get too high.

I use Media Center Master and have no problem getting the metadata for my movies. I am trying to figure out TV shows still so that it will organize all 18 seasons of Top Gear for me.

Sammy2 - I am not sure that WTV will be a viable solution for you as most of your stuff seems to be HBR rips of BR movies. I am using it only for DVD rips and it works perfectly (almost perfectly, DTS still causes issues). It works so well that I have been able to put all my DVD's in a box and my wife and kids use MediaBrowser with no issues. As an added bonus, I no longer have broken/scratched/slimy DVD's laying around the house.

Yep - totally understand this. I did try to get in on the beta and was passed over... So, I will just wait for things to hit the beta channel...

There was also some discussion about the number of R-Frames being too high as well so who really knows?

For me, VBR on BD's didn't work so well. VFR is always an issue I thought, not just for hte echo but all extenders? At least it seems that way.

LOL, that's a great ending ... My gripping comes from this thread and all of the previous promises as well as being part of the beta. Your point is taken and I concede, except I didn't rip on the developers, just the state of the product.

Unfortunately I was

You quit?

Nobody likes a quitter!

I've had this in my living room for 3 months now. I expected the Echo beta to be where the Echo is at right now... OK, so exactly how long and how much patience do you, the voice of reason, say is an acceptable timeline to have EVERYTHING done? How about the list below?

- HBR movies, MKV's
- DTS
- HD Audio
- Windows 8 support (don't care what people think about it, it needs to be supported)
- No major bugs/audio problems, freezes, restarts
- fluid UI

How much longer?? If Ceton extends the return policy again, then I have no problems, until then... we have problems

no, I was only saying I was apart of the horrible beta (alpha) experience... I haven't given up, just expecting better and counting the days until either Ceton steps up and knocks this thing out of the park or I return it for being nothing more then a slightly updated Linksys extender.

I think that is not a matter of what anybody "thinks" about it but rather a matter of what M$ has done to the RDP in Win8. I'm not sure if there is a solution that ceton can do for this.

BTW, it isn't as if ceton doesn't already know about these things. Repeating them ad nauseum doesn't change anything. If it doesn't meet your expectations, return it and don't bother wasting your time posting about it because repeating these things doesn't change anything.

I think that only the top three items on your list are still needing to be done at this point anyhow.