Official Ceton Echo Extender Info Thread - Page 22

Please, Ceton. Give us some concrete details about the Echo and put us out of our misery of having to endure this discussion about stealing cable...

of course not; didn't intend to imply that it did.

A m e n ! ! !

I just want to point out a couple things:

First one is there are really two possible situations here. One is where you are not subscribed to anything from the cable provider, but have a wire to your house (maybe from the prior homeowner, or from before you canceled).

If you hook up your QAM tuner to this wire and get "free" TV, then well, I'll say I agree with the sentiment here that it is "wrong" to do that (I won't use the word "stealing" as that's too loaded).

The other situation is where you sign up for just internet service, but not TV. In this case you have a line run to your house that you are paying for. Now this is a big gray area IMO. Reason being you're paying for service that enters your house on a cable, specifically internet, but what else comes with that internet is it "wrong" to view it if the cable company decides not to filter out the local channels? I can see both sides to that one.

But here's some more food for thought:


This is correct so far....


What is "stealing" is those adds don't pay for the service of providing those channels to you via the cable to your house. They don't pay for the infrastructure the cable provider has to maintain, the lines, the receivers, etc, etc.


Actually they do charge you for those channels. My provider (according to their website) charges $23.98/mo for the 17 "basic" channels, the locals essentially. This is $23.98/mo for the service of delivering those channels to your house via a cable that is free from reception issues and antennas.


Except that the cable line isn't public space, it's owned by the cable company.

Just a further bit of food for thought. My cable provider provides me something like 40 channels via Clear QAM, including Velocity, Discovery, TNT, etc. These are obviously not "free" channels, but my provider provides these as a means of differentiating itself form the other provider in the area, but obviously not with the intent of giving everyone free TV.

Thanks but i bought the inksys wes610n. it was not easy making it use the 5ghz band at 300 mbs. Guess i will not need it for months if i dont get the echo beta. But im going to it on my tivo hd and my computer till i get a echo.

Any chance of getting some beta action soon. 4 ceton cards have tout for something

you know , here is a great idea, if you plug into the cable line and get a bunch of "free" content and are unsure if that is free, stealing or something else, Just call up the cable company and see what they think.

Truth is in that senario, i doubt anyone would think that they wouldn't want you to pay. That said, the conversation is pretty pointless.

Back on topic guys...

Sorry if I'm coming late to the party, but this whole discussion reminds me of an old question we had in our household, and maybe y'all can weigh in on it.

We discovered Clear QAM about six years ago when one night my wife was sleeping on the couch and, out of boredom, I started playing with our new Sony TV's features. One thing I tried was to have the TV scan for channels. (We did not have a cable box of any kind then, the coax was hooked up directly to the TV, and we were paying for a cable package including about 80 analog channels.)

Much to my surprise, the Sony reported a ton more channels than I'd expected to see, most or all on the digital side. A few clicks later, I was introduced to the world of Channels "29.1," "60.3" and "84.12."

I woke my wife up and showed her what I'd found. We started surfing up and down these mysterious channels, and discovered that some seemed to duplicate the channels we already had and others were brand-new to us.

Over the next several months we learned that these mysterious channels seemed to jump around unpredictably -- 84.12 would become 84.9, or 60.3 could turn into 2.2, and you'd have to rescan in order to find them all over again.

So we started to wonder if this wasn't some kind of clever marketing tool for the cable company to lure customers of less-extensive channel packages into buying bigger packages so that we could count on the channels still being there the next time we tuned in. You know, like offering free samples.

My questions to you, then, are:

1) What do you think of that idea (that letting their customers discover these channels was a low-key marketing ploy)?

2) Did it constitute stealing to watch these channels that the cable company was sending into our home unrequested?

Thanks for any insights.


EDIT: @Mike Lang: Sorry, I posted this and then your request showed up. Still hoping someone will enlighten me.

+1!

I'm still very interested in the Echo's media streaming capabilities, particularly for DVD and blu-ray rips. Basically, I want some sort of clarification regarding the following statement on the Ceton website:


What kind of videos will we be able to play?

I hope that answering the first question is ok with the mods...


I doubt it was any sort of marketing ploy. There doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency in what channels the cable companies encrypt versus what they use Clear QAM for. But the most common situation seems to be that the over the air equivalents are usually Clear QAM and premium content, like HBO, will almost always be encrypted. Everything else tends to be a crap shoot as to whether it's Clear QAM or encrypted, but most channels that aren't part of the lowest service tier will usually be encrypted to make sure that only those who are paying for them can get them. Naturally, there are lots of exceptions to this - some cable companies encrypt all the channels, and some don't encrypt some of the channels in the middle tiers.

Note: Don't confuse encryption with the copy never / copy once / copy freely flags as that's a completely different thing. Encryption just means you need a CableCard device to tune the channels, so a Clear QAM tuner won't work for encrypted channels.

As to why the channel numbers keep moving around, that's one of the negatives to using Clear QAM rather than a CableCard device (or the cable box, which ultimately has a CableCard inside). Again, not sure if there's any method to their madness, but the cable companies somewhat frequently move things around to different frequencies, perhaps to balance their load as they modify their channel lineups. The CableCard devices have a mapping between the channel numbers you tune to and the underlying frequency. That mapping gets updates when changes are made. With Clear QAM, you're going more direct without that mapping which is why you would need to rescan when they move things around.


I think we may have beaten that topic to death and the mods have obviously asked us to stop discussing it, so I'm not going there .

I'm super excited about ceton extenders - I'm a long time sagetv user looking to bail and ceton/wmc looks like the way to go (though I'm a use Linux so I'm also happy about the Q).
I'm wondering if anyone is concerned about the state of WMC - it doesn't look like MS is putting much effort into it and considers it a legacy product. Does anyone think it's possible they'll simply discontinue it in the next couple of years?

Shopping bags are not illegal - but you can use them to steal things.

They are about to become irrelevant: in our market, Comcast now requires a box to receive even basic channels. (These are distinct from cableCARD tuners. Up to two are "free" to subscribers.)

FWIW, I've never heard of "free" cable channels. (Seems an oxymoron.) Neither has Comcast. . .

Guys: I am not a mod, but let's behave like adults. While cable theft is a good discussion point, this is a Echo extender thread.

Wow, sorry for causing this huge derail. I just thought that since I was already paying for the infrastructure for Comcast to run cable for internet into my house that if it also transmitted unencrypted TV signals, I could improve the reception of my local channels by using the cable connection. I just went and bought a $15 amplifier that stabilizes the channels I get via OTA so I'm good to go.

I really do hope the Echo comes in at around the $150 price range since at that pricepoint, with the added expense for me of having to buy MOCA adapters I might just buy the WDTV Live SMP for my office and use Hulu Plus as my DVR there. I already get Hulu on the Boxee Box in my bedroom using BartsideeTV so the only benefit the Echo serves me personally is being able to watch local live TV in my bedroom. Paying more than $150 so I don't have to get my lazy butt out of bed on Sundays to watch football probably isn't worth it.

Need Extender Updates!!

It is theft to take the un-encrypted signal from the cable and use it in any fashion. The cable company did the work and spent the money on the infrastructure to deliver it to your house. Even if it is only the same signal that you can get with an antenna it is theft because you did not do the work and spend the money to install an antenna on your house. Plain and simple.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Those in the Ceton app beta any immediate feedback? Or are you limited by NDA?

Next you'll be telling me it is theft to enjoy the smell blowing through the window from the baker down the street.

If the cable company cared about the prospect of you hooking a tuner up and receiving the free channels on the wire coming into your house, they wouldn't pump those signals into your house to begin with.

Anyway, is this system going to properly replace SageTV or not? That's the $64 question as far as I'm concerned. Ceton, if the answer is yes, I've got a bag of money sitting here with your name on it.

-Suntan

Today is the day, but it hasn't been released yet. We will be able to discuss it.

Count me as one of those who's concerned about the future of WMC. Right now it just isn't clear what's going to happen with it down the road.

I've seen speculation running both ways. On the one hand, because Microsoft is making it available as an add-on to Windows 8, some believe this means that WMC will be supported for as long as Win8 is supported. If previous experience is any guide, this would mean 'til 2022 more or less.

On the other hand, I've also seen speculation that because MS split WMC off Windows, it's become a semi-independent product with its own lifecycle -- and this means that they could stop supporting it at a different point than Windows 8 (probably sooner).

Fortunately, though, it looks like Ceton is committed to working with WMC as far as the eye can see. The biggest issue would be the EPG, especially since not having to pay endless monthly fees for the TiVo EPG or for the cableco DVR is one of the appeals of using WMC on an HTPC.

Might depend on your provider, but with WMC, even with a cable card tuner used as intended with subscribed service, you can also add in those sub channels you get OTA that arent in the normal subscribed lineup. I discovered this sort of on accident when editing the guide to remove channels I did not subscribe to. One of the network stations here has 2 movie sub channels....one with 80's to early 90's movies, and another which is like what AMC used to be before they moved on to newer content. Anyhow, those arent a part of the normal FiOS lineup via their set top boxes, but are fed in the pipe and will come in when using a clear QAM tuner (just get the locals+sub channels here just like your using an OTA antenna). Anyhow, even using a cablecard tuner with cablecard installed, I could still seemlessly add those sub channels to the WMC guide and watch them same as any other channel.

Thanks very much for taking the time to explain.

In our case, whatever the cableco was doing paid off for them, as ultimately my wife really got into some of those "extra" channels that had been in Clear QAM (Lifetime Movie Channel, Hallmark Channel) and when the cableco started scrambling them, we shelled out for the higher tier so that she could keep watching the new channels.

If those channels had always been encrypted, my wife would never have seen them and I'd be paying a lot less for cable today.

With all the Windows embedded that MS is betting on, it is hard to believe that they would abandon WMC all together. They jumped the gun a little bit in the 2000's with the software was more capable than the hardware was available. Many manufacturers, including HP, Linksys, and D-Link were onboard with MS, but due to the lack of hardware, mainly affordable tuners, the idea did not take off.

Ceton came out with what MS should have had lined up in 2005 to make Vista MCE a really viable option to cableco DVR and TiVO.

It will take a lot of convincing on MS part to get big manufacturers to support Windows embedded after they were burned by the extenders fiasco. It may be up to the little guys, like Ceton, and Silicon dust to make the hardware for Windows embedded platform to actually take off as MS envisions it.

Only if you eat the food he makes without paying for it. You know, like watching the channels via the cable company without paying them for it.

Thanks for your example, it works well to show it is theft.


If the car owner cared about his car, he would have locked the doors. You are allowed to steal it since he did not...

For those that got in the beta, can non-beta members access the forums to at least read what is going on?

You guys know that Comcast charges extra for internet without cable TV, specifically because they know people can get local channels for free over QAM, right? They're not losing any money here.

I don't think so, I think that your e-mail address has to be one that is registered for the beta in order to gain access to the forums.

I'm in ceton beta program and access is controlled for beta participants only. Can't discuss much but echo is not in beta yet