Official Ceton Echo Extender Info Thread - Page 31

Yes. Unfortunately 179 will only attract early adopters and niche crowd. I am out.

They just want to be sure you are in so you don't waste a slot. They just have your name and email know way they can hold you to that charge.

I would tend to agree that they (probably) can't legally force people to provide a credit card number in September, but it seems odd to ask people to take a slot without more information to be able to make an informed decision. If more info isn't provided by the July 30 deadline, I'll decline the invitation and let someone else take my spot rather than tie up a spot until September that I might end up not wanting.

I was selected as a beta tester. The price for the units seem very fair. A matter of fact, I asked if I was restricted to only one. I made it clear that we have 6 to 7 tv's connected to hd300 sage extenders and I would be willing to replace them all with beta units. How else can you expect to test them unless you use them in a real life experience. I would have no problem paying for 6 to 7 of them in a beta test at $179 each. Ceton has a great track record at taking care of their customers. Hell, I have wasted a lot more with a couple more zero's then what this would cost me.

I have 4 girls ranging from 7 to 14 and a wife. If they can learn switch from SageTV to the Echo platform then I would call what Ceton has to offer a success. I am hopeful but doughtful I will get the number of extenders I would like.

Erik, bring me some units!

btw, $79 per unit would be rediculous. Some people here need to stay away from the garage sales.

I would be happy to take your spot...

$180 is perfectly acceptable if it plays full bit-rate blu-rays (rips or disks from the host htpc).

I think one thing that people may not be considering is the liklihood that Extender functionality will be dropped in the next gen XBOX. MS already appears to be phasing out WMC from the Windows operating system. Has anyone seen confimation that the 720 will have extender capability?

If not, the whole "I can get a new XBOX for $199 and a used one for much less" argument (not to mention the XBOX falls way short on HD material) is moot, since XBOX's tend to have a pretty short lifespan. I'm already on my 3rd, with an average life of about 2 years before they go up in smoke.

Well there are comparable products due from Tivo and perhaps others.

So the pricing will have to be evaluated against those other products.

+1

Define "comparable". You could say the Dish Hopper or DirecTV HR34 clients are "comparable" but only if you only count TV, they've all got sucky media support like the Xbox and prior WMC extenders did. If the Echo can play DVD and BD rips in some form or another (but not converted to wmv-hd format like the Xbox) then the only "comparable" device is the SageTV HD300 which discontinued, and those have been selling (used) on ebay for $300 or more.

Transporting live TV and recorded shows to other rooms.

Well if that's all it does, I have no interest in it, or any other solution that only does that. I've already got a solution that does quite a bit more than that.

It's only a niche who wants to stream BD rips. So understandable that they'd focus on core features.

The niche streaming bluray rips are the exact same people who are interested in media center based whole home TV distribution. You're probably in the minority if you're not interested in it.

Count me as not interested in playing bluray rips, and I have had whole home media center based distribution for many years.

Why dont you just spend 50 dollars on a blu-ray player then you would not have to rip them.

Isn't this positioned to be the companion for their DVR more than existing HTPCs?

http://www.kaleidescape.com/

I have a Blu-ray player (which I paid a fair bit more than $50 for when I got it), that's not the point, if you don't get the benefits of having your whole movie/TV library online and available anytime you want, I'm not going to argue with you.

If all I wanted was to get TV to more than one room, I'd still be with Dish (I switched to Cable about a month back) and I'd have a Hopper, or I'd have switched to DirecTV and their HR34. Either would get me a DVR and TV to more than one room, and would be a lot simpler and probably less troublesome than a PC based system.

Based on everything Ceton's said and shown, it seems to be positioned as a lot more than a standard "get TV to other rooms" Media Center Extender.

That is so 1980s, where you went to a shelf somewhere and looked at all the VHS cassettes, picked the one you wanted, carried it to the player, and put it in. In 2012, we prefer to simply click the movie we want with a remote control and it plays.

If the Echo is just a regular extender like the old Linksys DMA 2100/2200's, or an Xbox, would Ceton even bother beta testing its "software"?
I'd think they could just test that internally, since the extender platform is pretty much established.
I realize they haven't announced the specifications yet, but you have to believe that as they're taking their time to release it, there will be some interesting new features to test.
What those features are? We'll find out soon I hope. I'm optimistic that they'll fill most of what we're looking for.

CFC

I am just wondering how many people really have 80" LCD/Plasma TVs in more than just 1 room in their house.

I understand the desire to retain the highest quality rips to play on the large screen where the high resolution will make the most impact. However, I may be in the minority here as we only have large TV in the "theater" everything else in the house is a mix of 19", 24" and 42" TV's. All but one are 60 Hz refresh, and 2 out of the 4 are 720p. So, high rez BD rips, at least for our house, are only aplicable when played in the "theater" elsewhere in the house, converted files are still higher quality video than what you'd normally get off Cable, and we are more than just satisfied with the quality.

So, really, if someone has the funds to buy 4-5 80" LCD/Plasmas at $3000 - $6,000 a unit, plus the associated sound gear (additional $2000 - $3,000), I don't think they would be complaining about the $180 device. At that point, $180 is just a drop in the bucket.

At, least that is what I can think of. I am just confused.

I must admit I'm kind of baffled at these comments. Do you really believe that $179 is too much to pay for an extender? And these comparisons to xbox... Clearly a lot of people dont think of an xbox as a viable option. I'm genuinely curious; if you had the choice of a $179 echo, or a $100 echo lite that played TV recordings but threw an 'incompatible format' error for every DVD, divx, BD, mkv, or home video you tried playing - would you bother with the cheaper version?

All it takes is having one large size HDTV for wanting the echo to play rips. My guess is the typical HTPC users doesn't have a library of movies and shows all converted to multiple resolutions. ex; Movie A @ 1080P for playing in the living room, Movie A @ 720P for playing in bedroom TV's.

Maybe I'm lazy, but I don't want to be converting movies just to watch on different size TV's.

I definitely would. I already have a cheap disc player that streams everything except my live and recorded tv. If the Echo can't play physical discs, then I need a 2nd box anyway. All I need is a small, cheap, quite, efficient extender for that. The Echo fits the bill perfectly but is too expensive.

I know I'm in the minority here, but I don't have a huge library of ripped discs and have no desire for one. I'm old and have seen all the old movies I want to see, and have no desire whatsoever to watch the same title more than once. The handful of quality new titles that come out every year can easily be rented for a few bucks. So ripping and maintaining a library is a huge waste of time and energy in my case. All I care about is the few titles I've downloaded, my music/photo library and personal video library, all of which play fine on my current blu-ray player. So all I need is a single purpose extender for tv. Whoever can provide that for around $100 gets my business. I'd hoped that would be the Echo, but see now that isn't the case. So I'll continue using alternate solutions.

Curious, if you just need something for TV, why not just pickup a DMA2100 off of ebay? I have a couple and they work perfectly fine for TV... they ARE missing WOL, but there are ways around that.

I'm bummed I didn't get picked for the Beta. I had put the Echo around $150 but I'll still take 5-6 of them @ $180. Chances seem very high that the extender will be much more than just the typical WMC extender and either work with dual interfaces like the HPx280n has(had) for other services/Ceton centric apps, etc; or, hopefully integrated nicely with the existing WMC interface, giving the appearance of smooth transitions in/out of the existing WMC extender UI (something that the x280n severely lacked; it felt like 2 completely separate products).

The price is not that big of a deal to me, it is the features that I want. Right now I use old P4 machines in 3 of my bedrooms for the kids to watch movies and TV. Netflix is a must have and Amazon would be nice. I would save enough money from the power savings to justify the cost. I do like the fact that even with my old hardware, I can play full quality BD rips, so the ECHO would have to do that also.

$179 seems reasonable if it can do the same duties as my old systems. I don't know about you, but I rarely get stuff at MSRP. Buy.com, Newegg, Amazon will have these on sale for less than the $179.

I can see where the Beta testers are upset with the price because they have the job of finding all the bugs and have to pay retail for the box. I would think that Beta testers would get the box for a lesser price than retail?? Just my opinion. I am just glad that a new extender is coming out.

The whole "paid beta" seems new to me, but maybe I just never paid attention to it before. I would expect something more along the lines of "Hey, for $99 you can take part in the limited beta and when things go live, the MSRP is going to be $179"

Either way, I'm curious to see more details. Right now I'm not using WMC extenders. I have a WDTV in the master bedroom and an HTPC in the living room and an HTPC in the basement on the projector. I'd really be interested in the Echo as an extender in the basement on the projector, but my projector is very old and only has VGA in and I think it would be more than safe to say that the Echo won't have VGA out.

+1

Cool concept, I guess that's why we're all here. The never ending battle for the best way not to get off the couch ...

Good point. Thanks. When I'd briefly looked into extenders a while back, I guess I mistakenly thought it was incompatible with Win 7. I see now it should work fine. Off to ebay ...

I've never been in a paid beta either, but then again I've never beta tested hardware. So I think in the case of hardware (in it's finished form), it makes sense. It's not like these are development units and will be returned to Ceton. I think everyone who has something to say about it being "a paid beta" is thinking about this from a software standpoint.

For all the people that got chosen for the beta testing, and think the $179 is too much, there are probably many more who weren't chosen who would pay to take their places. You're really getting early access to buying the device, and beta testing the software on it - well that's my guess, based on how they said they will update the software to the official release and your warranty will start at that time too.

I would pick $100 Xbox if I don't have any at home because I play Xbox live games too. Ripping and streaming movies is not my thing. I prefer play BD discs in my BD players and once I watched, I move on to other discs (that's why I only rent instead of owning BD discs). I rarely ever re-watch the movie again. So for me, achiving and streaming movies are a waste of time.

We just have to accept the fact that not everyone have the same perferences and requirements. For my bedroom, I maybe tempted to buy a $150 version of the Echo (street price after the release). But still I'm not interested in movie archiving. That's why I have BD players attached to every TV in the house.