Ceton Q DVR-HTPC Info Thread

Question 1. Will the "Q" support the use of external tuners through USB?

My cable system has a mix of Analog, encrypted Digital, encrypted HD and clearQAM HD. The infinitv I know can handle the all the digital and HD signals but I will need to add an Analog tuner.

There already is an "official" thread:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1386351

Might want to re-read the original post in your link...and see who posted it too.

oh, got it.

I have some questions...

1) Will this be able to record analog cable channels? Or is it digital only? By MSO still has a handful of channels that are only available via analog so, unfortunately, analog is still a requirement for me.

2) Will there be a way to transfer the recorded WTV files from the Q to a PC? Even if it's just a simple network share of the recordings folder? I work for VideoReDo, a PC based video editor that can work with WTV files. If this Q can actually transfer the WTV files over to a PC then it could become a very popular option among our users, a lot of whom already use your PCI cards on home brew HTPCs.

Dan

According to this FAQ, they don't support analog. Which makes sense, because it uses Cablecard and that's all digital. This box will use the InfiniTV 6-tuner card internally and the FAQ should apply. But if it's stock WMC with their plugins, USB tuners may also be supported if you want analog. It's got USB ports.

I can't see why it wouldn't have a share feature for transfer, it's just a SFF WMC PC after all. I'd be shocked if it didn't.

Just speculation, of course.

I'll be curious to see what the main diffs are for WMC Embedded vs. WMC running on a stock Win7 install.

One is an appliance and one is a full fledged PC. You get limited options with embedded. Ceton doesn't want you calling their support line when some random program you installed doesn't work or a setting in the control panel you changed broke something else.

That's obvious, but I was talking about features not support.

I was pleased as punch to hear it has an eSATA port for increasing storage. However, I'd like to hear it can work with Windows Home Server for archiving recorded content.

How does Windows 7 Embedded handle the inevitable security updates for the OS? Will the Q just install all updates automatically?

There are a few update mechanisms available for Windows Embedded, but it will be (relatively) transparent to the user, in a similar method to other DVRs.

Will the Q need 2 actual cable cards or just one cable card to feed all 6 tuners? I am very excited about what they are building here, but if we could get all 6 tuners with one cable cards, we could save the additional card rental fee per month. Thanks for answering questions, Eric!

It will need just one CableCard to handle all six streams coming into the infiniTVs six tuners, but you'll need two Cisco Tuning Adapters if you have a cable operator the uses SDV.

Embedded is highly customizable. You can have as little or all the way to a full blown Windows 7 system. I think that we will have little to no access to the underlying platform. It's basically a closed box, but they really haven't specified a feature set for the platform yet. It would be really nice if they develop a plug in architecture so developers can write plug-ins that you can download from an app store, and they would automatically install themselves just like iOS apps do.

I know some people have suggested the ability to install additional tuners such as ATSC tuners. Personally I don't see that happening from a support standpoint, and it also might not be possible given what they have removed from the platform. There may be dependencies that a driver may rely on that are outside of the scope of the platform they are creating. I don't think they are going to want third party hardware other then an addtional hard drive or tuning adapters for SDV attached to the box.

This is going to be a tightly controlled environment with very limited expansion options. I have an HTPC with an InfiniTV 4 installed that works well, but I don't want a PC in my living room along with the hassle of maintaining it. If I had the ability to download plug-ins from an app store such as MyMovies or Media Browser, that would be great. I don't use extenders because an xbox can't play DVD or Blu-ray 1:1 folder rips. If the Echo extender can support that, I would dump my HTPC and buy a Q and a couple of Echo extenders.

They have stated that they want to bring on addtional content partners, and what that means I really don't know. If they can come in at a decent price point with some decent marketing, this will be a big win for for all of us regardless if we can tinker with the box or not. The Q and Echo could very well give Tivo a run for it's money. It will be interesting to see how this box develops.

This is incorrect. Unlike competing products, we only require one TA (and one CableCARD) for our 6-tuner unit.

I was under the assumtption that the TA would only support 4 tuners like the current Cisco TA now does. My question now is will there be a firmware upgrade to the TA to support 6 tuners, or does the firmware already support this? Now I'm confused can you please clarify?

The current firmware for both Cisco and Motorola TAs both support 6 tuners.

One thing I would love Ceton to develop is a program similar to KMTTG for the TiVo Premiere.

KMTTG took the framework TiVo added to support the iPad app and added it to a desktop app. This way from any PC in my house I can add, modify or remove season passes, make a backup of my season passes, change priorities, and various other options.

This is one thing I have never been able to get used to with Media Center. I forget to add shows because I usually modify my TiVos remotely while watching a recording. I have tried Show Analyzer and concurrent sessions but it just doesn't come close.

Hopefully Microsoft also addresses the conflict management bug in embedded. If you have too many conflicts in a single timeslot, which yes with 6 tuners it is still possible, the conflict screen crashes Media Center if you try to fix or move anything.

Why not just wait for an enthusiast to develop that? I rather have Ceton focus on the product, not some enthusiast add on that applies to the .0001%.

I assume that this will be included in all of the mobile apps their including.

Because there has yet to be any sort of development for Media Center that does this and I didn't know if it was more of an option with Embedded. Also at least in the Engadget interview they mentioned they were developing apps similar to what the TiVo iPad app does. Since they are already adding some of this functionality, I figured I would throw it out there.

From everything I have read Media Center doesn't allow you to offload your series recording list. Media Center is painful when it comes to shifting series around in the priority screen and anything that can be done to improve that would be nice.

Does anyone know if it will record OTA?

If the InfiniTV 6 card they'll be using has the same features as the InfiniTV 4 card that many of us already have, the internal tuner won't record OTA. So it will come down to whether they support the use of external USB or network tuners, and it sounds like they haven't really decided on that yet.

I sure hope they allow the use of OTA via internal or external tuners. It will be a useless brick otherwise.

I am hoping/praying that the Q will be able to access networked storage? (for backups, etc.) I don't really want to hang another drive off the eSATA port, while I have 10TB of redundant storage on my WHS, sitting on GigE.

I'm thinking it will, since it's 7 Embedded and since there are images of the standard WMC interface that show movies. Now, exactly what formats they will support is another question entirely! Oh please oh please oh please oh please support BDMV with full menu support...

It would be very silly for it not to do so.

Lots of people are hoping this is a HTPC. I hope it isn't. OTA tuners, network storage? If you want all that continue to use your HTPC. This thing needs to be simple and rock solid. I hope it doesn't have all that crap. Network storage would be awesome though...