Ceton extender beta shipping in Sept

[davefred99]

I just received my confirmation email that I am have been accepted as a Ceton Beta tester and they will ship me a unit sometime in Sept 2012. I had to agree to pay a fee of $179.00 for the extender and they will update it to the latest firmware when the beta goes public plus extend the warrantee on the unit for one year from the final beta testing.
It looks like I will be putting together a Media Center PC soon with either win7 or Maybe Win 8 not sure.
I will keep my Sage Server active for the duration and then if all goes well play it by ear as to my Sage experience.

I am exited to just be able to get to play with something new and hope that this is the extender we that we all hope it will be. I know I will have to give up some of Sages benefits but honestly I use mostly jut the DVR function and do not archive content for long term anyways.

[stanger89]

Yeah, I've got to decide if I'm going to accept too. Wish I had some idea what the Echo can do and what is or isn't in Sage's future.

[reggie14]

I didn't get an invite.

[PLUCKYHD]

Knowing Ceton and their strive for great products I think it will be nice if you like WMC

[davefred99]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Knowing Ceton and their strive for great products I think it will be nice if you like WMC

My motivation is mostly to eliminate paying the cable company or Verizon in my case any rental fees for inferior DVR & cable boxes . I would much prefer to be free to use any service I choose and WMC/Ceton I believe will do that just fine. I would prefer to see Sage stay active but since there is no evidence that Sage will ever again be a major option I feel I must move on.
With the current prices for used Sage Extenders as they are the Ceton Product seems like a bargain.
Also I have been playing with WMC on my laptop on and off for several months now ever since I got an HDHR-Prime it makes it easy to share tuners across both Sage & WMC. I have actually come to like WMC and feel it will suit me fine for my type of use.

[mr_lore]

How are people having reservations about this!? It costs the same as an xbox, have faith that folks at ceton are smart enough to at least look at one and come up with something slightly better.



From the rumors I recall in the AVS forum thread its going have features:

silent
small
less power
rippped DVD playback
ripped bluray playback
high bitrate mkv playback
an infrared port that works


And maybe apps like netflix but I'm not holding my breath on any DRM stuff.


I threw my credit card at my screen when I got my email.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by mr_lore

How are people having reservations about this!? It costs the same as an xbox, have faith that folks at ceton are smart enough to at least look at one and come up with something slightly better.

Me personally? Because I don't know what it will do. If it doesn't play DVDs and BDs (in some form in their original quality), then it's really of little use to me, and I will have no great desire to give it a chance.

And really that's the crux of my dilemma, they want the beta testers (and I'd want to be, as a beta tester) someone who really wants to use it and to push it, and if it doesn't support DVD/BD, well then I'm just not going to be incentivised to use it and I'll essentially waste a beta slot, and that's no good for anyone.

The only other part of the dilemma is that if SageTV (Google) releases whatever they're working on to the masses and it can replace Sage, I might rather use that.

From the rumors I recall in the AVS forum thread its going have features:

silent
small
less power
rippped DVD playback
ripped bluray playback
high bitrate mkv playback
an infrared port that works

If it does that, then it's a no brainer, I'm in. And I think that's more likely than not, given what the Ceton reps have said, but it would be nice to have some sort of official "expected" feature list prior to signing up for real.

[tmiranda]

No invite for me, just an email telling me the beta program will be happening.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by stanger89

If it does that, then it's a no brainer, I'm in. And I think that's more likely than not, given what the Ceton reps have said, but it would be nice to have some sort of official "expected" feature list prior to signing up for real.

Yeah I am hoping of for the best. Given it isn't a true extender but built on WMC technlogy I am hoping for the best u never know. If it does blur ays and dads natively and can at least bitstream hd audio I am in like a fat man on cake.

[panteragstk]

That would be very tempting if it indeed does everything it's supposed to. If WMC would work with all my tuners and I could get everything displayed the way I want, then this would be a viable alternative.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

No invite for me, just an email telling me the beta program will be happening.

Same here ... Maybe if stanger declines one of use will be his replacement

[reggie14]

For those of you that were invited to participate, was there any restriction on the number of beta units you could purchase? Basically, did it say you can only buy one Echo during the beta?

[mr_lore]

No restriction, just basically an acceptance of the fee type agreement. It didn't mention limits but I assume it would be 1 due to fact that they probably don't have a bunch laying around yet.

[panteragstk]

The real question is what (if any) NDA's apply? Are you guys allowed to share anything with us?

[stanger89]

Nothing I clicked through had any NDA, but I didn't actually accept yet, so I might not have gotten that far.

[panteragstk]

I doubt that it would since it is a beta test, but you never know. Kinda funny that this little extender is so important to a possibly dead platform (not that we have anything to say about that).

I still can't believe that MS has decided (or seems to have) to end development for WMC. Oh well.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I doubt that it would since it is a beta test, but you never know. Kinda funny that this little extender is so important to a possibly dead platform (not that we have anything to say about that).

I still can't believe that MS has decided (or seems to have) to end development for WMC. Oh well.

Any likelihood Ceton may eventually write their own server software? Once they get a decent install base for the hardware extenders, switching everyone to different server software might not be too difficult, especially if that was your only option as a consumer.

[davefred99]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

The real question is what (if any) NDA's apply? Are you guys allowed to share anything with us?

I did not see any NDA when I accepted the offer. I only posted what was publicly noted in there own email anyways.
I think it kinda funny some are already writing the WMC obituary when they will at least have to support it through the life cycle of win8 because it will still be available in that version. I think as the another poster said Ceton may well continue development for quite some time with or without MS support in the future.

[nycjoe]

Originally Posted by davefred99

I did not see any NDA when I accepted the offer. I only posted what was publicly noted in there own email anyways.
I think it kinda funny some are already writing the WMC obituary when they will at least have to support it through the life cycle of win8 because it will still be available in that version. I think as the another poster said Ceton may well continue development for quite some time with or without MS support in the future.

I'm not sure that's accurate - ms has to support it until the EOL for windows 7, but because it's not packaged with windows 8, it might not be tied to it.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by davefred99

I think it kinda funny some are already writing the WMC obituary when they will at least have to support it through the life cycle of win8 because it will still be available in that version. I think as the another poster said Ceton may well continue development for quite some time with or without MS support in the future.

Has MS ever really supported MC? Wasn't it originally an OEM product where you were supposed to call your PC manufacturer, like Dell or HP for support rather than MS?

And how much support have they offered in recent years? In reading some of the reviews of Win8 it seems that they just included the version of MC in Win7 in Win8 without even fixing some fairly obvious bugs.

Here in Canada MS has never supported ATSC and still doesn't even though our broadcasting technology is exactly the same as in the US. They don't support any online content for Canada and they apply DRM measures, like CGMS-A, that supposedly don't exist in Canada which has caused major problems in the past for WinMC users.