Ceton extender beta shipping in Sept

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

It sounds as if the SOC they used is very similar to Tegra 2 and the other basic A9 SOC's from other vendors. The exception seems to be the GPU.

Right. That's why I hypothesized that the reason they went with the i.MX6 over a Tegra2 was because they didn't need to GPU in the Tegra2 (making an implicit assumption that the i.MX6 GPU isn't as fast as those used in Tegra2 SOCs).

It's also possible the Tegra2's GPU doesn't have the video decoding capabilities they wanted and a quad-core Tegra3 would be overkill.

I just don't see what was/is so special about the i.MX6 that Ceton would choose to go with a chip that basically wasn't available until the Echo's release date, versus an existing ARM SoC.

Originally Posted by MattHelm

On the GPU, from what I read, they are using a Vivante core or 3, depending on which i.MX 6 chip they are using. This should be a reasonably mature GPU.

I couldn't find any decent information about the GPU in the i.MX6. I'd be curious to know what its capable of decoding. Ceton hasn't said much about that.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I couldn't find any decent information about the GPU in the i.MX6. I'd be curious to know what its capable of decoding. Ceton hasn't said much about that.

I think the VPU is responsible for decoding video. The GPU is responsible for rendering the UI.

I wasn't able to find much detail on the VPU's capability on Freescale's site, just really general stuff.

[stanger89]

Personally, if I were going overkill on the SOC for a media player/extender, I'd have gone with the Sigma 8910

It's got 3D support (including MVC), tons of format support, better performance than the HDxxx SOCs, oh, and a VXP video processor (which is what the Lumagen Radiance has (and my Planar 8150 and AVM50V), though I'm sure the Radiance's is better).

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Economies of scale is an important concept to keep in mind in any discussion around BOM and component selection.

Another important aspect of any comparison is digesting the intended use case and requirements of the items being compared. In this case the pool is fallacious because even though they look similar, the what-it-needs-to-do is too different to make it valid.

Then let's do a direct comparison to the HD300 by Sage shall we? Sage charged $150 for the HD300 and you can't tell me they expected to sell a ton more than Ceton was expecting to sell of their Echos (so there is no economies of scale at play here)? Further, Sage had a stand alone mode (much like booting to Android that Ceton is trying to do now) and had an extender mode. HD300 could do this with components that are now what 3 years old? And at 1080P....

So now tell me where I have gone wrong? I have a hard time believing that MCX would add so much overhead as to require a more powerful SOC than what was in the HD300 (and even if it required some additional overhead, we are now 3 years down the line and any SOC in the least year would be at least 2x what is in the HD300).

I still maintain that the core functionality of network connected devices are still all roughly the same. They manage a network connection, stream the data to their GPU/VGU, and render GUI elements when necessary. If a $60 device can do it, then why does an almost $200 device struggle to do so?

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Personally, if I were going overkill on the SOC for a media player/extender, I'd have gone with the Sigma 8910

It's got 3D support (including MVC), tons of format support, better performance than the HDxxx SOCs, oh, and a VXP video processor (which is what the Lumagen Radiance has (and my Planar 8150 and AVM50V), though I'm sure the Radiance's is better).

We'd still be waiting for the Echo if they went that way. Last I checked the 8910 was vapor.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Personally, if I were going overkill on the SOC for a media player/extender, I'd have gone with the Sigma 8910

But can you run Android on that? I'm guessing Ceton isn't real comfortable with being reliant on WMC at this point. Running Android opens up some doors for them. In particular, its probably their best bet for getting Netflix support, and maybe Hulu/HBO Go/etc. if they're really lucky.

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Further, Sage had a stand alone mode (much like booting to Android that Ceton is trying to do now) and had an extender mode. HD300 could do this with components that are now what 3 years old?

I hope Ceton has their sights set higher than the standalone mode of the Sage extenders. I found that mode painfully slow.

Originally Posted by paulbeers

So now tell me where I have gone wrong? I have a hard time believing that MCX would add so much overhead as to require a more powerful SOC than what was in the HD300 (and even if it required some additional overhead, we are now 3 years down the line and any SOC in the least year would be at least 2x what is in the HD300).

Presumably not, given that the earlier WMC extenders had less powerful SoCs. I think they were always planning Android support. At least, after they made the change from Atom to ARM.

Originally Posted by babgvant

We'd still be waiting for the Echo if they went that way. Last I checked the 8910 was vapor.

Isn't the Signma 8911 in the PCH A400? Is there much of a difference between that and the 8910?

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Then let's do a direct comparison to the HD300 by Sage shall we? Sage charged $150 for the HD300 and you can't tell me they expected to sell a ton more than Ceton was expecting to sell of their Echos (so there is no economies of scale at play here)?

The SageTV used an off the shelf design for the STP-HD300. Ceton's design is all custom.

There are economies of scale therefore working in SageTV's favor.

Originally Posted by paulbeers

I still maintain that the core functionality of network connected devices are still all roughly the same. They manage a network connection, stream the data to their GPU/VGU, and render GUI elements when necessary. If a $60 device can do it, then why does an almost $200 device struggle to do so?

The i.MX6 should be able to do all of the things we what it to do, it appears that the mistake Ceton made was to choose a brand new SOC with an undeveloped SDK.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Isn't the Signma 8911 in the PCH A400? Is there much of a difference between that and the 8910?

I know they announced it, but I wasn't aware that it was actually shipping.

Ceton made a good choice going for an ARM platform (pretty sure Sigma is MIPS). Even if they got Android on Sigma, they'd have to do something like Intel did for Medfield to make non-JIT apps run.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by babgvant

The i.MX6 should be able to do all of the things we what it to do, it appears that the mistake Ceton made was to choose a brand new SOC with an undeveloped SDK.

Out of curiosity, is the 59.940/23.976 fps timing issue someone brought up over on AVS actually a problem? Someone made a claim that the Echo doesn't include an external HDMI transmitter and won't be able to support those frame rates.

Originally Posted by babgvant

I know they announced it, but I wasn't aware that it was actually shipping.

It's shipping in limited numbers now, but is apparently very, very buggy. So, we probably wouldn't be in better shape anyway if the Echo used that.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Out of curiosity, is the 59.940/23.976 fps timing issue someone brought up over on AVS actually a problem? Someone made a claim that the Echo doesn't include an external HDMI transmitter and won't be able to support those frame rates.

Do you have a link? I'm guessing no, but I'd like to check the context to make sure.

Originally Posted by reggie14

It's shipping in limited numbers now, but is apparently very, very buggy. So, we probably wouldn't be in better shape anyway if the Echo used that.

I'll have to try to get review unit then . Been trying to get something w/ VXP in it for forever. Very interested to see how it stacks up.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Do you have a link? I'm guessing no, but I'd like to check the context to make sure.

Here's the main post.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Here's the main post.

Interesting. I wasn't aware of that, and lack the tools to verify if it is correct. Will do some digging.

Thanks

[panteragstk]

I think going with an ARM based SOC is a great idea. Android and W8 will run on it without issue. They are powerful enough to do just about anything most people would want. If the SDK is that bad though, it's going to make it difficult to get everything running correctly. Hopefully they get this all figured out. A MCX device with the option to run android (provided that they give it a decent custom UI) would be a fantastic media player. Anything WMC doesn't support could be overcome using Plex (or something else). I still think this will be an interesting product

[babgvant]

FYI - Levels issues have been fixed in FW 2012.1206.1720 (pre-beta ATM).

[reggie14]

Still no deinterlacing fix though?

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Still no deinterlacing fix though?

nope, not yet

[cncb]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Interesting. I wasn't aware of that, and lack the tools to verify if it is correct. Will do some digging.

Have you been able to find out if it is true or do you have some means to get Ceton to verify or deny? Thanks.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by cncb

Have you been able to find out if it is true or do you have some means to get Ceton to verify or deny? Thanks.

I did take a look and it's not clear what the actual limitation is.

Not done looking.

[SprDtyF350]

Engadget review

http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/11/c...iew/#continued

[reggie14]

People following the AVS thread know this already, but Ceton and Freescale seemed to have resolved the issues with interlaced video playback. Scaling is still problematic, but Ceton implemented a native resolution switching option. It always deinterlaces interlaced video, but it won't scale it.

I tried it out briefly late last night. Video playback quality is much, much improved. General performance/responsiveness in the menus seems to have improved also.