Ceton extender beta shipping in Sept

[KryptoNyte]

If this is a brand new device, for $180, what exactly are the advantages of buying this device as opposed to an Xbox 360 for roughly similar cost? Does the Ceton extender not depend on WMC for it's DRM fed content?

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

If this is a brand new device, for $180, what exactly are the advantages of buying this device as opposed to an Xbox 360 for roughly similar cost? Does the Ceton extender not depend on WMC for it's DRM fed content?

The hope is that this will have better media support than the Xbox. Notably, many of us are looking for some sort of ripped blu-ray support.

[reggie14]

For those of you not following the AVS or GreenButton threads:

Originally Posted by Ceton

[...]
Progress on the Ceton Echo is going quite well. The hardware is done and has passed the required FCC and CE certifications. We’ve built the first batch of devices and have started alpha testing them. Yes, a bunch of us at Ceton are now running Echos as extenders at home! While the hardware is done, we still have a bit more work to do on the software before we will begin the beta. Things are looking good to start sending out beta units the first week in October, which leaves us on target to release the Echo in November, in time for the holiday shopping season as promised. If you’ve been selected for the beta, keep an eye out for email from us toward the end of September with information on how to order your beta unit.

We’ll send an update with the final Ceton Echo version 1 technical specs as well as an update on the Ceton Q at the end of this month, before the Echo beta ordering process starts.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but they seem to be running into some difficulties. Ceton folks originally suggested we'd hear about Ceton capabilities in May, then July, then early September, and now late September. In general, they don't appear to be too far behind schedule- they were originally planning a September beta launch, and they still expect be selling the Echo in November.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by reggie14

... Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but they seem to be running into some difficulties. Ceton folks originally suggested we'd hear about Ceton capabilities in May, then July, then early September, and now late September. In general, they don't appear to be too far behind schedule- they were originally planning a September beta launch, and they still expect be selling the Echo in November.

I don't think your reading in to this too much, I am very leary about the first run hardware as well. I think the beta period is going to only be a 2-3 weeks for us and I don't think that is long enough to iron this out. It will most likely have a lot of updaes when released in Dec. JMO.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Ceton folks originally suggested we'd hear about Ceton capabilities in May, then July, then early September, and now late September.

This is incredibly annoying. "We'll have more information on this date" and the more information always seems to be a new date when there will be more "information". It doesn't give me a lot of faith in their product if at this point they still don't know the specs but we will see at the end of this month (maybe)....

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by cncb

This is incredibly annoying.

I pointed this out on AVS, but this is exactly the reason why companies (like Google, or SageTV) never tell the public anything about their future plans. Plan's change, but the public treats every forecast/guess/plan as a "promise" and has a fit whenever plans change.

It doesn't give me a lot of faith in their product if at this point they still don't know the specs but we will see at the end of this month (maybe)....

I'm sure they know the specs, at least for the most part (you don't go into something like this without having design goals/requirements up front), but they're not going to commit to anything publicly (as I noted above, anything they tell the public is treated as a "promise" or commitment regardless of how much they say it's subject to change) until it's actually "done" so as to avoid the Internets going into a tizzy if they either can't make something they planned to work, or end up prohibited from doing something for legal or political reasons.

For all we know the boxes could have been done (and under NDA-protected beta test) for months and they could just be fighting the legal/political fight to get all the features implemented, or they could just as easily be running into technical challenges. Maybe they're trying to get MS to fix/implement something... Who knows.

[darcilicious]

I'm currently participating in one beta program that has slipped nearly 4 months; and another that is already about two weeks behind the initial start date.

It's the nature of the beast.

Grab a beer and watch a game

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stanger89

For all we know the boxes could have been done (and under NDA-protected beta test) for months and they could just be fighting the legal/political fight to get all the features implemented, or they could just as easily be running into technical challenges. Maybe they're trying to get MS to fix/implement something... Who knows.

Well, right, one of those is exactly what it sounds like is going on. They said in the announcement that Ceton employees are alpha testing. But it seems like those are all roughly equally bad scenarios. Honestly, I'd probably feel better about the whole thing if they were running into manufacturing issues. That would simply be a matter of time. Legal/technical issues aren't necessarily solvable by Ceton.

Part of me sort of suspects that the issue is something completely new. I'm fairly confident they'll get high-bitrate H.264 playback in MKV containers working (though far less confident about HBR audio). The problem with the Xbox appears to be a hardware limitation of the Xbox, not a WMC limitation. So, I'm not too worried about that. So, I kind of wonder if they're trying to get Netflix on it.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by reggie14

The problem with the Xbox appears to be a hardware limitation of the Xbox, not a WMC limitation.

But it can't be, people seem to forget the Xbox could play HD DVDs, and that HD DVD had essentially the same codec requirements of BD, decoding TrueHD (to stereo) was even part of baseline HD DVD requirements. It looks like the Xbox runs in to trouble with H.264 above 10 or 20Mbps, but the HD DVD spec allowed up to ~30Mbps H.264, so there's some artificial limitation going on with the Xbox and H.264, not the hardware.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by stanger89

But it can't be, people seem to forget the Xbox could play HD DVDs, and that HD DVD had essentially the same codec requirements of BD, decoding TrueHD (to stereo) was even part of baseline HD DVD requirements. It looks like the Xbox runs in to trouble with H.264 above 10 or 20Mbps, but the HD DVD spec allowed up to ~30Mbps H.264, so there's some artificial limitation going on with the Xbox and H.264, not the hardware.

Is it possible that the networking on the XBox360 just sucks? In these days of 10GbE, it is easy to forget that embedded "utility" 100Mb/s NICs with no offloads can suck down CPU cycles like there is no tomorrow, especially when the CPU is an embedded CPU, which is "weak" for general purpose networking. For example, running a network benchmark into my HD300 sucks down about 70% CPU at 94Mb/s. An x86 based machine, even an atom like the echo is supposedly based on, is barely ticking over at that rate.

Drew

[stanger89]

The 360's got a 3 core, SMT-capable (6 threads, 2/core), 3.2GHz, IBM PowerPC chip, I'd be very surprised if the network stack is so bad that that can't handle ~50Mbps streaming.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by stanger89

The 360's got a 3 core, SMT-capable (6 threads, 2/core), 3.2GHz, IBM PowerPC chip, I'd be very surprised if the network stack is so bad that that can't handle ~50Mbps streaming.

Its not like it is a real G5, it is a cell, which reportedly sucks for nearly everything but FP math, which is the heart of a game console's job. Eg, in-order execution, terrible branch prediction, small caches). I managed to find the linux driver for the nic chip (linux-2.6.21-xenon-enet.diff), but it is hard to tell much, since it is obviously reverse engineered. It at least appears to support DMA, which is better than I'd feared

Anyway, I'd still be much, much more inclined to believe the BD rip bitrate issue is not a WMC limitation, just an Xbox limit and that Ceton will "get it right". Eg, there is some decoding being done (poorly) in software that just barely has enough CPU power to work when content is efficiently read from a disc, but which fails when content is inefficiently read from the net. (straw, meet camel's back).

I'm a linux guy, but I'm still rooting for Ceton. If their stuff works with a generic Win7 MC, I will probably buy echos and run Win7MC in a VM.

Drew

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by drewg

Is it possible that the networking on the XBox360 just sucks? In these days of 10GbE, it is easy to forget that embedded "utility" 100Mb/s NICs with no offloads can suck down CPU cycles like there is no tomorrow, especially when the CPU is an embedded CPU, which is "weak" for general purpose networking. For example, running a network benchmark into my HD300 sucks down about 70% CPU at 94Mb/s. An x86 based machine, even an atom like the echo is supposedly based on, is barely ticking over at that rate.

Drew

That's funny, I would have to agree with the stament "Is it possible that the networking on the XBox360 just sucks?", because it definetly does.

One of the non approved MS fixes for the "Network Issues" problem is to turn off offloading. When I did that, among some other things like checksum on rcv only, on the WMC side, these "Network Issues" cleard up.

I will probably buy echos and run Win7MC in a VM.

Works quite well for live tv and the 360 right now for me. The Echo is the next step.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by drewg

Its not like it is a real G5, it is a cell, which reportedly sucks for nearly everything but FP math, which is the heart of a game console's job. Eg, in-order execution, terrible branch prediction, small caches). I managed to find the linux driver for the nic chip (linux-2.6.21-xenon-enet.diff), but it is hard to tell much, since it is obviously reverse engineered. It at least appears to support DMA, which is better than I'd feared

Right, but my point was it's way more powerful than the what 500MHz single core MIPS cpu in the HDxxxs, so if an HDxxx can handle Blu-ray bitrates, the 360 should have no trouble at least passing that data, and decoding should be fine too since it was certified for HD DVD.

Anyway, I'd still be much, much more inclined to believe the BD rip bitrate issue is not a WMC limitation, just an Xbox limit and that Ceton will "get it right".

Oh, my guess is it's a software problem on the 360's part, it would be harder (in my estimation) to build a protocol that limits video bitrate than one that doesn't.

My "fear" regarding the protocol is more on the handshaking end. I think it's very possible that there is handshaking logic between extenders and WMC indicating their capabilities, and that that handshaking doesn't support TrueHD or DTS-HD, or PCM audio for example.

I don't really know how much handshaking/format-support logic is in the extender protocol, so that's really the big potential roadblock I see. I hope the extender protocol is more robust (or less such that it's not an issue) than that.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by stanger89

... Oh, my guess is it's a software problem on the 360's part, it would be harder (in my estimation) to build a protocol that limits video bitrate than one that doesn't.

My "fear" regarding the protocol is more on the handshaking end. I think it's very possible that there is handshaking logic between extenders and WMC indicating their capabilities, and that that handshaking doesn't support TrueHD or DTS-HD, or PCM audio for example.
...

You quite right, ther eis a handshaking protocol which define's it's capabilities.

I use VMC tcp/ip controller for windows MC found here:
http://vmccontroller.codeplex.com/

there are commands to bring back the capabilities of what is being connected. some of the returned attributes are:

DirectX=True
Audio=True
IntensiveRendering=True
Console=True

Based on that I would have to conclude the actual protocol uses alot more then that. I can only see in the codedplex source some of the attribute looked at.

So the good news would be that the Echo could return what it actually supports. Just a guess though.

[stanger89]

Well, I did find this:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...ia_types__auww

Some third-party Extender devices may support additional media types...

So it sounds like extenders can do stuff more than what MS "supports".

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by stanger89

... So it sounds like extenders can do stuff more than what MS "supports".

Exactly, which is the basis for some of my other post here and else where.
But as far as the protocol goes, the connection query, it is possible that the Echo could do more then the xbox 360. And as you state, the 360 is most likely more powerful then MS will report it to be when connecting to 7MC.

EDIT: Nice find on the support info BTW

[drewg]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

Exactly, which is the basis for some of my other post here and else where.
But as far as the protocol goes, the connection query, it is possible that the Echo could do more then the xbox 360.

Pie in the sky, but...

It seems like the way to do it is to just ignore the WMC protocol as much as possible. Eg, you have a WMC server extension or even external daemon that serves all the newer media types (high bit rate MP4, MKV, BD / DVD folder rips, etc). Then your extender contacts the main WMC server for DRM stuff, like recorded TV, but uses a side channel outside the WMC protocol for the newer media types. Eg, like a combined WMC and UPNP. The extension could put a button on the GUI ("My media") that, when pressed on the extender, could activate the side channel. The side channel replicates the WMC gui, so it looks seamless to the user.

Damn.. I should patent that

Drew

[stanger89]

I've thought the same thing, you could essentially make a media "app" and launch into that from WMC and then support whatever you want. That said, I hope they can get something approximating BD working "within" WMC/extender because then we can use something like MyMovies (or maybe MediaBrowser, though I was not thrilled with it's metadata functionality, or lack thereof), where as if they go the outside WMC route, we'd be "stuck" with whatever they come up with.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by drewg

Pie in the sky, but... ...

Not exactly, If the Echo reports that it's capabilities support extended audio or video then it's done. And as Stager has stated we then have the capabilities of MyMovies and the like. While your idea is not a bad one, it would require greater support on Ceton's part.

IIRC, Ceton states somewhere that if you use thier Q, you would have greater capabilities then standard 7MC. Maybe this is what they are refering to?