Version 2013.122.1356

[Diverge]

Can beta users still get refunds?

Right now I really don't have any faith in ever seeing windows 8 support, and my echo hasn't been used in a while.

http://cetoncorp.com/blog/extended-retu ... eton-echo/

I have emails to EdG (4/30/12) about the echo, my payment request came down 11/2 which I think is pretty late beta unit?

Thanks. I guess I have another month to procrastinate the inevitable.

[RacerXofFL]

Like the 6 paid amazon labels it took me till the deadline to ship. I cant imagine what effort it would take to put it back in this brown beta box 2' from my mouse. Yeah, right there. I figure usps medium flat rate. ugh. guess I'll just wait till its too late.

damn that hipster kids pitch: www.youtu.be/emO0raDp1DE

[Sammy2]

Yeah, I kinda know how you feel. I'm sticking with it bc I do have lotsa faith in these guys, but now that this isn't their forum, I kinda feel free to get something off my chest: CETON CANNOT MAINTAIN A $179 PRICE POINT WHEN AN XBOX IS $199!!!! They best be pushing out something that justifies that price, or bring down to $99 or throw in a Shamwow and Magic Bullet with purchase; SOMETHING. Maybe a coupon off their existing products. SOMETHING! These issues are becoming annoying. My thoughts are if I can play it on Xbox it should play on Echo; NO EXCUSES! I have given up on MKV playback. Telling me to reencode my videos is insulting, and i want my Netflix!!! There, I feel better. I hope they keep up with more firmware release and continue to refine the Echo. They continue to do a great job in my book. And Afterall the Echo is one sexy set-top!

From what I can see the MK808 has related HW at a fraction the cost. I have 3 Xbox360's at this time and I was hoping to leave the Echo powered up all the time to alleviate my time to TV woes the wife complains about. For me its a no brainier, I have a HomeRun Prime for the Ethernet standpoint. I formerly used a pair of HD-PVR's with DTV stb's on usb>serial<usb hooks and channel changes took forever. Back to the Echo's value, 5W and Toslink. (3/4 rooms have 5.1) I was involved way before the android announcement, but still wonder where the html5 support is? I think most of my issues stem from the optical audio link and wish cec were added but none of my sets even support it.

Now that you made me look: 4/30/12 I would have paid them that day for the answer to this question:
Hi RacerX. We haven’t announced specifics like MKV support yet. We will do that of course before people who are selected for the Echo beta gave to commit to participate (e.g. provide their credit card).

The MK808 does not have the same hardware nor the ability to stream Live and Recorded TV especially copy protected content because it doesn't have ethernet or the same software. Even if it did have the same hardware it runs $50 to $60. You are paying for gig ethernet, a better chipset and programming when you get the echo. You are comparing apples to oranges here, so to speak.

They gave the answer to that question many times and it was exactly what you state. Their web site never mentioned mkv support either.

[RacerXofFL]

The MK808 does not have the same hardware nor the ability to stream Live and Recorded TV especially copy protected content because it doesn't have ethernet or the same software. Even if it did have the same hardware it runs $50 to $60. You are paying for gig ethernet, a better chipset and programming when you get the echo. You are comparing apples to oranges here, so to speak.
They gave the answer to that question many times and it was exactly what you state. Their web site never mentioned mkv support either.

http://www.missingremote.com/review/cet ... a-extender

ARM Cortex A9 based Freescale i.MX6 SoC drives the device. Decoding the part number on the chip we know that it is a dual core running at 1GHz and supports an operating temperature range of -40 to 125C. Unfortunately, I was not able to decipher the RAM SKU, so I am not sure how much memory or what type is provided.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/-4T23uYoOcVM/ULgh_ ... x6dual.jpg

MK808:
houses with the improved RK3066 Dual Core for enhanced graphics and gaming, and the Internal Memory storage has increased from 4GB to 8GB. What's more, to make up for UG802's shortcomings of weak Wi-Fi signal reception, it comes with two Wi-Fi antennas.

Fine, goto the Hi802:
http://www.hiapad.com/?p=1939

As a person with 20+ cat5e drops in my house connected to a Dell PC2824 managed switch I can firmly say I also watch my full HD content over my 5G wireless often. Yes, MCE on my laptop so I can watch the HBO's of the world. Anything not requiring cable labs I can watch with VLC on linux etc.

We are only speaking to the premium they are demanding. Yes, GigE (love the no lights mod) and well they somehow became the first MCE extender approved in years. But the Xbox is a more mature platform with well is owned by the guys who have the cable labs bit down. Cons power, boot time.

On the MKV part, we know they never said they never claimed they would be, but if *android* were shipping and I could load MX player and by some stroke of luck the decoders are support this device would all of a sudden ROCK MY WORLD.

[Sammy2]

You are still ignoring the fact that the primary purpose of the echo is to have a DVR device or "whole home" solution for Live and Recorded TV via a PC CableCARD tuner. None of the devices you are comparing to do that. Even the hiapad andriod stick, with the same processor, cannot do that. With the echo the premium cost comes in the form of development time to make that happen. With the $120 premium for each echo you bearly or not even quite cover the cost of one hour of a programmer's time to make that happen. If you want freeware you're not going to get it to work with CableTV content that is marked copy once.

[RacerXofFL]

You are still ignoring the fact that the primary purpose of the echo is to have a DVR device or "whole home" solution for Live and Recorded TV via a PC CableCARD tuner. None of the devices you are comparing to do that. Even the hiapad andriod stick, with the same processor, cannot do that. With the echo the premium cost comes in the form of development time to make that happen. With the $120 premium for each echo you bearly or not even quite cover the cost of one hour of a programmer's time to make that happen. If you want freeware you're not going to get it to work with CableTV content that is marked copy once.

There are plenty of whole home opensource options, and yes MCE Extenders are nice, but what we are discussing is the disgusting performance vs price, when for 20$ more we get the tried and true Xbox360. My 1080 video has NEVER played smoothly. I did some really far stretches of what a user should have to do splitting traffic on interfaces, building vlans, and tweaking every drop of blood I could from my network to get smooth video (none of this was needed on the Xboxes) to no avail.

We are also talking about codec support for NON total home stuff. I REALLY want to redo my daughters media collection. She was given a MCE instance with my movies when she was 2yrs old, Dimension 3000 with a hauppauge back when cable was decrypted. We have the dvd's in my living room but as you know 2yr olds cant be trusted with DVD's 8yrs later and her collection is ~1/2TB (+raid 6 losses) all vob merged and quick stream fixed for maximum xbox support. I want to make then MKV's h.264/ac3 but no love on the Extenders.

[Chuckr53]

I just updated and have a problem that I haven't see previously.

When I fast forward the display freezes at the last frame, while I am in the fast forward mode. Doesn't matter if I'm in x2, x3, or x4 speed. The time bar does show progress and time is incrementing, but I can't see where I am in the video until I go back to normal playback speed.

I usually know better then to update to Beta products...I screwed up and updated one of my Echo's to this firmware, and I'm experiencing the same effect. I should have stayed with the Stable version. Hope they get this fixed soon. Has anyone turned in a ticket to Ceton?

Yes, there's a ticket pending and a number of other people have pointed out the problem. I read somewhere (don't recall which forum) that Ceton will fix this in the next beta.

Right...that's the feedback I got from Ceton on the ticket I submitted. They also gave me instructions on recovery procedure. Once that completed I updated to the latest stable version, and everything is cool again. No more Beta updates for me.