Ceton Echo and DTS

[PeteS457]

I have had a Ceton Infinitv4 since they were first released. (Remember the long wait?) I love it and have had very few problems with it. I also have an Xbox 360 extender in a second media room in my home - and while servicable, I have several complaints about it. Anyway, I have been interested in the Echo since it first was released, but I can't bring myself to invest in it when I see all the complaints and (seemingly) broken promises about it. I come back to this forum every couple months to see if things have changed, but alas, it doesn't look like much has changed to me. The obvious question is has Ceton ceased development on the product? Will there be any new firmware releases? Will there be a followup product (the Echo 2)?

Those questions are (I'm sure) beyond the scope of this post. I have decided that if I could get some positive information about DTS, I may bite the bullet and buy one when I see a good price. For years I converted DTS mkvs to DD5.1 so I could listen to 6 channel sound on my Xbox 360 extender. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it. However, as much as I'd like to say I enjoy DD just as well as DTS, well, the fact is, I just don't. So I have been keeping DTS in my most recent mkv containers the past year. If I knew Ceton would keep its promise regarding DTS, I'd seriously consider buying one.

Does anyone have some insight into Ceton's plans with DTS? Do we know if they have ditched the plan and it will never happen?

[IownFIVEechos]

Not gonna happen. Invest in the FireTV that supports DTS I think, or wait for the AndroidTV (that I imagine will have it too). The echo is old news. The sad thing about the echo (among many other things) is that they promised DTS hands down. Even going as far as saying they partnered and licensed DTS. That at the time was a selling point I bought into.

[IownFIVEechos]

This is a good read. All the promises. Even says they would support HTML5. Boy those were the days. I was just a little boy back then.

http://cetoncorp.com/blog/more-details-on-ceton-echo/

"Netflix, Hulu, etc.
Most of the major streaming media sites are moving to HTML5. As those services become available in HTML5 you’ll be able to use them with an Echo. At launch we do not expect you’ll be able to use the Echo with Netflix, which a lot of people have asked about specifically."

"DTS Support
Currently the Echo does not support DTS and is not expected to support it at launch. We hope to add DTS support in the future but we can’t say yet when that will be. "

[IownFIVEechos]

Ahh this article was the icing on the cake when I made my purchase.


http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/16/ceto ... t-to-supp/

[Bill]

They won't tell you it's dead, but it's dead. Get an echo for live/recorded tv and a fire for netflix/prime/plex. There's no new firmware and no new features, but if you're patient you can find them for $99.

[slowbiscuit]

With ServerWMC and the Fire XBMC code, why do you still need an Echo? Who cares about live TV and if you're that desperate for it you can stream it directly from a Prime tuner. Or just get an Xbox360.

[IownFIVEechos]

With ServerWMC and the Fire XBMC code, why do you still need an Echo? Who cares about live TV and if you're that desperate for it you can stream it directly from a Prime tuner. Or just get an Xbox360.

Are you running this combination? And if so is it reliable and smooth? My small amount of experience with ServerWMC and MB3 was bad news. And the OP wants DTS. As I research the FireTV it sounds like even that is not giving the users the true DTS experience. I see PLEX on Roku can pass the DTS raw but I am no expert on audio (or anything else). But please share your ServerWMC experience.

[RyC]

There's still no recording or playback of copy-once channels on anything ServerWMC based. And not every device is capable of streaming those from the Prime either. Just get an Xbox.

[IownFIVEechos]

There's still no recording or playback of copy-once channels on anything ServerWMC based. And not every device is capable of streaming those from the Prime either. Just get an Xbox.

The OP has an xbox, he says the audio is not DTS.

[Crash2009]

Get a new amp.

[IownFIVEechos]

Perhaps this old topic will help, I did not read it all.

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=8&t=1701

[RyC]

There's still no recording or playback of copy-once channels on anything ServerWMC based. And not every device is capable of streaming those from the Prime either. Just get an Xbox.

The OP has an xbox, he says the audio is not DTS.

I was directing my post more to using ServerWMC, should have quoted sorry

[slowbiscuit]

Get a new amp.

Exactly, the Xbox supposedly does DTS passthrough, but my guess is that he needs to re-container his mkv's to something the Xbox supports natively (m2ts?) for it to work.

http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-360/ ... o-settings

[cncb]

This is the first I've heard of DTS support on the Xbox, but I tried an M2TS with plain DTS audio and it doesn't pass through HDMI at least when watching through the WMC interface.

[PeteS457]

Get a new amp.

Exactly, the Xbox supposedly does DTS passthrough, but my guess is that he needs to re-container his mkv's to something the Xbox supports natively (m2ts?) for it to work.

http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-360/ ... o-settings

Wow...could Microsoft be more confusing? The Microsoft support link above indeed says that the Xbox 360 supports "playback of DTS (Digital Theatre Surround) 5.1 media (such as movies) by passing the encoded DTS digital bitstream to an external DTS decoder". I can't remember ever seeing that before. And yet further down in the same article, it says you configure the Audio of the Xbox 360 by selecting either "Digital Stereo", "Dolby Digital 5.1", or "Dolby Digital with WMA Pro". (So what do you select for DTS?) Anyway, I've been researching the issue for years and I've never seen anyone confirm that they can play any supported container containing DTS on an Xbox 360 as an extender and have it play as 5.1 DTS. The DTS on the extender is converted by the Xbox 360 to 2 channel PCM. So it plays as stereo, but not as 5.1.