Just got an email from Ceton with a new estimated ship date.  May 31st.

here is the email incase your not signed up for updates 

As you know, we’ve been hard at work for many months developing our quad-tuner digital cable product and today we want to give you an update on where things stand.  To be frank, it’s a good news/bad news situation, but we’d rather be up front with our customers and fans as opposed to trying to sugarcoat things. 

First, let’s get the bad news out of the way so we can focus on the good stuff.  The Ceton quad-tuner card will unfortunately not ship on March 31 as we had planned.  The new ship date is May 31, 2010.  We know this isn’t welcome news, and trust us that no one is more disappointed in the delay than we are, but our #1 objective is to ship a great product and if that means taking some extra time to do that then we believe that’s the right decision for everyone.

Why the delay?  There isn’t any single reason, or any major “show stoppers”, for why it’s taking us a bit longer than planned.  It just boils down to a handful of small issues that are typical in new product development and that collectively add up.  We’ve developed a first-of-its-kind product and that means we’re forging new ground in several areas, which always makes things a bit harder to plan for.

How confident are you in the May 31 date?  We’re highly confident we’ll be able to ship units to end users on May 31.  R&D is finished, testing has been going very well, and we’re about to kick off our first production run of final, finished product units.

How come you’re telling us now instead of earlier?  We’ve known for a little while now that we’d miss the March 31 date but wanted to make sure that when we gave you a new date we had a high degree of confidence in it.  We have that confidence today. 

So what’s the good news?  Well, glad you asked!  We have a couple of exciting things we want to share with you today.

The New Name!  As you know in December we launched a “Name the Product” contest on The Green Button to harness the collective energy and brainpower of the Media Center Community in helping us come up with a name for our line of digital cable TV tuners.  We thought the contest would be popular but were frankly blown away by the results.  Hundreds of people submitted more than 1,000 names!  In fact the response was so great we decided that instead of just one winner we’d have three!

So without further ado … InfiniTV is the new family name for our line of digital cable tuner products.  InfiniTV 4 is the name of the 4-tuner PCIe card coming out May 31.  We won’t go into all the reasons we chose InfiniTV over the other options, but in the end we felt it best reflected the aspirations we have for the product line, it spoke to opening up new capabilities for TV on the PC, and it meshed very well with our “Live without Limits" philosophy. 

Who are the naming contest winners?  Congratulations to Gary Petro who submitted InfiniTV!  You will be receiving a free Ceton InfiniTV 4 hot off the first production run!

The second category we decided to award was for most submissions.  In addition to the sheer number of people who submitted a name, a handful of people submitted 10 names or more, including one person who submitted 23, one who submitted 32, and one who submitted 47 names.  But one particularly avid fan submitted a whopping 94 names!  And these were good names that he’d obviously put some thought to.  A couple of his ideas even made it into our list of finalists.  So, the winner of the award for the most submissions is Russ Sanchez!  Congratulations Russ, you too will receive a brand new Ceton InfiniTV 4 in May!

Reading through the list of ideas, we found ourselves chuckling at a number of the names.  Some were incredibly creative, some were just downright bizarre, and some made us laugh out loud.  Multiple people thought we should name the cards after the 3 Stooges.  One person thought we should name them after “Media Center nerds with blogs”, and specifically listed Chris (2-tuner), Ian (4-tuner) and Ben (6-tuner).  But in the end, the entry that made us laugh the most was:

                Product Family Name:   Wicked

o   2-tuner card name:     Super

o   4-tuner card name:     Super Duper

o   6-tuner card name:     Super Duper Alley Ooper

Congratulations Charles Fraser, you too will be getting a free InfiniTV 4 in May!  We debated this one a bit but Charles submitted some serious names as well so we decided it was ok to reward his creativity and his sense of humor!

But wait, there’s more … the even better news.  We know you guys are very eager to get your hands on the first units that come off the production line so we’re launching an InfiniTV 4 Pre-Order Program effective today on Zones.com!  What this means is that you can go to the link below and place your order today and you will be guaranteed to receive a unit from the first production run when they ship on May 31.  You’ll need to enter all the typical order information to qualify -- including name, address and credit card number -- however your credit card will not be charged until the unit ships in May.  You might not be familiar with Zones, but they’re a big online retailer that does a lot of business with large corporate customers as well as consumers. 

Unfortunately, the pricing shown on Zones.com when it went live today (March 13) was incorrect.  Zones is working to fix that now.  Rest assured that the price remains $399, as we’ve said all along.  If you go to Zones.com and see $478.99 that is incorrect and is not what you will be charged in May when the unit ships.  We’re very sorry about the confusion and frustration that might have caused.

The InfiniTV 4 Pre-Order Program will only be available on Zones.com.  The program won’t be available forever and initial quantities will be limited, so make sure you get your order in today! 

Order Today

Let’s talk about the fan.  In the category of more good news, you’ll be happy to know the fan has been eliminated from the InfiniTV 4.  How you ask?  Well, it boiled down to some smart engineering that included power management which reduced the overall power requirements, the end result being no fan required!   Also, temperature sensor data will now be accessible via the card’s admin page for the super geeks in the audience!

Can you clarify the issue with tuner sharing?  We’ve seen some confusion and incorrect information online about network tuning and tuner sharing and we want to set the record straight so there’s no confusion. The Ceton InfiniTV 4 can utilize the network bridging capabilities in Windows 7 to expose the tuners to other PCs on your network. However, tuner sharing is actually not an allowed feature per the OCUR specification, which is required in order to be CableCARD-compatible.  InfiniTV 4 can be used over a network with network bridging but in order to be compliant with the OCUR specification, all 4 tuners must be connected to the same PC.  So, for example, you cannot use 2 of the InfiniTV 4 tuners on System A and the other 2 tuners on System B.  By the way, this applies to any OCUR product and not just InfiniTV 4, regardless of whether or not network bridging is used or the device has Ethernet integrated.

In summary.  So that’s the latest and greatest from Ceton.  Like you, we’re very disappointed about the change in ship dates for InfiniTV 4 but we’re glad it’s a relatively short delay in the world of technology.  We’re really excited about the new name and our naming contest winners.  We are thrilled to launch the Pre-Order Program today (even with its hiccups).  And we’re pretty darn pleased that we‘re able to eliminate the fan from the final version of the product and maintain our quality standards.

Thanks for your continued interest in Ceton and InfiniTV.  Thanks for your enthusiasm and support.  And thanks for your patience as we get InfiniTV out the door!

Cheers,

The Ceton Team

Just preordered one

 Any chance that other companies will be selling these? And, any chance of some of these companies discounting them a bit?  I'm cheap but I'll pay $399 if I have to.

 Same email sent to me earlier...this sucks....I hope they make the May 31 deadline.

Strange...  I signed up on teh Ceton Buy Page for notification but did not get the email.  Glad I saw it here.  I am now in for a pre-order and would not have known I could opre-order without this post.

The link in the email did not bring me to the Ceton Pre-order page on Zone either.  When I hit the back button on explorer to get the link again from this thread, I magicly got to the Ceton Pre-Order page.

When ordering with Amex, there is a strange Amex Ref Number box to fill in.  I left it blank.  After submitting myt pre-order it brought me back to the main Zone site with no confirmation that my pre order was accepted.  Fortunately I did create an accound aand was able to log in and find my pre-order.

I am not sure that we would see a discount at this time or in May but I am sure if I did not do this pre-order I would have been able to get the card with free shipping and no tax from Amazon or some other vendor.  I guess it is worth the price of Tax and Shipping to show my support of this product with a pre-order.

Annoying that zones is the only with the pre-order. Tax AND $12 shipping? Where's it shipping from, Hong Kong?

 I just posted some info in another TGB thread that answers your questions.

Ed

Ceton Corp.

The change is ship date is dissapointing but not being able to share it over my network is really dissapointing.  Of course realizing that this has more to do with red tape then Ceton.  Regardless i'm going to have to seriously think about this one. Such a long time comming, this is a real let down....

I didn't see the email in my inbox as well but did find it in my junk mail.  Again, thanks for the post as I probably would not have seen the email either.  Bummer on the delay but great to see it without a fan.

I'm curious to know about people's opinions about purchasing this product versus waiting for AT&T U-Verse running Microsoft Mediaroom 2.0 which will let us run Live TV from either a Windows 7 PC or Xbox 360 without the need for a TV Tuner.

TWMediaCenter

I'm curious to know about people's opinions about purchasing this product versus waiting for AT&T U-Verse running Microsoft Mediaroom 2.0 which will let us run Live TV from either a Windows 7 PC or Xbox 360 without the need for a TV Tuner.

U-Verse isn't available here (and it's AT&T phone service) so it's not a consideration. But have you seen any date at all on this? It's a big move for AT&T and although MS said it's going to happen, I haven't seen any date and it's going to take a system update to get it working. Also don't know what the DRM restrictions will be on this delivery system vs. what's available via cable.

Keep hoping that Verizon can make inroads into AT&T territory and start offering FIOS here.

John

At&t has announced that it will be offering its U-Verse service via the Xbox by the end of this year with no announcement yet via the PC.  I would assume that would be from the upgrade to the 2.0 platform now available from Microsoft. 

http://www.microsoft.com/Mediaroom/News/Blog.aspx

I don't believe FIOS is running the Mediaroom software.

TWMediaCenter

I don't believe FIOS is running the Mediaroom software.

FiOS does not run MediaRoom - Mediaroom is an IPTV solution and FiOS is traditional cable.  FiOS will work with CableCARD-based tuners, like the Ceton card.

Disappointed. This is being pushed back to may 31st. Truth be told probably August 31st 2010.

Wait for this weeks show on the Engaget HD Podcast. Jeremy is a guest and goes through the problems that led to the delay and how they feel about the new date (and what padding may be in place to get it ready). If everything goes well (does it ever?) they might beat the May 31st day by a few days.

You should also know that the first production run will be for the pre-orders and a few extras, but if you want one of the first run it will likely be sold out. A second run could be anywhere from a month later to your date.

John