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We know that you have been eagerly waiting for the first shipment of the Ceton InfiniTV 4 digital cable quad-tuner card and want to update you on where things stand.  Unfortunately, we’re not going to make our planned May 31 ship date as we expected when we announced it in March.  We believe units will ship by the end of June but we don’t yet know for sure.  Rather than waiting, we wanted to let you know what we know at this point.

This is hugely disappointing news.   Trust us, no one is more disappointed than we are.  We’ve been working day and night to meet our May 31 deadline but there are some things that simply are not in our control.

What happened?  As we told you in our last newsletter, development and testing for InfiniTV 4 have gone very well.  In fact, since we last wrote you in March we have received formal notification of InfiniTV 4 CableLabs certification, which was the final critical step on the way to manufacturing and release.  That was a huge milestone, not only for us but also for the industry.  It’s our understanding that InfiniTV 4 is the first multi-tuner PC card to pass certification, the first quad-tuner device of any type to pass certification, the first device ever certified for 1 GHz cable systems, and one of the first Windows 7 devices to pass certification.  That’s quite a list of firsts for a new company like us and something we’re really proud of.  It’s also indicative of the complexity involved in doing something like this for the first time in the industry.

The next step after certification is to get the product manufactured and shipped.  We’ve seen a lot of funny speculation online about how long it takes to get units produced and boxes shipped from our manufacturer overseas.  It’s actually relatively quick and our products do not in fact sit for weeks on cargo ships crossing the ocean while warding off Somali pirates.  The physical production of the units is fast, and we can airship units to the U.S. cost effectively.  So we’re talking days and not weeks from when our manufacturer starts a production run until units are ready to ship from our retail partners in the US.  That wasn’t the issue here. 

The issue was simply parts.  Well, not so simply in fact, as there are more than 1,000 individual parts used in each InfiniTV 4 card.  Unfortunately, the global recession has resulted in manufacturers maintaining low inventory levels of everything, which have resulted in parts shortages across the industry that are affecting everyone from little guys like us to the largest PC and CE OEMs in the world.  In our case it boiled down to not being able to get the right quantity of a couple of critical parts in time to meet our production schedule.  We’ve been scrambling for a couple of weeks to find what we needed but it was obvious this week that it wasn’t going to happen in time for us to meet our May 31 goal, which is why we’re writing you today. 

What’s the new date then? We really hoped that if we had to give you bad news about a delay that we’d be able to give you a new ship date at least.  Unfortunately we can’t do that today as we simply don’t have a solid answer yet.  But we wanted to at least let you know about the May 31 slip, even if we can’t give you a new date. 

How will Pre-Order Program units ship?  Will one retailer get priority over another?  Since we kicked off the InfiniTV 4 pre-order program in March the response has been great and orders have continued to come in at a steady, in fact increasing, pace.  It’s obvious that there is a ton of pent up demand for a solution like this and we hope to be able to fulfill all the pre-order program orders at the same time.  But, depending on how the parts situation evolves and how many units we are able to manufacture at a time, it is possible that we’ll have to ship out units in smaller batches than initially expected.  In that case we will fulfill orders on a first-come, first-served basis, regardless of which retailer you ordered from.  So someone who ordered in March could get units earlier than someone who orders today.  Regardless of where you are in the shipping queue however, your credit card will not be charged until your unit ships. 

We understand your disappointment and hope you’ll stick with us as we get these first units out the door.  We promise we’re doing absolutely everything we can to get InfiniTV 4 in your hands as soon as we can and will update you once we have a new ship date!

Thanks for your continued interest, enthusiasm and support. 

Cheers,

The Ceton Team

Very disappointing.  Keep us informed.

 I actually know nothing more than the email they sent to me and others.  It was news to me.

 Are you in Who Dat-ville too? 

 I got the letter tonight and am more than disappointed being that I sold both ATI DCTs this week on eBay (for a 10% profit over what I paid). I'm worried that "the end of June" will become more like August. At that point I might as well look hard at the new HDHomerun.

 Media Center is in a seriously awful stretch right now. I can't imagine anyone adopting this platform until something major changes. Very sad indeed. I'm just going to go to bed. 

 Yeah...this does suck indeed....I'm really looking forward to this card.

I call BS in a major way.  It took until now to realize they couldn't get the parts they need?  I seriously doubt it.  HUGE disappointment.  Something else is wrong. 

I appreciate the honesty about the upcoming Ceton card. Since Comcast started scrambling everything digital other than locals and a few crap channels like "The Jewelry Channel" I've had to re-install my Hauppage analog dual tuner in order to get extended basic on my Win7 HTPC. I have two Aver 180s and an HDHomerun that are now useless for anything but recording locals. I also had some decisions to make regarding providers as my choices in that area are now expanding.

Our town is getting Uverse. I've seen them laying the fiber all over town and a couple days ago on my way to work I saw them starting to put in the electronics boxes. A Uverse salesman had already stopped by the house to make the pitch. Another possible choice was satellite. Since I'm going to have to make some kind of radical change anyway I decided to consider all possibilities. But neither Uverse or satellite currently play with my HTPC, so either of those choices meant deserting my centralized entertainment hub. My Win7 HTPC is presently working flawlessly and has been for some time. OTOH, I've never been that impressed with Comcast but in weighing all the options I decided that staying with Comcast and spending the $400 on one of the new Ceton cards was my best compromise.

But unlike another poster, I'm not selling anything I presently own until I have its replacement in my hands. This delay appears to be beyond the control of Ceton, but it means I have another month or so to see what else appears (Cablecard HDHomerun?). I'm sure that's exactly what Ceton was afraid of. That's also the benefit of not pre-ordering. I have no spot at the front of the line, but I also am not yet locked into a decision. And $400 isn't exactly a small investment. I'm willing to spend the money, but not until I see the reviews. I was really looking forward to getting all the extended basic stuff in HD finally rather than the digital SD I had been getting before everything became encrypted. If the reviews of the Ceton are positive there's a pretty good chance I'll get one. If Silicon Dust releases their cablecard tuner and its reviews are positive (and it supports 4 streams) I may order one of those. As usual price, availability, features, and reviews will all factor into that decision. And when the first card from either vendor comes out I'll still be waiting a few weeks to make a decision. If a month goes by and the first card to appear on the market meets the above-mentioned criteria while the other vendor is still in delays that may contribute to that decision. Otherwise, one vendor beating the other by a few days isn't going to matter.

 I own a small business and, while I don't have any idea what Ceton is going through inventory wise, I can say that many of the factories that I buy from over the last year have greatly reduced their inventory.  I was told by 1 huge company in the states that I buy from that inventory is cash flow and if it's not selling, there is no cash.  If you buy it and stock it and vendors do not buy, it's negative cash flow.  So, not knowing what the economy was going to do this year, many (about 75% of who I buy from) have greatly reduced their inventory.

Furthermore, China has been hit so that many of it's smaller factories have laid off or closed so it's now taking longer for factories in the states to stock up when they do need more inventory.  It's not a pretty picture but I personally believe most of what Ceton said.  Certainly they have money tied up in this that they know will hurt them if they don't start selling them soon.  I just wish they would have said something sooner.

pcostanza

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We know that you have been eagerly waiting for the first shipment of the Ceton InfiniTV 4 digital cable quad-tuner card and want to update you on where things stand.  Unfortunately, we’re not going to make our planned May 31 ship date as we expected when we announced it in March.  We believe units will ship by the end of June but we don’t yet know for sure.  Rather than waiting, we wanted to let you know what we know at this point.

 

This is hugely disappointing news.   Trust us, no one is more disappointed than we are.  We’ve been working day and night to meet our May 31 deadline but there are some things that simply are not in our control.

What happened?  As we told you in our last newsletter, development and testing for InfiniTV 4 have gone very well.  In fact, since we last wrote you in March we have received formal notification of InfiniTV 4 CableLabs certification, which was the final critical step on the way to manufacturing and release.  That was a huge milestone, not only for us but also for the industry.  It’s our understanding that InfiniTV 4 is the first multi-tuner PC card to pass certification, the first quad-tuner device of any type to pass certification, the first device ever certified for 1 GHz cable systems, and one of the first Windows 7 devices to pass certification.  That’s quite a list of firsts for a new company like us and something we’re really proud of.  It’s also indicative of the complexity involved in doing something like this for the first time in the industry.

 

The next step after certification is to get the product manufactured and shipped.  We’ve seen a lot of funny speculation online about how long it takes to get units produced and boxes shipped from our manufacturer overseas.  It’s actually relatively quick and our products do not in fact sit for weeks on cargo ships crossing the ocean while warding off Somali pirates.  The physical production of the units is fast, and we can airship units to the U.S. cost effectively.  So we’re talking days and not weeks from when our manufacturer starts a production run until units are ready to ship from our retail partners in the US.  That wasn’t the issue here. 

 

The issue was simply parts.  Well, not so simply in fact, as there are more than 1,000 individual parts used in each InfiniTV 4 card.  Unfortunately, the global recession has resulted in manufacturers maintaining low inventory levels of everything, which have resulted in parts shortages across the industry that are affecting everyone from little guys like us to the largest PC and CE OEMs in the world.  In our case it boiled down to not being able to get the right quantity of a couple of critical parts in time to meet our production schedule.  We’ve been scrambling for a couple of weeks to find what we needed but it was obvious this week that it wasn’t going to happen in time for us to meet our May 31 goal, which is why we’re writing you today. 

 

What’s the new date then? We really hoped that if we had to give you bad news about a delay that we’d be able to give you a new ship date at least.  Unfortunately we can’t do that today as we simply don’t have a solid answer yet.  But we wanted to at least let you know about the May 31 slip, even if we can’t give you a new date. 

 

How will Pre-Order Program units ship?  Will one retailer get priority over another?  Since we kicked off the InfiniTV 4 pre-order program in March the response has been great and orders have continued to come in at a steady, in fact increasing, pace.  It’s obvious that there is a ton of pent up demand for a solution like this and we hope to be able to fulfill all the pre-order program orders at the same time.  But, depending on how the parts situation evolves and how many units we are able to manufacture at a time, it is possible that we’ll have to ship out units in smaller batches than initially expected.  In that case we will fulfill orders on a first-come, first-served basis, regardless of which retailer you ordered from.  So someone who ordered in March could get units earlier than someone who orders today.  Regardless of where you are in the shipping queue however, your credit card will not be charged until your unit ships. 

 

We understand your disappointment and hope you’ll stick with us as we get these first units out the door.  We promise we’re doing absolutely everything we can to get InfiniTV 4 in your hands as soon as we can and will update you once we have a new ship date!

 

Thanks for your continued interest, enthusiasm and support. 

 

Cheers,

The Ceton Team

 

Thanks for letting us know. So we can be assured that card it self will be aveliable at the end of June September / 2011. Correct?

Vladimir Uschintsky

Our town is getting Uverse. I've seen them laying the fiber all over town and a couple days ago on my way to work I saw them starting to put in the electronics boxes. A Uverse salesman had already stopped by the house to make the pitch. Another possible choice was satellite. Since I'm going to have to make some kind of radical change anyway I decided to consider all possibilities. But neither Uverse or satellite currently play with my HTPC, so either of those choices meant deserting my centralized entertainment hub. My Win7 HTPC is presently working flawlessly and has been for some time. OTOH, I've never been that impressed with Comcast but in weighing all the options I decided that staying with Comcast and spending the $400 on one of the new Ceton cards was my best compromise.

There is a soft-tuner being released for UVerse - as to when, that's a question for AT&T

 Lesson learned, never jump on a unknown product from an unproven company that may or may not hit their release date. Always wait at least a month after its released to buy.

erkotz

Vladimir Uschintsky

Our town is getting Uverse. I've seen them laying the fiber all over town and a couple days ago on my way to work I saw them starting to put in the electronics boxes. A Uverse salesman had already stopped by the house to make the pitch. Another possible choice was satellite. Since I'm going to have to make some kind of radical change anyway I decided to consider all possibilities. But neither Uverse or satellite currently play with my HTPC, so either of those choices meant deserting my centralized entertainment hub. My Win7 HTPC is presently working flawlessly and has been for some time. OTOH, I've never been that impressed with Comcast but in weighing all the options I decided that staying with Comcast and spending the $400 on one of the new Ceton cards was my best compromise.

 

There is a soft-tuner being released for UVerse - as to when, that's a question for AT&T

 Didn't know that. I don't exactly get the warm fuzzies for AT&T either, but Uverse would mean that I could get a bundle with TV and (much faster) Internet and drop my land line. Everyone in our family now has their own cell phone and the only reason I've kept the land line is because its a requirement to get the DSL service I currently subscribe to. But my DSL is currently stuck at 3.5 Mbps and according to my provider (Atlantic Nexus) I won't be able to get the 6 Mbps they've started offering elsewhere. Atlantic Nexus has been fantastic, absolutely the best company I've ever dealt with. And their prices are very reasonable until you factor in the fact that I have to continue to pay for land line service I no longer need. For about what I pay for land line/Internet/TV every month I could get a really good Internet/TV bundle from Uverse with more channels in HD and MUCH faster Internet. I'll be researching the soft-tuner from Uverse and like I said, I'm still some time away from deciding which way I'm going to go.

Vladimir Uschintsky

 Didn't know that. I don't exactly get the warm fuzzies for AT&T either, but Uverse would mean that I could get a bundle with TV and (much faster) Internet and drop my land line. Everyone in our family now has their own cell phone and the only reason I've kept the land line is because its a requirement to get the DSL service I currently subscribe to. But my DSL is currently stuck at 3.5 Mbps and according to my provider (Atlantic Nexus) I won't be able to get the 6 Mbps they've started offering elsewhere. Atlantic Nexus has been fantastic, absolutely the best company I've ever dealt with. And their prices are very reasonable until you factor in the fact that I have to continue to pay for land line service I no longer need. For about what I pay for land line/Internet/TV every month I could get a really good Internet/TV bundle from Uverse with more channels in HD and MUCH faster Internet. I'll be researching the soft-tuner from Uverse and like I said, I'm still some time away from deciding which way I'm going to go.

In many areas it's possible to get DSL service without buying dial tone. This might vary with your PUC and it's not something your dial tone provider is going to want to talk about but if your DSL service isn't with the dial tone company you can approach them.

Also make sure you understand just what AT&T offers. Currently while you can record four shows (or watch four) you can only do two HD shows. They're supposed to be upgrading that and just when is another AT&T question (and heaven only know how to get to the right level at AT&T to get good answers to those questions). Also until the media room interface is released, you'll have to have the AT&T boxes for all  your tv sets.

Now it if was Fios coming in, there'd be no question about jumping ship since they really do drop fiber on your doorstep and have a cableCARD compatible distribution system.

Just remember Mark Twain's warning, "Believe none of what you read and half of what you see."

John

moosic

I call BS in a major way.  It took until now to realize they couldn't get the parts they need?  I seriously doubt it.  HUGE disappointment.  Something else is wrong. 

That's what I'm saying.  If I'm wrong I'll gladly take over production management for Ceton.