With retail availability just a few days away it turns out that Ceton still has a few tricks up their sleeves - with an announcement going out tonight that they will be adding the Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) rev of  Android to the Echo. Not much is known about what that means exactly with queries around Play access gleaning nothing useful (I'm hoping that we'll get Netflix at the very least). Either way it sounds good.

Adding Android Support

Speaking of new features, one of the big projects we’ve been working on is adding the Android platform to Echo!  As you might imagine, having Android will give us lots of opportunity to extend the Echo in interesting new ways with more capabilities and apps.  Android is not included in this week’s update but we’re working hard to get it out as a Christmas present   Since you’re probably wondering … it’s the Ice Cream Sandwich version.

Intel's Next Unit of Computing (NUC) shot to the top of many HTPC enthusiasts' Santa lists when Intel finally revealed the final specs and prices earlier this month. The NUC will be available in two versions, the Thunderbolt-equipped DC3217BY and the DCDC3217IYE, which forgoes the Thunderbolt port in favor of a Gigabit Ethernet port. Our friends at TechReport recently got to take the DC3217BY for a spin and seemed to come away generally pleased with the experience. Certainly it looks like the NUC will have more than enough SFF horsepower to serve as a capable HTPC so long as internal storage capacity is not a major concern.

The Cliff's Notes version is simple: Intel should have called this an Ultrabox, in an obvious play on the Ultrabook name. The guts of the NUC are essentially the same as an Ultrabook's, right down to the 17W dual-core Ivy Bridge processor. This CPU, with the incredibly catchy name Core i3-3217U, has four threads via Hyper-Threading and runs at 1.8GHz, with 3MB of L3 cache. It's not exactly a screamer by desktop standards, but it's vastly more capable than your average Intel Atom or AMD Brazos CPU. 

TechReport

Unfortuantely, the NUC was not without its issues. In particular, the TechReport reviewer, Scott Wasson, noticed issues with the system buckling under the load of large file transfers across a network, with the transfer slowing to a stop and taking the rest of system down with it. In his review, Scott posited some theories about what was occurring, and after reaching out to Intel, posted a follow-up confirming that the issue was a result of thermal issues surrounding the placement of the wirless NIC and the SSD. Intel is reportedly working on a fix and is currently confident that the issue only affects the DC3217BY and not the DCDC3217IYE. With the NUC release imminent, it will be interesting to see how Intel fixes the issue.

In our recent review of Intel's "Next Unit of Computing" barebones box, we explained a snafu we encountered with large network file transfers causing the system to lock up. At the time, we were working with Intel on resolving the problem and suspected it was confined to our particular review unit. After further testing, we have a clearer sense of the nature of the problem, and potential NUC buyers should read carefully from here.

TechReport

While most of us were cleaning our houses in anticipation of the wave of Thanksgiving visitors, MediaPortal fans were busy jumping on the alpha bandwagon with the release of the MediaPortal 2 Alpha 1 Autumn release. The MediaPortal team teased the MP2 Autumn release last month. The Autumn release is noticeably more stable than the MP2 Summer release and with support for movie collections and .nfo metadata files, MediaPortal 2 is starting to feel like a complete media center package. There are still some obvious feature gaps, but then that is to be expected with alpha software and anyone interested in the future direction of MediaPortal should definitely give the new release a try.

Team MediaPortal is proud to release yet another alpha of the upcoming HTPC revolution - MediaPortal 2!

A lot of work has been done since the summer release of MediaPortal 2. 

MediaPortal Blog

While MediaPortal 2 might not be ready for most people's full-time HTPC, there is still MediaPortal 1.3.0 to look forward to. At the same time that the MediaPortal team was teasing the MP2 Autumn release, they were also announcing that MediaPortal 1.3.0 would be coming with a new deafult skin named Titan. The team has announced that the MediaPortal 1.3.0 beta is in final testing and they are stoking anticipation with more images of the Titan skin and talking up Titan Extended, a version of the Titan skin equipped to extend the Titan experience to compatible MediaPortal extensions. As MediaPortal 2 development has creeped along, the most striking improvement over MediaPortal 1 has been the visual upgrade, but with the latest collection of Titan screenshots, the MediaPortal team looks to change things rather dramatically.

A few of you might feel a sweet shiver crawling down your spine after reading that news title.

I am extremely happy to announce that after many months of hard work, MediaPortal 1.3.0 Beta is in final testing! So the release is now very close!

MediaPortal Blog

A couple of months ago, coinciding with the release of Plex Media Server version 0.9.6.8, the Plex team made a couple of big announcements. The first announcement was the introduction of PlexPass, a new subscription system that would provide Plex supporters with early access to new features in develpoment. The second announcement was the introduction of a new Plex web client, which would also be the first new beta feature made available to PlexPass members. The new web client, dubbed Plex/Web has evidently been given a thorough working over by the PlexPass community and is now ready to break cover into general availability with the release of Plex Media Server version 0.9.7.3. There are new multi-selection options, remote playback tools, and universal search all on tap with Plex/Web, and the Plex team is touting a greatly improved first-run experience with a new setup wizard. As for Plex Media Server, there are updates to support Plex/Web, but more importantly, a brand-new transcoder that should be more efficient in how it uses CPU resources and a host of API updates to improve metadata management. The Plex team is pretty excited about this new release, and with so many new features it is easy to see why.

We’re super excited about Plex/Web, and we suspect you will be too. It’s the fastest and richest Plex client that exists today for managing, browsing and playing your content. No, it’s not a replacement for the gorgeous Plex Media Center, but you can run Plex/Web from anywhere in the world in any (reasonably modern) web browser.

Plex Blog

It has only been a couple of weeks since the XBMC team announced that they were entering the feature freeze stage of development for XBMC 12, codenamed "Frodo", and the first beta is already available. The new version of Frodo is bringing some highly anticipated changes with the XBMC AudioEngine offering official HD audio support, live TV and PVR support, and advanced filtering in the library, among other new features. As always, the usual beta software caveats apply. Indeed, there have already been some issues with the first beta, including issues with live TV channel switching on remote controls and problems with broken skins and add-ons as the team moves from the Eden repositories to the Frodo repositories. There was also an issue with metadata scrapers returning an error that has already been fixed, so anyone who jumped on the beta release right away and is experiencing issues should be sure to grab the latest version of the release from the XBMC download page.

It’s been a mere eight months since Team XBMC released XBMC 11.  If you’ve been following along with us in that time, you already know about most of the new features, changes, and updates that our entire team has been working tirelessly to put into place. But you also know that all those features have only been available in monthly alpha builds.

Now we are excited to say that we are finally ready to roll out the very first beta of XBMC 12 Frodo.

XBMC

When I first saw reports of Intel's Next Unit of Computing (NUC) it seemed like the perfect little HTPC, although the price (~$400) was a bit off-putting. As it turns out, not only will it be getting Intel HD 4000 (madVR, yum) and an ULV IVB but will only cost $300-320. More importantly it will be easy to get one with retail availability at Amazon and Newegg. Hit Anandtech for the full specs and some pictures of the delicious looking mini-HTPC.