It’s been some time since TiVo’s had some competition in the retail DVR appliance space. And Ceton looked poised to join the fray this year. The Ceton Q DVR was expected to arrive in 2012 containing a whopping six tuners, powered by a single CableCARD, two terabytes of storage, and a Blu-ray drive. Ceton has announced upcoming Holiday availability of the Echo Windows Media Center extender, with benefits, yet they’re withholding further details on the Q until September… suggesting to me that we’re no longer on track for release this year. In terms of divining pricing, with the tuner-less Ceton Echo launching at $179, I’d say we’re easily looking at a $400 product – with $600 being even more realistic for a small company. But, with Microsoft seemingly content to let Media Center atrophy and die, I’m not sure how much I’d be willing to invest on a solution based on that platform.