Fiire experience

[tschak909]

oh, trust me. I don't recommend Fiire to anyone who asks. I saw one of our own developers get completely burned on their first generation hardware.

This system is incredibly complex, and anyone who sells it, needs not only to get a license, but also to become intimately involved with the system at a code level, as well as maintaining solid and consistent customer service with their customers. This is an immense challenge, only capable by those who truly believe in satisfying all of the above requirements (and you will sacrifice something of yourself to do it, trust me.)

This is a message to the people at Fiire: Shape up, or we are going to make you irrelevant.

-Thom

[jondecker76]

Not long ago I added a buyer beware comment in the wiki where the Fiire products were listed, along with a list of links to forum articles detailing why.

They really are giving LMCE a bad rep

[Monkgs]

Dave,

As of this morning my package has finally shipped. So at least there is that good news.

With regards to your comments I have to agree completely. Fiire is part of this community, whether we like it or not. They have developed aspects of Linux MCE, and are featured in the popular 0704 video. A few weeks ago I had never heard of Linux MCE. Being an avid Linux supporter and developer (Linux kernel contributor of over 10 years) I have an innate trust for all free open source projects. Between various Wiki entries and the Linux 0704 video (which originally turned me on to Linux MCE) I had come to believe that Fiire was an active and positive part of the community.

Part of the fault was undoubtedly my own, as Zaerc pointed out, "some people keep sending them money." A quick search of the forums before my purchase and I would have never dealt with them. So that's my bad.

However that does not shift any blame away from Fiire. An online store at the very least must respond to e-mails in a timely fashion and provide proper order tracking. You must ship product in a timely fashion. You must support the products you sell. Fiire fails miserably at all these tasks.

Lets not forget the Fiire representative in this very thread who was claiming to be the GM. As I uncovered in my dealings with Fiire he was in fact only a salesman. This dishonesty is a clear example of the business practices Fiire employs. And what's worse is that they are operating under the guise of support from the LinuxMCE community. Unfortunately this means the bad service Fiire provides reflects as a black mark on the whole Linux MCE project.

As a community we clearly need to make it more obvious to new comers that they should expect better support from a Hong Kong knockoff outfit. Jon has already taken the initiative on this front, and I will continue it by extending the warnings to the video wiki and anywhere else Fiire is mentioned.

[tschak909]

Blake is just a salesman?

-Thom

[Monkgs]

Blake is just a salesman?

-Thom

According to my chats with Adrian. The full log is on page 2, the details about blake about 2/3'ds the way down the log.

[totallymaxed]

oh, trust me. I don't recommend Fiire to anyone who asks. I saw one of our own developers get completely burned on their first generation hardware.

This system is incredibly complex, and anyone who sells it, needs not only to get a license, but also to become intimately involved with the system at a code level, as well as maintaining solid and consistent customer service with their customers. This is an immense challenge, only capable by those who truly believe in satisfying all of the above requirements (and you will sacrifice something of yourself to do it, trust me.)

This is a message to the people at Fiire: Shape up, or we are going to make you irrelevant.

-Thom

 Thom,

 Do they infact HAVE a pluto liscence? Maybe a LMCE front page tag like ""Fiire BAD"" would be good.  Do they actually contribute to the cause or Just profit from the info we supply here free to help them as well. I know we cannot control who are reading the forums, and I for one would certainly not want to leave a customer of their's out in the cold for help if those users needed us here in the community.

 Dave

My understanding is that Fiire definitely have a commercial agreement with Pluto so that is not in any doubt. As far as I am aware they have very little or no presence here in the forum currently and in fact never have in the past either. I am also not aware of any other contribution they make to the community as I am almost 100% certain they make no code contributions at all.

All the best

Andrew

[colinjones]

Andrew - Fiire were talking about expanding outside N.A. (EMEA, AP, AU/NZ) - seems highly unlikely at this point given they can't even service their N.A. customers, but the leaves the rest of the world outside the UK without any hope of a packaged provider...

Is there ANY chance that CHT might think about expanding at some point in the future? I realise that your business model is heavily dependant on the value-add that you provide complete/configured/integrated systems, and are not just a box dropper, which makes it difficult for you. But would you consider at least providing systems without this service, outside the UK? (I think you mentioned Germany recently, I was thinking furter afield tho!)

[justdeb]

Hi all,

I am one of those people who didn't do their homework in relation to posts from other people. As a result of the 'lack' of service and support from FIIRE i was almost ready to walk away from this whole environment, but thanks to the efforts and support of poeple in this forum my thoughts have certainly been turned around. Whilst i am not a guru in relation to this product(LMCE) i am certainly happy to recommend it to anyone based on my experiences. I will certainly be pushing the point of not using or purchasing fiire equipment.

I too would be interested to know whether CHT would be interested in expanding into Australia as i certainly believe there is a market for LMCE and believe a good integrator would do exceptionally well.

[totallymaxed]

Andrew - Fiire were talking about expanding outside N.A. (EMEA, AP, AU/NZ) - seems highly unlikely at this point given they can't even service their N.A. customers, but the leaves the rest of the world outside the UK without any hope of a packaged provider...

Is there ANY chance that CHT might think about expanding at some point in the future? I realise that your business model is heavily dependant on the value-add that you provide complete/configured/integrated systems, and are not just a box dropper, which makes it difficult for you. But would you consider at least providing systems without this service, outside the UK? (I think you mentioned Germany recently, I was thinking furter afield tho!)

Hi Colin,

Yes we are expanding in a number of ways currently. CenterSonic is our brand for the German market... the site is up now here;

http://www.centersonic.com

And we are launching for the German market in October at http://www1.messe-berlin.de/vip8_1/website/MesseBerlin/htdocs/www.ehome-berlin.de/index_e.html

We are also in discussions to take Dianemo into a number of other markets too and we'd be happy to receive approaches from anyone with an interest in setting up either country based distribution, to serve dealer/installers in their local market, or those that are interested in setting up individual businesses as dealer/installers. We have discussions on both of those models underway currently.

It has always been our intention to have these 'local' Dianemo dealer/installers serve the market that is here in the Forum ie the person who wants to do most of the installation themselves but wants to purchase a supported, reliable product with a basic installation included. So instead of shipping product from the UK to wherever the customer is located we would have the local dealer/installer handle that. We think that would work well for all concerned - the dealer gets some incremental business and the customers get a local company and proper aftersales support.

All the best

Andrew

[grepico]

This is an interesting thread to me.  I've ordered 2 servers (one the 7.04 model and one the 7.10 version), a total of 13 MD's (3 of the old ones and 10 of the new prestige boxes) and 3 remotes with 13 dongles.

I was charged correctly, they shipped within the 2-4 weeks they had promised and to date everything is running perfectly.

It is noteworthy that with both of these systems are limited to DVD/CD storage and playback.  No lighting, alarm, video surveillance and the like, strictly store and play DVD's and CD's.

The older equipment is sitting in our home theater showroom connected to a D-Box motion couch and an overhead projector, with 2 MD's connected to LCD TV's in another room.  We've had no problems with the system and it's a big hit with home media people.  We'll be showing that system at our second Home and Garden Show this October. 

With the commercial installation the customer gets promo video's on CD that he rips to the server then plays on 6 TV's throughout his building and he is extremely happy with the system's performance.

As far as tech support:  I only had occasion to contact them twice and in both cases the people I spoke to through their online chat were helpful and solved my issues.

I did have a number of problems when I first started learning the system, but that was clearly my ignorance of Linux, nothing related to the Fiire equipment.  Mostly, it was me "tinkering" with the system to better understand it's capabilities and limitations.

Also, I did have many problems when I tried to install 7.10 on the older equipment, but installing 7.04 from the DVD provided by Fiire was smooth and trouble free.  It seems that the older MD's are NOT compatible with 7.10.

I'm not sure if the reason I've had no trouble is that I'm not doing much with the systems in terms of LMCE's advertised capabilities but sticking to the "out of box" installation with no customizations has been flawless for me so far.  I, myself am not a coder and have no interest in becoming one.  I was looking for a cheaper media server solution to Kaleidescape and I've found it with LMCE.  Fiire, to this point has been a reliable source for hardware and software that keeps our installation/configuration labor down and I'm careful not to advertise/promise features of LMCE that aren't 100% reliable.

With my personal system at home (custom server with 2 Fiire MD's and the Fiire remote), I tinker around and experiment all the time and the system spends more time down than up, but again, that's due to my monkeying around, no reflection on LMCE or Fiire at all.

We plan on upgrading our demo system to the new equipment before our upcoming show and I intend to implement Z-Wave lighting.  I'll post again with my experience.

[Monkgs]

My "shipment" arrived today. All they sent was the remotes, all of the other items are missing. What a joke.

[agidi]

 

my condolences Demus

I think I'm going to have to assemble my system.

[Monkgs]

I really don't think anyone else should ever be fooled into buying from these idiots again. I have updated virtually all text occurrences of Fiire in the wiki to include a buyer beware comment. I have also created a new Fiire wiki page about the company.

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Fiire

Feel free to update any mistakes and add your own negative experiences to the "Issues" section.

[justdeb]

Demus,

I have added my comments and so forth to the site.

Unfortunately this information was not available when i purchased my fiire station and will hopefully advise other users not to purchase any of their products.


Regards

Justin

[justdeb]

Hi Demus,

I decided to remove my comments and concur with your comments. I think your comments cover off all of the issues.

PS - No one from FIIRE has contacted me yet regarding my overcharging - nor have they responded to my issues regarding driver support.

Regards

Justin