Meetinghouse Webcast Communicator 3-year warranty - some units now not covered

Just wanted to make a general posting for the Webcast community to try to make everyone aware that the Meetinghouse Webcast Communicator has a 3-year warranty, provided by the equipment manufacturer. We first started shipping units in February 2009, which means that some units are now coming out of that warranty period.

If you have a unit that falls outside the warranty period (which is longer than you would get on most PCs nowadays, by the way), you will be responsible to pay for any necessary repairs or replacement. If an individual component can be replaced, you will be charged for the cost of that component. If the entire unit needs to be replaced, you will be charged the full replacement cost of $840.

Contact the Global Service Center if you are having equipment problems and they can take you through the process.

Is there thought to update the unit with newer software versions that have been released?

We are definitely taking a close look at our entire webcast strategy this year, and will be driving towards updating the whole system, including the Communicator. We will preserve the investment people have made in existing equipment, but our goal is to use more current software and improve the experience.

The Communicator in its current design can run Windows Media Encoder just fine, but does not have the horsepower to run Expression Encoder, which is what we use underneath Meetinghouse Webcast Software. So, at the moment, we don't have a specific plan to upgrade the software on the Communicator, but examining our options will definitely be part of the webcast strategy project this year.

Any more recent thoughts about updating the software running in the webcast communicator?