Testing a basic andengine demo when reduced to the minimum parts in eclipse as was getting crashes when testing at home. I have taken the AndengineExamples and removed everythign not related to the AutoParallax background demo and then made that the sole activity and launcher intent.
It works! This might also be simply due to me cloning the Andengine repo's a few hours apart so will try this at home now with my current setup and then after doing a pull and rebuild all.