InfiniTV reboot issue

Ask fellow members about Ceton's infiniTV tuners here.
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STC

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#21

Post by STC » Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:07 pm

jwill42 wrote:Code can have a bug that does not become apparent in every situation.
Correct, but you state you have only tested the Ceton on one motherboard and you can duplicate the problem each time you rebuild Windows. I suggest a test on another motherboard.
Something in your setup is not happy. It could be the Ceton, but you are certainly in no position to blame that single product alone at this point.
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#22

Post by jwill42 » Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:10 pm

stonethecrows wrote:
jwill42 wrote:Code can have a bug that does not become apparent in every situation.
Correct, but you state you have only tested the Ceton on one motherboard and you can duplicate the problem each time you rebuild Windows. I suggest a test on another motherboard.
Something in your setup is not happy. It could be the Ceton, but you are certainly in no position to blame that single product alone at this point.
It definitely is the Ceton. There is no doubt. I have a standard Intel motherboard that works perfectly other than the Ceton. Other people have posted with the exact same crash/reboot issue and they have a different motherboard. Even Ceton has acknowledged the problem and said that it can probably be fixed with a firmware update (although Ceton has failed to fix the firmware after several months of being aware of the issue). The issue is buggy Ceton firmware, without a doubt.

You are certainly in no position to claim that the problem is not firmware at this point.
Last edited by jwill42 on Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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#23

Post by jwill42 » Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:14 pm

barnabas1969 wrote: I'm trying to give you some suggestions of things to try. If you're unwilling to try anything, then I understand why Ceton has been unable to help you.
I have tried everything reasonable to fix the problem, INCLUDING EVERYTHING CETON HAS ASKED. Getting a new motherboard when I have a perfectly good motherboard is NOT reasonable, and Ceton did not ask me to try that. Ceton has acknowledged that the problem is with the firmware.

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#24

Post by richard1980 » Sat Feb 25, 2012 12:17 am

Thanks to a post by john42 at WEC, I found out I have the same issue with the crash/reboot on my card. The only difference is I didn't know I even had the issue. And I'm certainly not one to use my tuners lightly. And believe me, if I wasn't able to record, I would post about it. I'm inclined to believe that this is indeed an issue with the card itself, however, just like the 29/59 issue, the effects seem to vary based on the specific environment.

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#25

Post by Scallica » Sat Feb 25, 2012 12:31 am

jwill42 wrote:The issue is buggy Ceton firmware, without a doubt.
I think your argument would be stronger if the issue continued to occur with a replacement tuner as well. Is there a reason why you have not requested an RMA?
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#26

Post by jwill42 » Sat Feb 25, 2012 12:54 am

Scallica wrote:
jwill42 wrote:The issue is buggy Ceton firmware, without a doubt.
I think your argument would be stronger if the issue continued to occur with a replacement tuner as well. Is there a reason why you have not requested an RMA?
As I said, Ceton has said they believe it is a firmware issue. If Ceton were to tell me that it is not a firmware issue, then certainly I would expect them to accept an RMA.

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#27

Post by KHTPC75 » Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:14 am

Wow is all I can say about all the above comments for those who don't think the ceton card can have firmware bugs!

I have the ceton crash and reboot issue as well as the ceton memory leak issue.

I have been working with Ceton on this issue for several months.

I have requests an RMA to get a different card.

They told me they would not RMA the card. Their specific words were: "At this point, we do not believe there is a hardware issue with your InfiniTV, and expect to resolve this issue with a firmware update."

I've been through 2 motherboards from different manufacturers with different chipsets, different CPUs, different power supply, different memory and different hard drive configuration.

The exact same problems happened with both configurations.

This is not a computer hardware or OS issue. The infinitv firmware OS runs independent of the computer os and hardware.

This is the ceton crash and reboot error:

Fault whee upnp_ocur_serve [29]: segfaults at 00000000 pc=0010c468

This is the ceton memory leak and reboot error:

Out of memory: kill process 17959 (upnp_ocur_serve) score 6543 or a child
Killed process 17959 (upnp_ocur_serve)

When both happen, the ceton card reboots.

Older firmware has the crash and reboot issue but they leak memory much, much slower.

I've looked at the logs of others who didn't think they had the same issue and guess what? Their logs show the same segmentation fault as above but they don't record as much TV and watch as much tv as some of us so they weren't affected as much. Some of them had partial recordings but since they didn't happen as often as heavy users, they thought nothing of it.

There was one person with fios who had not had the issue and had a 76 day uptime. Then a couple days later, that person experienced partial recordings with the manually stopped by another component error which indicates a ceton crash / reboot. He didn't post logs for us to analyze, however.

Hope this helps some of the non-believers.

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#28

Post by Scallica » Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:22 am

Interesting, thanks for posting that.

I guess your frustrations were heard loud and clear. newfiend just reported that new firmware is available.

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#29

Post by jwill42 » Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:41 am

No, 1.1.2.4 FW does not fix the crash/reboot issue. That firmware has been available in "beta" since early January, and the beta that some of us have been testing for weeks is the exact same as the released 1.1.2.4 FW (both have md5sum e5703bbe00f085ed5d7044020f176ef6)

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#30

Post by erkotz » Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:43 am

barnabas1969 wrote:
jwill42 wrote:
barnabas1969 wrote:Jwill42, Has Ceton replaced your card? Have you tried it in a different computer/motherboard with a different chipset?
No, Ceton has not replaced my PCIe card. I have only tried the PCIe card on one motherboard, but since it is a standard Intel motherboard (and I have kept the BIOS updates current), any incompatibilities are almost certainly Ceton's fault. Besides, other people have seen the exact same crashing/rebooting issue with the PCIe InfiniTV, and they do not all have the same MB that I do.
I'm trying to give you some suggestions of things to try. If you're unwilling to try anything, then I understand why Ceton has been unable to help you.
I am by no means saying it is impossible for an InfiniTV to be bad, or for us to have a compatibility issue, but taking the stance of "it's an Intel motherboard, so it can't be at fault" is faulty logic at best. I've definitely seen BIOS bugs in motherboards from all manufacturers, including Intel.
We're more than willing to work with you to resolve your issue, however, we also need you to work with us to perform troubleshooting. Can you please PM me your ticket number so I can look it over?
Quality Assurance Manager, Ceton Corporation

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#31

Post by jwill42 » Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:50 am

erkotz wrote: I am by no means saying it is impossible for an InfiniTV to be bad, or for us to have a compatibility issue, but taking the stance of "it's an Intel motherboard, so it can't be at fault" is faulty logic at best. I've definitely seen BIOS bugs in motherboards from all manufacturers, including Intel
That would be an unreasonable stance, but that is not my claim.

My claim is:

(1) It is a standard Intel MB (DH57DD)

(2) The MB has been working perfectly in every other way, no other issues at all

and most importantly:

(3) The Ceton PCIe crashes as documented in crashlog.txt are EXACTLY the same as other people have seen with different motherboards

So, it is rather silly to blame the problem on my MB. Especially now after I have had a ticket open with Ceton for months and I have provided all diagnostics Ceton requested, and Ceton has never suggested the MB was at fault before. If Ceton cannot make a product that is compatible with widely used Intel MBs, as well as other MBs that people have had this exact same issue, then Ceton has a faulty product.

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#32

Post by STC » Sat Feb 25, 2012 2:09 am

For the record my InfiniTV4:

Firmware: ceton_infinitv_fw_20110712_1_0_9_5.IMAGE
Uptime: 42 days 7 hours 3 minutes 31 seconds

This ties in with when I last rebooted my HTPC. Uptime has been up to 100 days + and has only reset when I have rebooted my HTPC.

I cannot therefore agree with the claim that Ceton has a faulty product.
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#33

Post by jwill42 » Sat Feb 25, 2012 2:17 am

stonethecrows wrote: I cannot therefore agree with the claim that Ceton has a faulty product.
So, if Ceton has the crash/reboot issue, with, say (to make up a number) 30% of the motherboards out there, then it is not faulty just as long as it works with your MB?

Is that really your claim?

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#34

Post by STC » Sat Feb 25, 2012 2:25 am

Un-pedantically no that is not my claim.
If there were 30% of all distributed InfiniTV's with the issues you describe, this forum would be full of posts like yours. It is not.
There are so many other external factors, that may/may not be contributing to your issue.
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#35

Post by KHTPC75 » Sat Feb 25, 2012 2:27 am

stonethecrows wrote:For the record my InfiniTV4:

Firmware: ceton_infinitv_fw_20110712_1_0_9_5.IMAGE
Uptime: 42 days 7 hours 3 minutes 31 seconds

This ties in with when I last rebooted my HTPC. Uptime has been up to 100 days + and has only reset when I have rebooted my HTPC.

I cannot therefore agree with the claim that Ceton has a faulty product.
Please post your latest ceton diagnostics log for us to analyze. Maybe we can find something different between yours and ours.

Who is your tv provider? Cable tv or fios?

When did you get your card? First version or newer streamlined version?


What are your pc specs?

Motorola or Cisco cablecard and tuning adapter?

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#36

Post by richard1980 » Sat Feb 25, 2012 2:37 am

jwill42 wrote:
stonethecrows wrote: I cannot therefore agree with the claim that Ceton has a faulty product.
So, if Ceton has the crash/reboot issue, with, say (to make up a number) 30% of the motherboards out there, then it is not faulty just as long as it works with your MB?

Is that really your claim?
That is actually a very legitimate claim. I used the exact same claim when I argued that stuttering from the 29/59 framerate issue was not a fault in WMC, but a fault in the GPU. And I was right. As if by magic, people stopped experiencing stuttering when they switched to a GPU that is actually powerful enough to handle the content flaw.

Not that I'm saying this is the case in this situation, but it's not completely out of the question. It's possible that those of us with the issue have some other fault that we don't yet know about, and until more information is known about this issue, I won't completely rule out the possibility that something else in my system is causing the InfiniTV to crash. For all I know it might be something funky in my CableCARD.

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#37

Post by KHTPC75 » Sat Feb 25, 2012 3:44 am

It should also be mentioned that the crash does not necessarily occur when one is watching tv or recording anything. It'll randomly crash at any time of the day whether I'm using it or not.

Since I'm having the same issues and it's happening with 2 completely different computers, different monitors, two different xbox 360s as extenders (1 the old style and the other the slim) a different network switch and a different tuning adapter ( I still have 2 and switched to the second one over 3 days ago), that only leaves three things that are attached to the ceton device and computer 1) The CableCard 2) The cable company 3) The Power Company.

So...what are the symptoms of a faulty cablecard? can a cablecard crash? If so, how can I tell if it was the cablecard or the ceton board since both show the same uptime after a crash or memory leak reboot.

I think we can rule out power. I used to be plugged into just a power strip, then a belkin ups, now I'm plugged into 2 APC 3000 UPSs.

Is it something with the cable feed? it's happening with various cable providers. My 2 8300HDs never have issues. I've had the exact same one for 7 years and the other about 5.

If it's the cable feed or cablecard reboot, the ceton card should handle either issues without a segfault. It should handle them without a memory leak.

What is a segmentation fault? Wikipedia says "A segmentation fault occurs when a program attempts to access a memory location that it is not allowed to access, or attempts to access a memory location in a way that is not allowed (for example, attempting to write to a read-only location, or to overwrite part of the operating system".

A segfault can also be caused by faulty hardware, memory or driver.

The thing with the Ceton InfiniTV 4 PCIe device is that it is its own little computer. It runs its own OS, has its own sdram, its own nvram storage, etc. If something is segfaulting in the infinitv OS, it's because something occurred within the infinitv 4 pcie card to cause it. Does it write a core dump? Can that core dump be accessed and analyzed? Wish I knew.

Think about this also...The USB device isn't plugged into the motherboard via a pcie bus. It only talks to the OS via infinitv's usb driver. It's been crashing and rebooting as well although I haven't been able to get a hold of a diag from one.

Ceton hasn't come out and said it's not an issue with the infinitv. They've only said they feel it will be fixed with a firmware update.

I want the ceton to work. I want to be able to give it 5 star ratings everywhere. I want to be able to recommend it to friends, I want to say I own more than one or that I have a Q or Echo but until this issue is resolved, I can do none of these.

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#38

Post by adam1991 » Sat Feb 25, 2012 4:00 am

stonethecrows wrote:
jwill42 wrote:It is the Ceton firmware without a doubt.
If it was firmware we would all be experiencing your issue(s). We are most definitely not.
Exactly.

No problems here, either.

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#39

Post by KHTPC75 » Sat Feb 25, 2012 4:21 am

stonethecrows wrote:
jwill42 wrote:It is the Ceton firmware without a doubt.
If it was firmware we would all be experiencing your issue(s). We are most definitely not.
I'm going to have to disagree. Depending upon what is causing the problem, it's perfectly possible for the same firmware to be uneffected for some while having problems with others.

jwill42 and I and others are having the exact same issue. Exact same segfault. Exact same memory leak. We've all had different computer hardware. I'm running AMD, jwill32 is running Intel even. We have different cable operators. We are 2,300 miles apart. Same problem, same symptoms, same errors.

We have not seen one peron on FIOS say they've had the problem. They all say they run perfectly fine. Numerous people on traditional cable have reported the problem.

Maybe there's something with the cable tv feeds that is triggering the memory leak and the segfaults. It's pefectly possible.

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#40

Post by jwill42 » Sat Feb 25, 2012 4:27 am

KHTPC75 wrote: I think we can rule out power. I used to be plugged into just a power strip, then a belkin ups, now I'm plugged into 2 APC 3000 UPSs.

Is it something with the cable feed? it's happening with various cable providers. My 2 8300HDs never have issues. I've had the exact same one for 7 years and the other about 5.

If it's the cable feed or cablecard reboot, the ceton card should handle either issues without a segfault. It should handle them without a memory leak.

What is a segmentation fault? Wikipedia says "A segmentation fault occurs when a program attempts to access a memory location that it is not allowed to access, or attempts to access a memory location in a way that is not allowed (for example, attempting to write to a read-only location, or to overwrite part of the operating system".

A segfault can also be caused by faulty hardware, memory or driver.

The thing with the Ceton InfiniTV 4 PCIe device is that it is its own little computer. It runs its own OS, has its own sdram, its own nvram storage, etc. If something is segfaulting in the infinitv OS, it's because something occurred within the infinitv 4 pcie card to cause it. Does it write a core dump? Can that core dump be accessed and analyzed? Wish I knew.

Think about this also...The USB device isn't plugged into the motherboard via a pcie bus. It only talks to the OS via infinitv's usb driver. It's been crashing and rebooting as well although I haven't been able to get a hold of a diag from one.
All very good points.

I'll add that the problem is much more widespread than Ceton would lead us to believe.

I just went through only the last 2 weeks of posts on avsforum.com, and I counted 13 people who appear to have the crash/reboot issue.

Given that only a small fraction of the people who have the issue are likely to post about it on avsforum, it is safe to assume that the number of people who have their InfiniTVs crashing and rebooting is much, much larger than 13. As a comparison, I've heard a TV exec say that for every complaint that they receive, they assume that there are at least 100 more people with the same complaint who did not bother to contact them.

But regardless of how many people in total have the crash/reboot issue, it is clear that if 13 people on avsforum have posted about it in the past 2 weeks, it is extremely unlikely to be isolated to a specific motherboard or specific cable TV provider.

The problem is buggy Ceton firmware, or some other fault in the InfiniTVs.

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