Ceton signal strength requirements

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rbmorse

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Ceton signal strength requirements

#1

Post by rbmorse » Tue Oct 25, 2011 6:49 pm

I've been having a host of small and intermittent problems with my Ceton InfiniTV tuner/MCE/ Comcast Cable HTPC which, in aggregate, pointed to Comcast's inability to reliably deliver adequate signal strength to the input of the Ceton tuner. Symptoms included, but were not limited to: occasional dropouts of indeterminate length, occasional severe pixelization on one or more channels, inability to tune a desired channel on demand without several retries, tuner not found, etc. None of these were constant...they would come and go at various times throughout the day and days of the week. Could not find a correlation with ambient temp (either inside or outside) or moisture.

This isn't a complaint about Comcast. They made several site visits (at no charge to me) and made what I believe to be good faith, if unsuccessful, attempts to resolve the issue. I discovered that several of my neighbors were experiencing similar issues. That pointed to a problem on the local loop and after reporting that Comcast did replace the loop amplifier and the coax from the loop interface to the DEMARC box at several addresses in the neighborhood (they had already done mine).

No improvement.

In an act of desperation, I bought one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Booster- ... B000066E6Y, installed it according to the directions (after the splitter that separates the feed to the tuner from the feed that goes to the cable modem/telephone) and all my problems went away. Not a single smeared pixel, dropped recording, lost tuner. Nothing but the performance for which I had paid (Ceton and Microsoft) and was paying (Comcast). I was pretty satisfied with the Ceton unit before, but since adding the amplifier I am really, really, happy with the way it performs.

I do have one question. I've read here that the acceptable signal strength to the tuner is -15dB to +15dB. After installing the amplifier most channels report +13 to +14.5dB, but there are a couple that go as high as +17.5dB. Is that too high? Should I buy an attenuator to keep all the channels below +15?
Last edited by rbmorse on Sat Oct 29, 2011 2:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.

adam1991

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#2

Post by adam1991 » Tue Oct 25, 2011 7:52 pm

I've always needed a signal amp; I'm 300 feet away from the pole, at least.

Last April when I couldn't make the Ceton card work, the guy came out and rewired things a bit--and ended up bypassing the amp (without my knowledge). Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I started getting EXACTLY your behavior. A quick look see showed all good cabling but no amp actually in line! I put the wiring back the way it's supposed to be, and all is well.

erkotz

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#3

Post by erkotz » Thu Oct 27, 2011 6:12 pm

17.5dBmV is a bit outside of the recommended range (max recommended is 15dBmV) but it's not high enough to cause any sort of damage. I don't remember how high we test our hardware to offhand, but I know it is higher than the 15dBmV maximum.

In short, if you aren't experiencing a problem, just leave it alone.
Quality Assurance Manager, Ceton Corporation

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rbmorse

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#4

Post by rbmorse » Thu Oct 27, 2011 9:38 pm

Thank you. That's the information i needed.

Blamey

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#5

Post by Blamey » Wed Dec 21, 2011 5:34 am

rbmorse wrote:I've been having a host of small and intermittent problems with my Ceton InfiniTV tuner/MCE/ Comcast Cable HTPC which, in aggregate, pointed to Comcast's inability to reliably deliver adequate signal strength to the input of the Ceton tuner. Symptoms included, but were not limited to: occasional dropouts of indeterminate length, occasional severe pixelization on one or more channels, inability to tune a desired channel on demand without several retries, tuner not found, etc. None of these were constant...they would come and go at various times throughout the day and days of the week. Could not find a correlation with ambient temp (either inside or outside) or moisture.
I am having pretty much the same symptoms as described above. Basically channels can be slow to tune (20 to 30) seconds, they often don't tune at all. My device also has a tendency to give the "no available tuners issue" but I don't often have pixelation. Ultimately it's really not a pleasant experience.

I previously had the Hauppaugue 2650 but decided to swap it for the Ceton to up the number of tuners. I first though it may be a driver conflict and tried installing the Ceton on my laptop but had similar issues. So I am thinking it's either the Ceton itself or the signal from the cable card. I didn't have any issues with the Hauppaugue but reading this makes me think it may be the signal issues. I have a tuning adapter but usually don't use it, either way it doesn't seem to make a difference.

My signal level is usually around -7 to -7 an my SNR around 36-36, which as far s I understand isnt great but isnt terrible either.


My Question is should I just go out and buy an amplifier or should I try contact Ceton/Time Warner. Anybody else have this problem. Any recommendations?

adam1991

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#6

Post by adam1991 » Wed Dec 21, 2011 10:54 am

You should contact Ceton, who will tell you to push a log for them to analyze and help you.

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