Ceton ITV6 PCIe: tuning adapter breaks usb ports

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causr99

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Ceton ITV6 PCIe: tuning adapter breaks usb ports

#1

Post by causr99 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 8:34 am

Hi,

I have been fighting with this issue for a few weeks now.

I built a new machine a few weeks ago with Windows 7 x64 Pro, and bought ITV6 PCIe card.

I live in San Diego North with Cox service, Cisco cable card and Cisco TA.

I have been having nothing but problems with the tuning adapter disappearing and taking USB ports with it.

I have an HP remote with a USB receiver plugged into the machine's USB2 port on the back. I also have the tuning adapter plugged into USB2 port on the front via motherboard header. I also have a wireless Logitech keyboard with the receiver plugged into the second USB2 port on the front next to the TA USB plug.

I have been having constant problems with the tuning adapter disappearing from the system, with the front light blinking 6 times (solid, then 6 blinks, then solid, etc.)

Ceton diagnostic page says that the TA is 'waiting to initialize' or 'disabled', and going to 'diagnostic menu' link reports 'request timed out'.

When this happens to tuning adapter, my USB remote stops working as well. The red light in the receiver lights up, but nothing else happens. However, the wireless keyboard keeps working even though it is plugged in into the same USB2 header as the TA.

If I try to reboot the machine, it seems to hang on 'logging off' screen. I then have to force reboot the machine. Sometimes it takes 5-10 rebooting attempts until the TA appears and Ceton diagnostic screen says that the status is 'ready', and the light is solid green.

Everything seems to be working fine for some time, but at some point, maybe as soon as next scheduled recording, a few hours, or a day, when TA is tuning channels to record shows it disappears again, and I have to go through the reboot cycle again.

I disabled selective suspend, updated Windows, installed hotfixes, updated drivers (chipset, USB, etc.), reinstalled Ceton driver package but the problem is still there.

I am at a loss as to what I can do.

It feels like an issue with Ceton USB drivers that are used for TA, but I have the latest available drivers.

Any help will be appreciated.

I contacted Ceton support, but they seem to have given up after a few back and forward contacts:
Posted on: 23 October 2015 02:37 PM
Hi,

We want to thank you for your patience and assistance in troubleshooting the issues you've been experiencing. We really appreciate the time you've spent running tests and sending us diagnostics, and after looking through all the information we unfortunately don't have a solution for the issue you've experienced. You cannot use a USB 3 port, and if you are having conflicts with other devices on the USB2 port then you'll need to isolate the TA on its own port.

There are so many possible hardware and software conflicts that can arise in a PC from simple OS corruption, virus damage, 3rd party software conflict, to hardware component incompatibility and failure.

Again thank you for your patience, and we apologies for the inconvenience. We are rarely without solutions for our customers.

Thank you,
Ceton Support

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Crash2009

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#2

Post by Crash2009 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 12:01 pm

causr99 wrote:Hi,

I have been fighting with this issue for a few weeks now.

I built a new machine a few weeks ago with Windows 7 x64 Pro, and bought ITV6 PCIe card.

I live in San Diego North with Cox service, Cisco cable card and Cisco TA.

I have been having nothing but problems with the tuning adapter disappearing and taking USB ports with it.

I have an HP remote with a USB receiver plugged into the machine's USB2 port on the back. I also have the tuning adapter plugged into USB2 port on the front via motherboard header. I also have a wireless Logitech keyboard with the receiver plugged into the second USB2 port on the front next to the TA USB plug.

I have been having constant problems with the tuning adapter disappearing from the system, with the front light blinking 6 times (solid, then 6 blinks, then solid, etc.)

Ceton diagnostic page says that the TA is 'waiting to initialize' or 'disabled', and going to 'diagnostic menu' link reports 'request timed out'.

When this happens to tuning adapter, my USB remote stops working as well. The red light in the receiver lights up, but nothing else happens. However, the wireless keyboard keeps working even though it is plugged in into the same USB2 header as the TA.

If I try to reboot the machine, it seems to hang on 'logging off' screen. I then have to force reboot the machine. Sometimes it takes 5-10 rebooting attempts until the TA appears and Ceton diagnostic screen says that the status is 'ready', and the light is solid green.

Everything seems to be working fine for some time, but at some point, maybe as soon as next scheduled recording, a few hours, or a day, when TA is tuning channels to record shows it disappears again, and I have to go through the reboot cycle again.

I disabled selective suspend, updated Windows, installed hotfixes, updated drivers (chipset, USB, etc.), reinstalled Ceton driver package but the problem is still there.

I am at a loss as to what I can do.

It feels like an issue with Ceton USB drivers that are used for TA, but I have the latest available drivers.

Any help will be appreciated.

I contacted Ceton support, but they seem to have given up after a few back and forward contacts:
Posted on: 23 October 2015 02:37 PM
Hi,

We want to thank you for your patience and assistance in troubleshooting the issues you've been experiencing. We really appreciate the time you've spent running tests and sending us diagnostics, and after looking through all the information we unfortunately don't have a solution for the issue you've experienced. You cannot use a USB 3 port, and if you are having conflicts with other devices on the USB2 port then you'll need to isolate the TA on its own port.

There are so many possible hardware and software conflicts that can arise in a PC from simple OS corruption, virus damage, 3rd party software conflict, to hardware component incompatibility and failure.

Again thank you for your patience, and we apologies for the inconvenience. We are rarely without solutions for our customers.

Thank you,
Ceton Support
What motherboard are you using?

causr99

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#3

Post by causr99 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 3:15 pm

Hi,

I am using Gigabyte z97x-ud3h (rev 1.2).
I have i7-4770 CPU and 2x8GB DIMMs.
I am using an m.2 Samsung SSD drive for system and a USB3 Seagate drive to record shows.

I started with an MSI board, but I blamed the USB behavior on the board so I swapped it for the current board.

I have been experiencing the same behavior with both boards, so it must be a software issue.

Regards

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#4

Post by steveo_in_sd » Mon Oct 26, 2015 6:13 pm

It is probably the TA and not the Ceton card. I ran SD devices and had similar behavior. A couple of suggestions:

At the point of entry for the cable coax cord do a two way splitter and have one go into your existing wiring setup and the other go into your TA and only your TA. Have the Tuner connect to the TA via USB as normal (either direct or via the PC, as appropriate). If this is unfeasible, minimize the amount of splits between the TA and coax the point of entry, and separate the TA from the cable modem if you have one as the frequencies can interfere (or so I have heard).

Make sure all your unused coax connections are properly terminated with caps.

Make sure your TA is properly provisioned. It may not be even if the cable card is.

Call the Cox Cable Card support team direct: 877-820-8202.

Good luck. Using TAs is always going to produce an unreliable environment, from my experience. This is one of the reasons I gave up on using an HTPC DVR, since so many of the Cox San Diego South channels are SDV and therefore require a functioning TA.

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#5

Post by causr99 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 7:11 pm

Hi Steveo,

Thanks for your reply.

I was using the TA pass through until recently, when I added a splitter to connect the Ceton card separately from the TA.
The same coax line from the wall already has a splitter going to my cable modem, so now I have a cable modem splitter, then a second splitter for Ceton/TA lines.

Should I rearrange the wiring, and have the splitter closest to the wall go directly to TA? Should I also use a filter for TA?

The problem is the TA seems to work after I reboot the machine, and then at some point it causes havoc with the USB ports requiring a reboot, which may actually require a number of retries until things are stable again.

I will try to pick up a new TA on the way home and will see if it will make any difference.

I read in some thread that the TA power supply may be at fault, so I will swap that as well.

The problem seems to occur when TA is tuning to the desired channels that are being requested due to scheduled shows starting to record. When this happens and the TA gets lost to the system I am getting the USB havoc that I am experiencing.

The biggest issue is that I can't really track this down to identify what is really the underlying cause of this problem. I know when this happens, and what happens, but I am having a hard time figuring out what is really causing this.

Regards.

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Crash2009

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#6

Post by Crash2009 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 8:42 pm

causr99 wrote:Hi,

I am using Gigabyte z97x-ud3h (rev 1.2).
I have i7-4770 CPU and 2x8GB DIMMs.
I am using an m.2 Samsung SSD drive for system and a USB3 Seagate drive to record shows.

I started with an MSI board, but I blamed the USB behavior on the board so I swapped it for the current board.

I have been experiencing the same behavior with both boards, so it must be a software issue.

Regards
Were you using the USB3 Seagate drive as the recording drive in both the MSI and Gigabyte setups?

If so, eliminate the USB3 Seagate as a possibility.....Set WMC to record on the SSD and cold boot (discharge residual, etc.)everything (including the TA).

Have a look at the manual (Page 50) USB Support.....What are you set to?

http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Ma ... v1.1_e.pdf
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USB_Problem001.JPG

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Crash2009

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#7

Post by Crash2009 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 8:49 pm

Stevo has some good suggestions.....here are a couple sketches. In extreme cases some of the guys have put a 4 way on the incoming line, so the path can go to anywhere at the same time. Normally we just split TA and Tuner like the first pic. Second pic shows dual TA, you can substitute the 2nd TA with your Cable Modem and other splits.

By the way you don't need the filter, unless you are running MoCA.
Attachments
ETH6-CiscoTA-Moca.jpg
DualTunerDualTA.jpg
Last edited by Crash2009 on Mon Oct 26, 2015 9:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

causr99

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#8

Post by causr99 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 8:56 pm

Hi,

I have been using the Seagate USB3 drives for a few years now.
I had a different HTPC that died due to motherboard failure (it would not go through POST), and I never had such unstable behavior from the TA.

I think that I have default USB settings in BIOS.

I can use the wireless keyboard and mouse combo in BIOS GUI, so that means that it is enabled in BIOS.

I think that USB3 drives don't show up until Windows starts.

I can try removing the USB3 drive, but I have a strong suspicion that this is all to do with TA.
It is either Ceton USB drivers, or system USB drivers (doubtful), or TA itself doing something nasty that is causing USB2 ports to stop working.
When I have the TA problem, the USB3 drive keeps on working so the issue is isolated to USB2 drivers at some level.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, when this happens, I can't restart the computer as it apparently hangs during the 'logging off' screen forcing me to restart it using the hardware restart button.
Also, when this problem happens, I can't uninstall things (tried uninstalling TA USB driver from device manager) and I can't successfully run Ceton diagnostic function. It starts running, but seems to get stuck.

Something bad happens to the system but I am not getting BSOD so I don't know what is the real problem so that I can track it down.

Regards.

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#9

Post by causr99 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 9:00 pm

Hi,

So from the first sketch, it indicates that I should put a filter in front of the splitter, not for the TA branch?

I don't have a terminator cap on the TA line out.

Do you think going from the PCIe Ceton card to an ETH card will help?

Obviously the computer will not be connected via USB to the TA, so my USB issue may go away.

I have been reading about issues people have been having with ETH Ceton devices and I am not sure I want to deal with these issues.

Regards.

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#10

Post by Crash2009 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 9:24 pm

causr99 wrote:Hi,

So from the first sketch, it indicates that I should put a filter in front of the splitter, not for the TA branch?

I don't have a terminator cap on the TA line out.

Do you think going from the PCIe Ceton card to an ETH card will help?

Obviously the computer will not be connected via USB to the TA, so my USB issue may go away.

I have been reading about issues people have been having with ETH Ceton devices and I am not sure I want to deal with these issues.

Regards.
Sorry, wrong picture.
1-Filter not necessary unless you are running MoCA.
2-Terminator is always a good idea.
3-Not suggesting you switch to ETH.
4-I never thought about that, the USB issue "might go away" however I am guessing you have a USB issue. Correct that, and you don't have to switch anything.
5-Most of the ETH issues have been "Network" Switch-Router-Cabling insufficient.

I have no hard fast facts for my opinion, but I would never use a USB drive as my recording drive (even though yours can do 10 GBPS).....As a test, toss the USB and throw in a spinner as your recording drive.

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#11

Post by Crash2009 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 9:39 pm

Curious though.....What tuner were you using when the USB Seagate was working well with the TA?

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#12

Post by causr99 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 9:40 pm

Hi,

I just hit this problem with TA disappearing.

The Ceton diagnostic page shows TA as 'waiting for initialization'. The computer was up for about 14 hours and recorded a number of shows successfully.

I wish I could find a way to track down what is causing my USB2 issues.
The problem distinctly happens when TA tries to tune channels and not at any other time.
Things are stable for some time, shows get recorded, and then at some point when TA tries to tune it causes the system to loose USB2 connectivity irrevocably until reboot.

This time it happened when I was recording shows on same channels, one show ended, so recording stopped, and then when it tried to tune for a new show the TA started blinking, which it does some time when tuning, and then it started blinking six times intermittently, and Windows lost USB2 connectivity.

Regards.

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#13

Post by causr99 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 9:41 pm

Hi,

My old computer had PCIe 4 and it had 8 USB3 drives and all was working well.

The new computer has PCIe 6 card.

I have the same TA as on the old computer.

Regards.

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#14

Post by steveo_in_sd » Mon Oct 26, 2015 9:45 pm

One thing to consider: Try plugging the TA into a USB 2.0 port and not a USB 3.0 port (these have a blue part inside usually). I was unable to ever establish a connection with the TA on my HTPC's USB 3.0 ports. Probably just a weird quirk, but something to try.

The second of Crash's pictures with the 4-way splitter is a good way to go.

I am not familiar with Ceton's diagnostic pages, but with the SD tuners there were some diagnostic pages specifically for the TA and I assume there are for Ceton as well. Look on these and make sure that the TA reports itself as authorized. If it never gets authorized, there is either a communication problem (e.g. SNR too poor) or a provisioning problem (screw-up on Cox's authorization system). Don't discount the possibility of both being true.

If there is a SNR issue, then call the Cox CC line I gave previously. Actually, you'll need to give them a call if either of those two issues are true.

I really don't think that you have a problem that is tied to USB (except possibly the USB 3.0 thing I mentioned above) because your other USB devices work fine, but if you are convinced, maybe try buying a PCI-E USB card for $15 and see if that makes a difference. A hub won't do it since it just plugs into your existing USB host, but a PCI card would set up an entirely different USB environment and allow you to confirm or reject the idea of USB being a problem.

Ultimately, be prepared for flakiness. Tuning Adapters were the death of my DVR system. I tried carrying on with just OTA supplemented by streaming, since it wasn't worth it to keep cable without being able to access most of the channels we watch, but we end up just mostly watching streaming service content now so I'm decommissioning the entire system now. In the long run, I'm happy to save $80/month on cable and catch up on some older shows that we missed when they were on, and the first-party content from Amazon and Netflix is pretty darn good too.

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#15

Post by causr99 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 9:54 pm

Hi Steveo,

I am definitely using USB2 ports for TA, not USB3 ports.

The Ceton diagnostic page for TA says that it is 'ready' when all is well, and TA works for some time, and when TA disappears it says 'waiting for initialization' with TA blinking six times, pausing, and blinking again.

I have not yet considered getting a PCIe USB card, but it is something to try, I guess.

I suspect that the problem is tied strictly to software, or an interaction between TA, USB driver, and software, because when this problem occurs the system behaves badly, with the system getting stuck on 'logging off' screen when I try to reboot, and complete inability to uninstall drivers or programs.

Regards.

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#16

Post by Crash2009 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 9:56 pm

Powercfg might tell you what is going on.....Make an image before you play with it.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/lib ... S.10).aspx

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#17

Post by Crash2009 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 10:32 pm

The light bulb just lit up! Try this.....WARNING Just a hunch.

Plug the USB3 Seagate into a USB2. Yes, the same bus as the TA. Maybe the problem is the board not being able to communicate properly (driver) between USB2 and USB3.

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#18

Post by causr99 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 10:41 pm

Hi,

I can try moving the USB3 drive to USB2 port, but I suspect that what will happen is the drive will stop working when the problem occurs, and not the other way around, but it is something to try.

Regards.

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#19

Post by steveo_in_sd » Mon Oct 26, 2015 10:57 pm

causr99 wrote:Hi Steveo,

I am definitely using USB2 ports for TA, not USB3 ports.

The Ceton diagnostic page for TA says that it is 'ready' when all is well, and TA works for some time, and when TA disappears it says 'waiting for initialization' with TA blinking six times, pausing, and blinking again.

I have not yet considered getting a PCIe USB card, but it is something to try, I guess.

I suspect that the problem is tied strictly to software, or an interaction between TA, USB driver, and software, because when this problem occurs the system behaves badly, with the system getting stuck on 'logging off' screen when I try to reboot, and complete inability to uninstall drivers or programs.

Regards.
Do you regularly powercycle your HTPC system, including the tuners and TA? I did this and it made the problem more manageable because then I could influence when the TA flakiness would occur and then keep at it until everything was functional again. Not sure if you are aware, but the TAs have an authorization token of some kind that expires periodically (every day?). What I found is that sometimes the renewal wouldn't happen and then the SDV channels wouldn't tune. The PC going to sleep seemed to cause it sometimes, Windows Updates being installed almost always caused a renewal problem, and ??? also caused problems. Every morning before leaving for work I would restart everything until the SDV channels would work (which was usually just one cycle, but sometimes many). To put a bit of gasoline on your USB fire, sometimes I had to unplug and the replug in the USB cable for the TA to restore proper function even after several power cycles. It was basically a crapshoot.

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#20

Post by causr99 » Mon Oct 26, 2015 11:23 pm

Hi Steveo,

At this time, since I am getting the system into a dysfunctional state, I am forced to restart it to get functionality back.

My PC is set to never go to sleep, and I have Windows Updates never update on their own.

I don't think that the issue is with TA not being authorized, as I experienced TA problems that happened right after reboot on first recording attempt, but then sometimes the thing works fine for a number of hour or a day, and then craps out.

I have been looking around the forums, and people recommend getting three hotfixes from MS. I installed some of them, but didn't experience improvement, but I will try again to see if things will change.

I am quite frustrated with this, but I was happy with the previous HTPC that worked for over 3 years until motherboard died, and I never had such annoying issues with things mostly working with occasional TA tuning issues or need to replace cable card, but nothing as consistently annoying as this USB issue.

Regards.

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