Ceton infiniTV 6 ETH pixelates if more than 4 channels used

[ceton 6]

Help I have a Ceton infiniTV 6 ETH that pixelates if you record over 4 channels. I have sent in many tickets to ceton starting in early August the beta firmware ceton_infinitv_beta_fw_13_5_24_142.IMAGE offered did nothing to fix the pixilation problem.

Using fresh install win 7 all updates, SSD drive for OS, 16g ram, i5 4.4gh processor, 2gb HTPC video card, 2 7200 sata drives and tried several gb routers. No virus or firewall software is installed. This ceton is installed on a gb router with only 1 brand new pc that was built and used only as a media center specifically built for this card and this purpose.

Any ideas?

Is the Ceton infinTV 6 ETH devices defective?

Is the Ceton infinTV 6 ETH software defective?

Is the Ceton infinTV 6 ETH firmware defective?

[richard1980]

Possibly related to this?

[ceton 6]

richard1980 that is not the issue. The Ceton infiniTV 6 ETH I have pixelates if you have more than 4 channels active.

How may tickets and diagnostic reports does it take for Ceton to issue a RA for defective infiniTV 6 ETH ?

The infiniTV 6 ETH is the only part that has not been swapped out or replaced everything else has been swapped out more than once including the entire PC



It is 100% something to do with the Ceton, hardware, software or firmware that is defective.

[shortcut3d]

Ceton never replaced my InfiniTV6 ETH that pixelated. Never offered to replace, never floated the idea. Through several tickets and complete replacement of my entire environment never once offered a swap. Support alway pointed at things that were my fault. Until I swapped the HTPC, then they just stopped responding. Eventually got a call from Pam that they are no longer going to trouble shoot my issue and thanked me for the months of sending diagrams, diagnostics, and Wireshark captures.

For troubleshooting reference:
1. Clean install of Windows 7 x64
2. 3 new switches (Netgear, DLink, Ubiquiti)
3. Moved InfiniTV6 ETH the incoming coax drop
4. All new HTPC
5. 3 sets of new cables Cat5e, Cat6 UTP, Cat6a STP
6. Replaced RG6 coax with new quad shielded
7. Moved to new house so in wall wiring is new and tested
8. Added MoCa filter / low pass filter
9. 3 routers (Apple 3TB TimeCapsule, Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite, Ubiquiti EdgeRouter POE.
10. Multiple Storage options (2 SSDs, 2 HDD, 2 different NAS for iSCSI Targets)

[richard1980]

richard1980 that is not the issue. The Ceton infiniTV 6 ETH I have pixelates if you have more than 4 channels active.

What makes you so certain that the same issue that causes pixelation on the the InfiniTV4 when more than 1 tuner is in use isn't also responsible for the pixelation on the InfiniTV6 when more than 4 tuners are in use?

[ceton 6]

Now 1 of the tuners no longer receives a TV signal.

[richard1980]

Is it not receiving a signal at all, or is it dropping packets (which means the tuner is receiving the signal, but is not transmitting the packets to WMC)?

[barnabas1969]

Eventually got a call from Pam that they are no longer going to trouble shoot my issue and thanked me for the months of sending diagrams, diagnostics, and Wireshark captures.

Wow. I'd be really angry. Pam Hammer was very helpful when I spoke with her. Did you ask for a refund? I would.

[rv65]

Some CableCo's are using CableCARD's with outdated firmware which can have issues with more than 4 tuners!

[shortcut3d]

Ceton has worked everything out for me.


For those having trouble with pixelation, check your splitters. I was testing various splitters and found a MoCA enabling 2GHz splitter caused all kinds of problems for the InfiniTV6 ETH. The splitter was setup with a MoCA POE filter at the entry and no MoCA devices on the network. The splitter was also 4-way vs original 1GHz 8-way. The cable modem performed much better with this the 4-way splitter. Maybe the expanded pass through bandwidth is causing trouble?

Another difference was soldered back with 130 RFI min shielding on 8-way vs epoxy sealed with better frequency separation. Maybe the InfiniTV6 ETH is sensitive to RFI?

[signcarver]

Shortcut3d, I was curious if you knew what part number your cablecard was (it may not be worth removing it to check)... I have been reading that tivo has been having a lot of problems on fios with their new 6 tuner model of the cards whose part numbers were 514517-002-00 (MCPOD1) or 514517-006-00 (MCPOD2) (many refer to these as 002 and 006) The main problem has been severe pixilation/macroblocking on protected channels such as HBO as well as often requiring an attenuator to lower the signal on the working card 514517-017-00 (MCPOD3). All the cards seem to work fine in the 4 tuner models.

I'm just curious if this is also why so many have had issues with the ceton infinitv6 or if it is just a problem with tivo.

[shortcut3d]

Shortcut3d, I was curious if you knew what part number your cablecard was (it may not be worth removing it to check)... I have been reading that tivo has been having a lot of problems on fios with their new 6 tuner model of the cards whose part numbers were 514517-002-00 (MCPOD1) or 514517-006-00 (MCPOD2) (many refer to these as 002 and 006) The main problem has been severe pixilation/macroblocking on protected channels such as HBO as well as often requiring an attenuator to lower the signal on the working card 514517-017-00 (MCPOD3). All the cards seem to work fine in the 4 tuner models.

I'm just curious if this is also why so many have had issues with the ceton infinitv6 or if it is just a problem with tivo.

I believe the issue was with FIOS and I'm using Comcast. Either way my cards are 012

[signcarver]

Thanks, I think 12 would be the "3rd gen" as the others began with "00" in that position... I should probably open my own thread for this as I am interested in collecting some information to see if there is a pattern that also affects the infinitv6 but for now I just wanted to throw that idea out there to some that are having problems. For some reason I thought it was you that had to lower the signal from verizon and that is being discovered on the 6 tuner tivos as well.

[tzr916]

Looks like I may be having this issue as well. Last night 8pm-9pm had 4 shows recording, then 9pm-10pm had 2 shows recording. So far the 8pm shows all have pixellation fits every few minutes (more times than I can count and makes watching the shows very distracting to annoying to unwatchable). While the 9pm shows don't pixellate at all.

Comcast to ETH6 and cable modem
One 35ft coax line from point of entry and one splitter right at the equipment
No tuning adapters, no moca
One Cisco router, one Gigabit switch, HTPC & ETH6 plugged into switch using 6ft cat 5e patch cables
Signal levels on six tuners varies from -2 to +2 dBmV
SNR 37 to 39 dB
Temps 56 to 61 C
Firmware v13.5.6.132
Motorola cablecard v1573

[glugglug]

Check your ethernet adapter settings as well.
Try making everything happen in the CPU instead of being offloaded to the adapter. A lot of the offloading functionality that some ethernet adapters claim to have are INCREDIBLY buggy, EVEN IN ENTERPRISE HARDWARE! I've seen particularly bad Broadcom adapters present in the majority of HP and Dell servers. If you offload checksum calculation to the adapter, there are certain byte patterns which it will corrupt, sometimes replacing the 00 00 byte pattern with FF FF or vice versa, and it won't really do any checksum calculation as far as I can tell, so you get corrupt file transfers. If you turn on RSS (receive side scaling), which is supposed to distribute incoming packets between CPU cores for better scaling to multi-CPU systems, instead what it actually does at least with Broadcom is to send a copy of each UDP packet to each core, so an application running on a quad core system with RSS enabled will actually see and have to process 4 copies of every packet. Unfortunately these crazily buggy "features" are on by default.

Gigabit ethernet is a trivial thing for a modern CPU to handle all of it. Switch whatever you can to using the CPU.

[tzr916]

Try making everything happen in the CPU instead of being offloaded to the adapter

I saw http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 316#p19316
so I am trying:
IPv4 Checksum Offload - Disabled
Large Send Offload (IPv4) - Disabled
TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4) - Disabled
UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4) - Disabled

turn on RSS (receive side scaling)

I don't seem to have RSS. I do have Interrupt Moderation which I think I changed from Enabled to Disabled some time ago. I just re-enabled it.... See what happens

[mcewinter]

^Have you tried disabling network throttling? That makes a noticable difference with my Prime on my machine.

[tzr916]

^Have you tried disabling network throttling? That makes a noticable difference with my Prime on my machine.

Yes, I did that this morning as well.

[tzr916]

Seems those settings worked. Did a test after a reboot and all 4 recordings flawless. Last night had 5 recording at same time and so far those are also good.

[barnabas1969]

Try making everything happen in the CPU instead of being offloaded to the adapter

I saw http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 316#p19316
so I am trying:
IPv4 Checksum Offload - Disabled
Large Send Offload (IPv4) - Disabled
TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4) - Disabled
UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4) - Disabled

turn on RSS (receive side scaling)

I don't seem to have RSS. I do have Interrupt Moderation which I think I changed from Enabled to Disabled some time ago. I just re-enabled it.... See what happens

Each of the above settings can make things better or worse, depending on your NIC, CPU, and the load on both/either. I don't recommend wholesale changing all of them. You should change one at a time and observe any improvement or degradation.

It may well be that network throttling was the problem.