ITV6: Viewer or Listening Conflict after a minute of viewing

[JohnJ9]

As much as I found hooking up my InfiniTV6 pretty straightforward for the Win7 PC I have in the house, on the Win8 PC I picked up to use mainly for working with the ITV6 it's been a disappointing tale of woe. After a lot of hassles getting things to recognize and work (and many re-installs of the Ceton drivers), I can get things to tune after a reboot, watch a few minutes of a show, at which point I get a message "Viewing or Listening Conflict / No tuner available to satisfy the current request." It just gives up and goes to this status, at which point the only thing that will shake it is a reboot. I've now tried beta drivers for both the PC and the ETH without improving anything. Given I can watch for a couple minutes before it fails, this just has the feel of a driver issue, but who am I to say? When it gets in this mode, I can still go to the other PC and access the ETH with no problems. Obviously, nothing scheduled has recorded. Additionally, checking the status of the box shows five available tuners, as well as one that thinks it's still streaming back to this PC - still in the Playing state. The Win8 PC is running Win8 Pro, not 8.1. I'm not sure if upgrading to 8.1 is desired, suggested, or just confounds things that much more.

I'm not sure where to turn next.

[NCoastTweaker]

I'm not sure where to turn next.

I had similar issue, but it would happen a few seconds after the picture started playing. try checking the sound options in control panel. be sure you have the default sound device that being used set to stereo. WMC will override this on broadcasts with 5.1 AC3 sound, and default to 2 ch for broadcasts that use stereo.. but it only works when you set the default to 2 channel. same goes for configuring WMC. Set to 2 channel. (WMC will override it for 5.1 channel broadcasts)
(I make no guarantees, but this seems to work on mine.)

if that doesn't work....

Try using Ceton customer support. They will provide the means to diagnose the issue.
They are very knowledgeable and can help you. (if they can't fix it, then RMA it)

Have you tried
1. using the CETON diagnostic?
2. turning off all power management in windows
3. using a UPS in front of your PC / Tuning Adapter / modem etc
4. have the cable company check your signal levels inside your POE and also verify your cable runs are properly terminated and using the correct cabling type etc.

Sadly this is the uphill battle you will need to face. Ceton support can help get you started. Once they walk you thru their diagnostic procedures a few times, you get to where you have some basic knowledge at your disposal, but at the end of the day...
its on you to fix it.

Be methodical. Start at the POE and work your way down..
1. signal strength / quality must be right
2. HTPC must be running stable. (event viewer is your friend) identify errors and determine if they are relevant to your symptoms.
If they are , take steps to correct them. (easier said than done)
3. Ensure your power feeding your pc / network is stable. Frontend everything with a UPS, a good name brand power supply, and hire an electrician to run separate 20 amp capable outlets to your equipment area, and install a unified grounding block system to tie in the ground to your outside cable to the house ground. (if not, you run the risk of a ground loop if the cable box is grounded independently of your house ground. -(if your not an electrician, please do not try this on your own. you could burn your house down)
(I did all of this prior to installing the infinitv devices and still went thru hell)
4. have more than one system available to test on. at some point, the support folks will cast suspicions on your system. Some of the stuff they ask required loading drivers and can cause issues with other stuff that was installed already.
I built two based on AMD chipset / cpus and two others based on intel chipset / cpus. That way, I could direct compare. In many cases, the symptoms I had with the usb infinitv were consistent regardless of the OS or drivers... Excuses from support folks tend to go down when you have this option available. it forces them to look closer at their device instead of your system.
5. stay away from power saving/hibernation/sleep/away mode until AFTER you have it running stable with none of those options.
You can always introduce those features at a later time... then if you see issues, you'll know what changed.
6. Use only one tuner card. don't mix a Hauppauge hvr-2250 tuner in with it. That just gives ceton the excuse to blame the issues on the Hauppauge drivers and their tuner device. (even if it has no bearing)
7. build a cheap standalone pc just for the ceton. don't run anything else on it. no games, no video card. Use an APU or an intel cpu with HD4000 or higher igpu solution. The less drivers that need to interoperate ... the better.. just run cpu, ceton, SSD (for OS) and a standard HDD to store the recordings. (1 or more TB capacity) You only need a mobo with basic features.. not overclocking or super heavyduty vrm's etc.. heck, a small ITX mobo would do.. Your just asking for problems if you use the htpc for anything else other than watching TV.


Ceton support will go to the edge of the earth to diagnose the issue. My only complaint about them is that they only look at the ticket once every several weeks unless you call management and make a verbal request. pretty much anytime you need an update.(PITA) Once they get focused on it though, they are very thorough. Just be ready to spend an hour on the phone in front of your computer, and make sure you have easy access to every aspect of your cable infrastructure, back of your system etc. I went into this with the mindset to see it thru to the bitter end.. no matter what the cost.. the goal was to make work good enough.. price no object.. (er I mean 'I was willing to spend a few thousand dollars on alternate builds and infrastructure improvements to my home where most sane folks would just cave in and go for the cable company box instead.. and they are probably the smarter ones when I look at the time and money I spent on this)

If doing all of this seems to be more trouble than its worth, then go back to using a set top box or cable co dvr solution.
My experience may be a worst case scenario, but I sure did live thru it from April 2011 thru April 2012. My issues were finally addressed when I asked Ceton to exchange my USB ITV4 for a PCIE model. (this was after they had already swapped out the old usb unit with another usb unit) I've seen other posts where folks had nightmares with pcie units and got good results when switching to the usb versions... so I guess its a crapshoot. now I still have occasional issues with 'no subscription avail' etc, but it only happens once or twice every 2-3 months.. (and I don't trust a win os to run that long trouble free without a reboot)

I went to extremes to get this thing working 'good enough' for me... but its still not perfect. (I don't know if it can ever be)
I was even using task mgr to launch weekly .bat files to perform reboots to get in/ front of the usb ceton tuner dropouts... but even this did not help. Things only got better with a pcie replacement. and I initially resisted this because I wanted to diagnose and find the root cause of the usb ITV4. 1 year, 3 additional pc builds later, I realized that I don't have the skills to fix it. (and neither do the vendors) I can only get it working 'good enough'.

Now I'm probably counting my blessings where other folks new to this would barely be able to tolerate it. So its also a matter of perspective. If you go thru enough punishment, you start getting to the point of being able to live with some of the quirks.
For me, if 99.9% of my recordings are avail, I call that success! I remember as a new user being really concerned about the macroblocking issues that are still present in the product today. After a year of missed recordings, etc, I don't even care about the line of blocks that randomly appear every several minutes.. My expectations got whittled down due to the other more important issues... Like having the tuners avail).

Another alternative is to build two pc's, get two infinitvs, two Tuning Adapters (if cable co required) and run them both side by side. (or use a competitor product to compare) Have them both record the same stuff. Chances of both failing at the same time are less... again that's extreme, but when your dealing with consumer based electronics, and pc systems... you cannot depend on these to work glitch free.

(you won't see any consumer based solutions being used in ANY mission critical applications)

even after putting ALL my pc's/modem/router/switch/splitter-amp on UPS, I still lose service when the power goes out cause the cable co relies on the power company to run their nodes. (wish they used batteries / dc like the hardlines on the phone co does)
Hardlines stay on.. ditto for some cell towers too...

I thought about building a server grade system, or a blade, but c'mon.. its a tv tuner... as it stands, I'll need to run this thing for the next 15 years to roi the investment of equipment an time I've committed.