Ceton InfiniTV 6 Discussion

[JohnW248]

Had my first failure on the new Ceton6 ETH after about two weeks of uptime. Media center failed to tune (no signal) when the wife went to watch TV. Just power cycling the Ceton ETH made no difference, but a subsequent power cycle of the PC brought it back.

Is there a way to just "reset" the media center portion w/out rebooting? I'd like to be able to get back from the no signal citation w/out a PC reboot.

I too hate to reboot unless absolutely necessary. I would suggest you try:

1. Close and open media center again and see if it works, if not close media center
2. From services, stop and restart the ehRecvr service
3. Open Media Center and see if it works.
4. Another "handy" trick is to use the SD installer and open the set-up program, click repair and apply and then reopen Media Center.

I don't know if you can install the SD installer without the tuner but you could try.

[Otter351]

I tried to get a self install, they said it wasn't available in my area. On top of that, there is a $60 fee for them to come out. This was over the phone so maybe I'll go into the local service center in person and see what they have to say

This might be your best route. Just go to the local service center and ask for a Cable Card. Nothing more nothing less. You shouldn't need to provide them further info. You could return your set top boxes if you like during this trip but I suggest you hold on to the set top boxes UNTIL you are certain you have your Cable Card properly functioning at home.

Just a followup, I was able to get a self-install by going into a service center. After about a 45 min wait I was ready to scream and argue my FCC rights to get one but they just handed the CableCard over without a blink. Although, the lady kept saying Tivo this and Tivo that...didn't matter how many times I said Ceton or Windows Media Center. Since most people only post when they have problems, I'd like to say that I got the 6ETH out of the box to fully functional in about 20 min (and I'm a WMC newbie). It only showed 4 tuners available at first but after resetting the tuners in the diagnostics, all 6 eventually showed up. My only disappointment has been picture quality but it seems this is a WMC decoder issue. I've been running BeyondTV for almost a decade and my HD quality had been phenomenal through QAM and a variety of codecs. Oh well, I'll see if my TV settings can make it better

[scyto]

My Current Experiences

I haven't used tuner pooling since the first week, I did some maintenance tasks Ceton support asked me to and I have not see any tuner unavailable issues since then. I will now put tuner pooling back into the equation and keep folks updated.

However compared to my InfinTV4 I do get much more macro blocking tuner drop outs. They seem to have two variants:
a) the one where you get a grey line and half of blocks 2/3rds down the screen (I used to get these on the InfinTV 4 too and know that the grey line is related to Nvidia cards as ATI seem to treat this differently) I sometimes get sound drop
b) general widearea smooshing of the signal, sometimes with sound drop and sometimes with out.

since moving to the ETH I am seeing less of scenario a but much more of scenario b across multiple channels. My signals seem to be ok on noise and db measures.

any ideas?

[JohnW248]

network packet loss? I think SD has a tool or test for this and you might prowl on their forums. But network set-up is much more important with Ethernet tuners, obviously, and any weak point can cause problems. Do you see any SOAP errors in any logs?

[werds]

So how long until the PCI-e version rolls out? That is the one I am waiting for!!!!

[shortcut3d]

The forth coming Intel NUC DS53427HYE has an i5vPro 3427U 1.8GHz Dual-Core Ivy Bridge CPU. The Ceton product webpage for the InfiniTV6 ETH recommends a dual core 2.5GHz processor. Can the new Intel NUC i5 support the InfiniTV6 ETH? According to comparison sites, this CPU is supposed to be comparable to my existing 2.7Ghz i7 Dual-Core Sandybridge CPU. Right now my CPU does not go over 15% utilization with 6 recordings and 2 Echos all running.

[foxwood]

MHz recommendations for CPUs have been utterly meaningless for years - a Pentium dual-core E5300 @2.60MHz is a lot slower than a Core i7-3720QM @ 2.60GHz.

[Haba]

MHz recommendations for CPUs have been utterly meaningless for years - a Pentium dual-core E5300 @2.60MHz is a lot slower than a Core i7-3720QM @ 2.60GHz.

I do not agree, frequency ratings have always been useful speed indication within their own product line. Naturally, when new CPU product lines come out they are in a different class, you cannot compare speeds to a different line of CPU's. I agree that Ceton's listed CPU requirements are poorly written.

[foxwood]

We're not talking about specific product lines - where model numbers are usually a far more useful guide to relative performance than MHz ratings anyway (the Core i7-3930K @ 3.20GHz is faster than the Core i7-3770K @ 3.50GHz for example).

[shortcut3d]

Agreed the requirements are some what unclear, hence my post. There are already success stories with the Intel NUC i3 Ethernet version and SD HDHR Prime. Not surprising since the NIC is a good ole Intel gigabit. The root of my question was related to Ceton driver efficiency vs SD's (I submit spinning blue circle caused by InfiniTV drivers as evidence). Second was double the tuners. I feel the network card will be bigger factor with the ETH.

[Shackleford]

I run a NUC with my Infinitv4 USB with no sweat. I'm sure the 6 would be no problem especially for the next gen NUC.

[ToddD]

I run a NUC with my Infinitv4 USB with no sweat. I'm sure the 6 would be no problem especially for the next gen NUC.

I run a 6 on the current gen NUC. Works fine....except....

[ToddD]

Had my first failure on the new Ceton6 ETH after about two weeks of uptime. Media center failed to tune (no signal) when the wife went to watch TV. Just power cycling the Ceton ETH made no difference, but a subsequent power cycle of the PC brought it back.

Is there a way to just "reset" the media center portion w/out rebooting? I'd like to be able to get back from the no signal citation w/out a PC reboot.

Not to be the barrier of maybe bad news, but today I had the exact same thing happen. Tuner had been running just over 2 weeks (15 days). Started giving no sig errors (Service not found-Killed the show I was recording today.). Rebooted Tuner ...no change. Rebooted PC - works normally. I find that I always have to reboot the PC after I reboot the tuner to reset Windows DRM (it's always red in the Ceton Web GUI after a tuner reboot without a PC reboot.)
I hope we are not going to have a reboot every 2 weeks requirement. One other note- I've rebooted the PC several times during the 2 weeks but not the tuner.

[erkotz]

If you collected a Ceton Diagnostic Capture, or have a way to reproduce this issue, please open a support ticket with us. The only way we can investigate this is with data.

[ToddD]

If you collected a Ceton Diagnostic Capture, or have a way to reproduce this issue, please open a support ticket with us. The only way we can investigate this is with data.

I think we will have to wait two more weeks...I'll get a diag next time.

[STC]

...The only way we can investigate this is with data.

Had to do it.


Sorry

[Otter351]

Funny, same thing here. About two weeks (12 days to be precise) of non-stop recording and really putting it through it's paces (200+ recordings) WMC lost the tuners. Ceton Diagnostic couldn't find them, had to reboot both to get it to work. I assumed it was a network issue, maybe not

[shortcut3d]

The early days of SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime a reset was required about every two weeks. Fortunately, the Prime did not have an issue with restarting without also restarting the HTPC. The SD support forums have a bunch of command line scripts to schedule tasks to restart the Prime. Those days have long passed for SD.

Is the dependency of the InfiniTV6 ETH restarting and being always available for the PC because its based on InfiniTV PCIe device?

I could always restart the Prime or disconnect the network and it would gracefully resume.

Edit: oddly enough Optimize Media Center option caused more (similar) issues than "optimization", so I've been running that disable since the HDHR Prime days.

[shortcut3d]

I run a NUC with my Infinitv4 USB with no sweat. I'm sure the 6 would be no problem especially for the next gen NUC.

I run a 6 on the current gen NUC. Works fine....except....

Awesome about the NUC. The i5 Intel NUC BOXDC53427HYE is now In Stock and shipping on Amazon. I debated between Gigabyte BRIX i7 and the Intel NUC i5. I ended up selecting the NUC because of the lauded Intel gigabit NIC. I also think the NUC looks more like an appliance, although I canceled my BRIX order before receiving it.

[ToddD]

I run a NUC with my Infinitv4 USB with no sweat. I'm sure the 6 would be no problem especially for the next gen NUC.

I run a 6 on the current gen NUC. Works fine....except....

Awesome about the NUC. The i5 Intel NUC BOXDC53427HYE is now In Stock and shipping on Amazon. I debated between Gigabyte BRIX i7 and the Intel NUC i5. I ended up selecting the NUC because of the lauded Intel gigabit NIC. I also think the NUC looks more like an appliance, although I canceled my BRIX order before receiving it.

I love the NUC...I think you're going to like that thing. I can see them replacing more and more of my computers.