No Tuner Available, Tuner Not Connected, etc.

[evilOlive]

In the next 90 minutes or so a Comcast technician is coming to adjust my cable signal strength however I'm not confident this will resolve my issues.

Basically, every 4-8 hours the tuner will either lose TV signal or lose all contact with the tuners entirely. In either case, rebooting the machine invariably fixes the issue, but rebooting my PC repeatedly throughout the day isn't feasible.

The signal strength for some channels is definitely low, hence the tech coming out to adjust signal strength. (Some have registered at -11.8db, which is obviously not acceptable.)

I tried downloading a special utility I found (and can not find again for some reason) on this forum which is supposed to give a list of all the signal strength and SNR's for each channel but I can NOT get it to run on my machine, no matter what security settings I establish in IE. In the end, IE *always* blocks the scripts from running, so it never gathers data. The file I am running for that is called CetonSignals.hta. I wish I could get it to run though as having that information available today would be super helpful.

Manually tuning some of the channels I've had problems with show the following:
174: -9.4db
702: -4
163: -10.6
502: -9.3
517: -4.4
670: -8.6
705: -7.1
529: -9.6
116: -0.1
699: -6.6
694: -5.1

While all but one shows within the technically acceptable range of -10 to +10, we're really riding the bottom of the signal strength limits.

The SNR on all channels tested was between 35.2 and 37.1

Edit: So I guess my question right now is whether or not the signal strength can cause the hardware to become unavailable where I just get "No Tuner Available to Satisfy the Current Request" until I reboot, or if there is another problem (firmware/hardware/?) that is causing that problem?

[evilOlive]

Update: Comcast just left. Tested the line all the way up to the card. Signal levels are very high - and totally acceptable - straight up to the point where I connect to the infiniTV. Measured at the point where the cable connects to the infinitv, my signal levels are all between -1 and +8 db. Once connected to the ceton card, and tuning to various channels, I get the numbers shown above. In other words, I'm losing somewhere between 7 and 10 db between the end of the standard coax cable and the pci card.

So the cable dude boosted my signals with a +10db powered amp, and padded it by -3 to give me an overall result of +7db. All signals look golden inside the infinitv PCI card now, however, measured at the end of the cable, the signal levels are far, far too high.

No idea how this will affect the problems I've been having, nor why I'm losing so much signal inside the card (or on the little tail connector). Anyone have any thoughts/suggestions?

[aweber]

i just posted about similar issues. I don't know if it's your SnR or not, but I'm frustrated as heck, because (you can read the details in my thread) I have to power cycle the PC to get my tuners back. And since they come right back, I'm pretty sure it's not the signal coming down the cable...there's something in the card or PC that's the problem.

Good Luck with yours.

-AJ

[evilOlive]

Yeah, that's probably the very thing that makes me worry the most, too. That the tuners disappear and can't be retrieved without a reboot. This makes it seem unlikely to be related to signal strength.

My SNR's are all above 35 except one, which is 34.3, which is not so bad.

Good luck to you as well!

PS - I have found Ceton tech support to be rather responsive, especially considering the level of service one frequently receives when contacting tech support with a web form. On Saturday, I submitted my first ticket fifteen minutes before they closed up shop for the week, and I received a reply six minutes later linking me to the new firmware. I updated twice over the weekend and today, Monday morning, I got a reply before noon my time. To be frank, that's stellar in comparison to many experiences I have had with other companies, so hooray for that. If you haven't submitted a ticket directly with them yet, I suggest you do that right away!

[aweber]

I have an open ticket, but it has started to drag on. I agree, they are not terrible about responding. I have seen far worse.

Coincidentally, I was just watching ESPN (and working) and again, after about 2hrs (timing is getting suspicious...used to be random timing), I suddenly get "All TV tuners are currently in use..." I can tell you that I'm the only one using the PC, and only tuned to one channel when it abruptly stopped.

Going into the Ceton Diag Tool, it says "Searching for InfiniTV" for a bit, and eventually finds the installed card (that should take all of < 1sec to do normally). When I click on "Devices" tab, it says "Please wait while searching for InfiniTV..." for about 30sec. Again, that should be almost immediate. Eventually it gets to "The InfiniTV is not responding. Try uninstalling any third party firewall software and rebooting your machine." Uh, I didn't install, update or change any firewall settings while I was watching Live TV.

Then the Diag seems to restart from the top of the list. Says the same thing...

[erkotz]

2 suggestions:
1. Uninstall (not disable) any non-MS Antivirus or Firewall software you have installed
2. Update to the Ceton beta drivers, then the beta FW from within it.

[aweber]

Tried to reply from my phone...excuse this if it ends-up being a duplicate post.

1) No additional AV or Firewall is installed. Just Win7 default stuff from MSFT. And I even tried excluding the Ceton Adapter from the firewall entirely (so it is not firewalled at all). Did not help.

2) I will try this tonight, though I thought I did install the latest (beta) drivers yesterday. Drivers seem to install fine. I just can't flash the card in any way.

[evilOlive]

I have uninstalled AVG and installed MSE instead. I have only the windows firewall in place.

Alas, everything worked fine for about three hours (as usual) and then the tuners crapped out and I had to reboot to get them back. Fortunately I caught diagnostic reports just before AND after the major errors, so I've sent that off to Ceton for review. Hopefully I'll hear something helpful from them today.

After a reboot my tuners were back of course, and they worked until sometime while I was asleep. Upon waking, I found again that I had no available tuner to satisfy the current requests.

A reboot again has my tuners back online.

I don't want to you know, gripe and complain and all that. But I am a little nervous... and quite disappointed. Ah well. Boo hoo and such... fingers crossed!

[erkotz]

I have uninstalled AVG and installed MSE instead. I have only the windows firewall in place.

Alas, everything worked fine for about three hours (as usual) and then the tuners crapped out and I had to reboot to get them back. Fortunately I caught diagnostic reports just before AND after the major errors, so I've sent that off to Ceton for review. Hopefully I'll hear something helpful from them today.

After a reboot my tuners were back of course, and they worked until sometime while I was asleep. Upon waking, I found again that I had no available tuner to satisfy the current requests.

A reboot again has my tuners back online.

I don't want to you know, gripe and complain and all that. But I am a little nervous... and quite disappointed. Ah well. Boo hoo and such... fingers crossed!

Did you install the beta firmware, too?

[evilOlive]

I did, indeed. My ticket number is TTZ-567-61172 and my most recent update includes two diagnostics reports which should show not only the beta firmware installed but also MSE as my AV and the removal of VirtualBox.

I'm very curious to know if the most current diagnostics reports show anything interesting/helpful/revealing.

To recap, I was watching recorded TV and recording several channels, maybe all 4.

I got a "No TV Signal" error on a new channel when switching to that channel to record a scheduled show.

I immediately did a Diagnostic and was in the process of updating my ticket when MCE started throwing a HUGE number of errors. More than 2 dozen I would guess. Tuner not available, recorder error, and some others I didn't even catch because I was just clicking so fast on cancel on each one. After the errors stopped coming, no tuners were available any longer. I did a second diagnostics report, zipped them both up together, and updated my ticket.

After a reboot, all was once again well. That was last night.

This morning I got up and had no tuners again, lots of missed recordings, and no tuner available. Rebooted to restore.

Hopefully those two diags might tell you something. I had heard that sending multiple replies to the ticket could delay replies, so I'm only doing one update at a time... I hope that's the right way to do it!

[evilOlive]

In case it might help someone else, I've been directed now to do the following steps:

1. Upgrade your PCI drivers to the latest Microsoft Windows 7 RTM/SP1 hotfix. The link below discusses a specific scenario, but this update contains other fixes as well:

KB Article Number(s): 2601456 for Windows 7 SP1.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2601456

2. We also recommend that you change your Power Options by following the instructions below:

-- Open Control Panel and navigate to the Power Options icon and double click it.
-- From the Power Options dialog box choose "Change Plan Settings" from the current selected power plan.
-- Click the "Change Advanced Power Settings" link
-- Scroll to PCI Express and expand the Link State Power Management section
-- Click the setting and change it to "Off"
Note: Laptops should change only the "Plugged in:" section
-- Save and reboot the computer.

Have done those items now and will of course, give it a hearty go and see if we have failures again. Fingers crossed. Once again, thanks to Ceton support for prompt replies.

[evilOlive]

And after about 3 hours (which seems pretty reliable) all tuners have failed. "Viewing or Listening Conflict - No tuner available to satisfy the current request."

Didn't even have MCE open, it was just trying to start recordings.

Now that I got those errors, opening MCE and trying to view live tv says all my tuners are unavailable.

Updated my ticket with a new diagnostic.

Edit: I want to also point out that every single time I have this problem, the log available at http://192.168.200.1/Services/Log.html shows the same long list of errors. I mean exactly the same errors every single time.

Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (2,4,8)
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (3,4,8)
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (0,4,8)
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (1,4,8)
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (2,4,8)
Jan 1 03:27:46 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 03:27:47 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 03:27:47 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (3,4,8)
Jan 1 03:27:48 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 03:27:48 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 03:27:48 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (3,4,8)

So every single time I lose my tuners, if I look at the log, this is what it says.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Of course I've updated my ticket at Ceton.

[evilOlive]

We would like to enable some additional logging on your machine to try and determine what is
happening. Please follow the steps below:
1. CloseWindows Media Center
2. Open an *ELEVATED* command prompt (Instructions Below)
-- Click the Start button .
-- In the Search box, type command prompt.
-- In the list ofresults, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator. If you
are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide
confirmation.
3. Run the commands below:
-- REG ADD HKLM\Software\Debug\ehRecvr.exe /v DbgLevel /t REG_DWORD /d 0xffffffff
-- net stop ehrecvr
-- net start ehrecvr
4. Start Windows Media Center
5. Please take a diagnostic when everything is working correctly and upload it to this ticket.
6. Once the issue has repeated itself please run a diagnostic capture again and upload it to the
ticket, so we have both a working and non-working diagnostic file.
-- To collect an InfiniTV Diagnostic Capture, please click on the Start menu, type in "Ceton InfiniTV
Diagnostic Capture" and then press Enter. Once the diagnostic utility loads, please click on the
Diagnose tab, file out the requested information, then press the "Collect Information" button.
Once it completes, please upload the resulting file here.

Have done those things. Up to and including sending a diag both while it was working, at 3pm, and when it failed, at 4:30 pm. So that was 8 mins ago and we'll see what comes next.

Hopefully this new error logging will show some insight into the problem.

Edit: Also, here's a snippet from the log:

Jan 1 02:44:43 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 02:44:43 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (2,4,8)
Jan 1 02:44:43 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 02:44:43 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 02:44:43 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (3,4,8)
Jan 1 02:44:43 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 02:44:43 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 02:44:43 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (0,4,8)
Jan 1 02:44:43 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 02:44:43 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 02:44:43 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (1,4,8)
Jan 1 02:44:43 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (2,4,8)
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (3,4,8)
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (0,4,8)
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (1,4,8)
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (2,4,8)
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: libupnp: total jobs = 1000, too many jobs
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UpnpNotify failed with -104
Jan 1 02:44:44 ocur[21]: upnp: WARNING: UPnP event was lost (3,4,8)

'tis always the same.

[benm328]

I've just had this same problem crop up in the last day. (Tuners going away after about an hour and come back with a reboot. Same errors.) I'll be very interested to see the outcome.

I guess to make it official I'll report this through the Ceton Ticket system as well.

Ben Miller

Ceton 4 tuner pci, Intel I7, 16 GB Memory, 7TB Disk, Windows 7

[evilOlive]

Definitely file a ticket with Ceton. They are pretty responsive, usually getting back to me within a matter of hours. Unfortunately, nothing they have had me do has had any impact on this issue at all, which causes me to be concerned that they aren't sure what the problem is, even though the error log always says the same thing. Hopefully I just have a defective unit and can get a return authorization from them today.

[benm328]

I find the timing odd though. This happened at exactly the same time for both of us. I'd be more likely to think its a Windows update that caused it. One more thing that came to mind... I installed a new version of MCEBuddy at around the same time. (I use it to downconvert .wtv files to smaller .mp4 files.) I didn't report that to Ceton. Should probably.

Haven't heard back from Ceton, but its early yet.

Ben

[evilOlive]

I've been dealing with this for a week now - ever since I got the tuner. It seems other people have had the same problem on a somewhat regular basis. So we will see...

[benm328]

Sorry, I missed that point. I've had mine for 2 years and this is the first time this has happened. I've been really happy with mine. Hope Ceton gets to the bottom of this soon.

[evilOlive]

Me too! Not sure what the deal is but obviously, losing my tuners every 90 - 180 minutes isn't satisfactory. It's been a bummer so far but at least Ceton is somewhat responsive. I have yet to receive a reply to my update though.

[evilOlive]

Crashed again. No reply from Ceton at this point. Sent another diag for the hell of it when the tuner stopped working a bit ago.

I also was watching a recorded movie (off of Encore, so it's subscription based) and had my first encounter with macroblocking.

I think I'm nearly done with this. If this can't be resolved - or if Ceton decides suddenly to leave my ticket to languish - then I guess it's HD HomeRun Prime here I come...