Ceton InfiniTV6 ETH Bad Tuners

[SoundForSound]

Starting a thread to keep track of people who have experienced this. I believe I've seen at least two others.

Got my Ceton ETH Friday and setup went smooth (upgrading from Ceton4 PCI). Things worked great Friday and Saturday, but today (Sunday) nothing would tune. Looking closer the signal level was -50 for both tuners 1 and 2, but was fine on tuners3/4/5/6. So it appears after two days tuners1/2 died.

Short-term I've set up Media Center to just use tuners3/4/5/6 and that's working so far. Will need to overnight a replacement from Amazon...

[JazJon]

Good idea, it sounds like the first batch of ETH 6 units have a QA problem. Tuners #5 & #6 came DOA on my ETH 6.

Tuner 1 -1.3dBmV
Tuner 2 -1.3dBmV
Tuner 3 -3.8dBmV
Tuner 4 -1.4dBmV
Tuner 5 -50.0 dBmV !!!!
Tuner 6 -50.0 dBmV !!!!

As I said in the other thread, I opened up a ticket. After sending in a diagnostics Ceton confirmed #5 & #6 tuners are dead. Ceton said tuners will die in pairs when they go out.

I just re-ran the Setup TV wizard and picked manual. I unchecked tuner 5 & 6. Having 4 solid tuners will hold me over for now. (ETH 6 is Pixelation free! so I'm still happy)

Ceton offers an Advance Replacement option and a new one is on the way to swap out.

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 541#p51541

[shortcut3d]

At this point, I'm fairly convinced my Ceton InfiniTV6 ETH tuners are bad. I can replicate full screen pixelation by tuning each tuner to a channel using the device webpage. The device webpage will say "STOPPED" for each tuner. I then tune one channel in WMC and it will have full screen pixelation. Support has not yet reached a conclusion.

[JohnW248]

At this point, I'm fairly convinced my Ceton InfiniTV6 ETH tuners are bad. I can replicate full screen pixelation by tuning each tuner to a channel using the device webpage. The device webpage will say "STOPPED" for each tuner. I then tune one channel in WMC and it will have full screen pixelation. Support has not yet reached a conclusion.

Seeing "STOPPED" after tuning in the web gui is normal.

Try this, go to media center and recorded tv/guide, then right click on that channel and choose edit channel from that menu, edit sources and uncheck all but the tuner you just used.

Do the same thing for the next channel up.

Now try tuning your original channel, then try going up one, then back down. See what your results are. Perhaps there was "no tune" on the second attempt and all you saw the the buffer for the web gui tune which was short and didn't necessary build up to a full I frame before it stopped.

[JazJon]

Good idea, it sounds like the first batch of ETH 6 units have a QA problem. Tuners #5 & #6 came DOA on my ETH 6.

Tuner 1 -1.3dBmV
Tuner 2 -1.3dBmV
Tuner 3 -3.8dBmV
Tuner 4 -1.4dBmV
Tuner 5 -50.0 dBmV !!!!
Tuner 6 -50.0 dBmV !!!!

As I said in the other thread, I opened up a ticket. After sending in a diagnostics Ceton confirmed #5 & #6 tuners are dead. Ceton said tuners will die in pairs when they go out.

I just re-ran the Setup TV wizard and picked manual. I unchecked tuner 5 & 6. Having 4 solid tuners will hold me over for now. (ETH 6 is Pixelation free! so I'm still happy)

Ceton offers an Advance Replacement option and a new one is on the way to swap out.

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 541#p51541

I just got my new replacement tuner, works great.

[SoundForSound]

What fwr and hw fwr did you out on it? The orig, the latest stable, or latest beta? Thanks!

[JazJon]

What fwr and hw fwr did you out on it? The orig, the latest stable, or latest beta? Thanks!

It came with
Firmware: ceton_infinitv_beta_fw_13_5_6_132.IMAGE
Hardware: 7359

I see 13.5.6.133 [beta] "*Beta firmware with tuner pooling enabled for InfiniTV Ethernet" is ready to update via Ceton Diagnostics, but I'm going to leave it on 132 for now.

[SoundForSound]

Latest on my end:
Ceton support requested a signal check on a different channel for all tuners and diag. Previously I had done 774 and tuners 1/2 failed with -50 signal while all others were fine and this time I did 190. Surprisingly with channel 190 all tuners showed a "good" signal as did 774. I had tried various channels before, so this was strange.

So then I fire up MCE and nothing will tune (still paired only with tuners3/4/5/6).

I look at my recordings from today and sure enough there is a failure saying a tuner was manually stopped for use by another component? I've ever seen that and it was hours before I got home and manually tuned everything to 190 for the Ceton diag.

So in summary two strange things:
1) Tuners 1/2 that had -50 signal before now had a valid signal, but nothing would tune on MCE.

2) A recording failed bc it was "manually stopped for use by another component".

Curious if anyone has any thoughts or experiences (2) with the ETH.

[TeddyR]

Though not directly related to the ITV6/ETH, these may help since they help with the SD Devices which get similar symptoms:

- If using any Antivirus/Antispyware/Firewall software other than MS Security Essentials/Windows Firewall/Windows Defender, uninstall it completely and use Security Essentials/Windows Firewall/Windows Defender instead. This is especially true for AVG and Malwarebytes.

- If the switch used is a "Green Ethernet" switch, update to the latest drivers from the chipset manufacturer (may be needed for the following) and then disable "Energy Efficient Ethernet" and/or "Green Tech" and/or "Green Ethernet" in the NIC advanced settings.

[SoundForSound]

- If the switch used is a "Green Ethernet" switch, update to the latest drivers from the chipset manufacturer (may be needed for the following) and then disable "Energy Efficient Ethernet" and/or "Green Tech" and/or "Green Ethernet" in the NIC advanced settings.

I have a TrendNet 16-port GreenNet switch (TEG-S16DG).

When you say update to the latest drivers, are you referring to those on my computer for the NIC?

Likewise when you say disable "Green/..." in the NIC avd settings, you are referring to those on my PC?

Does not look like the switch itself has any management settings to disable the "Green" features.

[Teddyboy16]

He's referring to both the switch and NIC. Look in the NIC drivers on the PC to see if you have a 'Green' setting or checkbox that allows the NIC to save power when not in use. Disable that.

[joelkirzner]

Hi there,
I installed my Infinitv 6 yesterday and I'm having some issues, possibly related to my network setup.

I have 4 computers networked in my home through a gigabit router and gigabit switches. 2 computers are on the main floor, 2 computers are in the basement. 1 main floor computer has Tuners 1-3, the other main floor computer has Tuner 4 and the basement computers have 5 and 6... so all 6 tuners are accounted for.

My 2 main floor computers are networked through a linksys gigabit router and linksys gigabit switch. They are tuning channels fine and the quality is good... no pixelation, blocking etc. They also have gigabit NIC cards installed

However, my 2 basement computers have older 100mbs NIC cards and are connected through a trendnet "green" switch. The tv image on both is constantly pixelated with jitters.

After reading the above thread, I'm thinking it may have something to do with the Trendnet switch? What is strange is I've upgraded from an InfiniTV 4 PCIe that was installed in one of the basement computers and networked throughout the house... I never had an issue with image quality.

So, suggestions? Should I upgrade the 2 NICs to gigabit... $10 a piece is cheap enough, I'm just curious if that's really the bottleneck.

Or is it the "green" switch? Or is it Tuners 5 and 6?!?

[barnabas1969]

My "green" switch works just fine. I don't understand why the "green" feature would make it not work well with network tuners and extenders. All it really does is reduce power consumed by ports that don't have a link established with another device.

[joelkirzner]

My "green" switch works just fine. I don't understand why the "green" feature would make it not work well with network tuners and extenders. All it really does is reduce power consumed by ports that don't have a link established with another device.

I agree. If you read my last post I'm thinking that Tuners 5 and 6 may be defective. I"m not at home now, so I can't get signal levels posted, but I'm fearing the worst with the actual hardware being defective.

I guess I can narrow this down by changing out which tuners are assigned to my various computers... if indeed it's Tuner 5 and 6 being the culprit.

[shortcut3d]

I continue to try various combinations to reproduce my pixelation issues.

It appears the problem is tuning to the same channel multiple times using the InfiniTV6 ETH device webpage. Fortunately, my current setup will not be a problem because I'm using extenders. This will be a problem in the future if more devices are streaming from the InfiniTV6 ETH and tune to the same channel. For clarity, the pixelation happens on all channels. Example: 4 of 6 tuners tuned and "STOPPED" on channel 801, 1 tuner "PLAYING" channel 801, 1 tuner "PLAYING" channel 707. Channel 707 would experience severe pixelation as well as channel 801.

[barnabas1969]

My "green" switch works just fine. I don't understand why the "green" feature would make it not work well with network tuners and extenders. All it really does is reduce power consumed by ports that don't have a link established with another device.

I agree. If you read my last post I'm thinking that Tuners 5 and 6 may be defective. I"m not at home now, so I can't get signal levels posted, but I'm fearing the worst with the actual hardware being defective.

I guess I can narrow this down by changing out which tuners are assigned to my various computers... if indeed it's Tuner 5 and 6 being the culprit.

I can't tell you if your tuners are bad but after reading your post, the first suspects would be:

1) Is "flow control" enabled on the PC's with the 100 megabit NIC's?
2) If the answer to #1 is yes, then I'd suspect that your switch doesn't have enough buffer memory. Do you know the size of the buffer memory in the switch?

[joelkirzner]

I continue to try various combinations to reproduce my pixelation issues.

It appears the problem is tuning to the same channel multiple times using the InfiniTV6 ETH device webpage. Fortunately, my current setup will not be a problem because I'm using extenders. This will be a problem in the future if more devices are streaming from the InfiniTV6 ETH and tune to the same channel. For clarity, the pixelation happens on all channels. Example: 4 of 6 tuners tuned and "STOPPED" on channel 801, 1 tuner "PLAYING" channel 801, 1 tuner "PLAYING" channel 707. Channel 707 would experience severe pixelation as well as channel 801.

So, I'm really hoping this device will just work correctly and not exhibit pixelation issues, regardless of whether I'm tuning 6 different channels simultaneously, or the same channel on each tuner. If this is going to be problematic, I may just return this device and go back to having 2 Ceton InfiniTV 4's.

[joelkirzner]

My "green" switch works just fine. I don't understand why the "green" feature would make it not work well with network tuners and extenders. All it really does is reduce power consumed by ports that don't have a link established with another device.

I agree. If you read my last post I'm thinking that Tuners 5 and 6 may be defective. I"m not at home now, so I can't get signal levels posted, but I'm fearing the worst with the actual hardware being defective.

I guess I can narrow this down by changing out which tuners are assigned to my various computers... if indeed it's Tuner 5 and 6 being the culprit.

I can't tell you if your tuners are bad but after reading your post, the first suspects would be:

1) Is "flow control" enabled on the PC's with the 100 megabit NIC's?
2) If the answer to #1 is yes, then I'd suspect that your switch doesn't have enough buffer memory. Do you know the size of the buffer memory in the switch?

I'm not sure, but why did I have no issues with my old networked InfiniTV 4? Now things are all pixelated and jittery? Same NICs, switches etc.

[barnabas1969]

I'm not sure, but why did I have no issues with my old networked InfiniTV 4? Now things are all pixelated and jittery? Same NICs, switches etc.

Because you had the InfiniTV tuners installed in the PC's with the 100 megabit NIC's. In that configuration, the data was flowing from the PC's 100Mb NIC to the switch. When a 100Mb NIC feeds data to a gigabit switch, buffering and flow control are not as important because the switch can deliver the data to the gigabit clients faster than the 100 megabit server can send it.

Now, you have it hooked up to flow the other direction. Now, it's possible for the Ethernet-attached tuner to supply data faster than the 100 megabit NIC can handle it. Without flow control enabled, you will miss some packets. With flow control enabled, the packets should buffer in switch. If the switch's buffer isn't large enough, it will overflow, and you will miss some packets.

[joelkirzner]

The other thing I can change, although it wasn't an issue with the old InfiniTV 4 is the following:

Current setup for the trouble computers in basement:
Modem-->Linksys Gigabit Router-->Trendnet "Green" Switch-->PCs

Optional change:
Modem-->Linksys Gigabit Router-->Linksys Gigabit Switch-->Trendnet "Green" Switch-->PCs

Not sure if that would make things worse, but my other 2 computers upstairs are going through the Linksys Gigabit Switch and they do not have issues.

Does daisy chaining switches create more problems?