Continuous issues with my USB tuner

[2chesapeakes]

So I have been having issues with my USB tuner since it was received and have had multiple tickets with Ceton. I have had Charter at my house countless time now and get hit a truck charge each time. This last time I swapped the cable card with known good card from another tuner. I have also swapped TAs. I went so far as to relocate the USB tuner and TA to another computer and installed software and the reults were the same. Tuners 1 and 2 the dBMV was 50 and the SNR was 4.4. On the other 2 channels the dBmV was -.9 and -1.3 with a SNR 0f 37.1 and 38.4. With no exaggeration I had to disconnect and reconnect power to the USB tuner 28 times 9Yes I counted) and tuner 1 started working. After 12 more resets tuner 2 started working. This is typical of what I go through on a regular basis with this device. I understand Ceton does not do refunds however I have taken an extraordinary amount of time to trouble shoot including connecting the USB device and TA and installing the Ceton software on another computer and the results were the same. The log has been reset due to having to reboot the computer during trouble shooting so there is no log to attach.

An RMA for a reliable and working USB tuner would be appreciated however the support group will not issue one.

[Brendon]

I'm in the same boat with my PCIe card. I'm on the second one after the last one died. When it works, it works great. Then it stops working and it's an unbelievable amount of hassle to troubleshoot and get working again if you can. I've been a Unix and network administrator for thirteen years, and I've worked with computers many years before that as a kid. I don't think I've ever had a more challenging system to deal with. I've spent countless hours messing with this all the while having no cable.

I can't totally blame Ceton though, outside of one confirmed defective card and another possibly defective card (I believe it is, but support doesn't). I've had issues with DRM and things like that. I moved states and had a bunch of issues until I realized that I had to totally clear out the channel listings through the web GUI and start from scratch. I've had to rebuild a few times. Once when I tried network tuners, and that broke the system to where it wouldn't boot and I had to do a system restore. I know a lot of people have issues with their cable companies, but that's one area I haven't had too many problems with thankfully.

I'm pretty sure my PCIe card is defective and it doesn't look like I'm going to be getting an RMA this time. Either way, I think I'm going to give up on Ceton and maybe get a box from Verizon or just cancel cable altogether.

[erkotz]

So I have been having issues with my USB tuner since it was received and have had multiple tickets with Ceton. I have had Charter at my house countless time now and get hit a truck charge each time. This last time I swapped the cable card with known good card from another tuner. I have also swapped TAs. I went so far as to relocate the USB tuner and TA to another computer and installed software and the reults were the same. Tuners 1 and 2 the dBMV was 50 and the SNR was 4.4. On the other 2 channels the dBmV was -.9 and -1.3 with a SNR 0f 37.1 and 38.4. With no exaggeration I had to disconnect and reconnect power to the USB tuner 28 times 9Yes I counted) and tuner 1 started working. After 12 more resets tuner 2 started working. This is typical of what I go through on a regular basis with this device. I understand Ceton does not do refunds however I have taken an extraordinary amount of time to trouble shoot including connecting the USB device and TA and installing the Ceton software on another computer and the results were the same. The log has been reset due to having to reboot the computer during trouble shooting so there is no log to attach.

An RMA for a reliable and working USB tuner would be appreciated however the support group will not issue one.

Hi there,
I looked at your ticket, and I see that your ticket was opened yesterday and we requested a Ceton Diagnostic capture twice (in addition to the automated request when the ticket was opened) which you have declined to provide. We are unable to troubleshoot the issue without the requested diagnostic capture. Once you provide one, I will be happy to investigate.

[2chesapeakes]

What tech support as ked was for me to go to the device web page and try to tune an encrypted channel through the web page. At this point the only thing that it will show is that at this very moment (4) tuners are working. What it will not show is that two tuners had stopped working before power was cycled. Once all 4 tuners started working again the system was rebooted. I went back to the log and it was clear with approximately I hour of history showing. After all the trouble shooting and testing I figured it was obvious the only common dominator was the USB tuner. The cable cards were swapped out, the device and TA moved to a second compute, and TA swapped out. The only constant was the Ceton device I was able to swap out all other parts and use My HD Prime to test the TA connected to the PC with the Ceton USB tuner. The cable card that came out of the Ceton Tuner worked perfect in the HD Prime.

I guess money aside my best option is another HD Prime unit and cut my loses on the Ceton device.

Thank You for your time.

[erkotz]

What tech support as ked was for me to go to the device web page and try to tune an encrypted channel through the web page. At this point the only thing that it will show is that at this very moment (4) tuners are working. What it will not show is that two tuners had stopped working before power was cycled. Once all 4 tuners started working again the system was rebooted. I went back to the log and it was clear with approximately I hour of history showing. After all the trouble shooting and testing I figured it was obvious the only common dominator was the USB tuner. The cable cards were swapped out, the device and TA moved to a second compute, and TA swapped out. The only constant was the Ceton device I was able to swap out all other parts and use My HD Prime to test the TA connected to the PC with the Ceton USB tuner. The cable card that came out of the Ceton Tuner worked perfect in the HD Prime.

I guess money aside my best option is another HD Prime unit and cut my loses on the Ceton device.

Thank You for your time.

I'm sorry you feel that way. We troubleshoot hundreds of tickets a day, and have a lot of insight into issues that people not intimately familiar with our product do not. Even if you are only able to reproduce the issue using our tuner, it does not mean there is a hardware issue with out tuner. We need the requested data to understand the problem. If you would like to collect the requested data the next time you experience a failure, we will be happy to help.

[2chesapeakes]

OK I think I understand. There is no problem with the tuner but 2PC's, 2 TA's and threecablecards all have problems but the tuner works perfectly. I'll do one better than a diagnostic report. I plan on sending this unit back without an RMA as I can not in good conscience sell it to someone else and it is nothing but problems. I will be sure to adress this to Mr. Hammer CEO. Let him use it at his house.

[erkotz]

OK I think I understand. There is no problem with the tuner but 2PC's, 2 TA's and threecablecards all have problems but the tuner works perfectly. I'll do one better than a diagnostic report. I plan on sending this unit back without an RMA as I can not in good conscience sell it to someone else and it is nothing but problems. I will be sure to adress this to Mr. Hammer CEO. Let him use it at his house.

RMAs without a RMA number will be refused. This is standard practice at all companies. Once again, we will be happy to help you, however we need you to collect the previously requested data.

[JohnW248]

OK I think I understand. There is no problem with the tuner but 2PC's, 2 TA's and threecablecards all have problems but the tuner works perfectly. I'll do one better than a diagnostic report. I plan on sending this unit back without an RMA as I can not in good conscience sell it to someone else and it is nothing but problems. I will be sure to adress this to Mr. Hammer CEO. Let him use it at his house.

Collect the diagnostic information there are many files that are scanned and sent to Ceton including a lot of history files from Media Center (you can open the zip file and look at it, if you want) and there very well could be information about various tuner problems already in history. There are also a lot of files in the event viewer in Windows that you can look at which will show tuning errors and reasons.

TA have their own set of problems are those are different for Cisco and Moto devices. There can be cable company issues as well. Its hard to get a handle on things with out more information specific to machines and tuner operation.