Ceton InfiniTV 6 PCIe Now Available

[Crash2009]

I just wanted to give the Antec Kuhler 620 a 2 thumbs up. I've had one installed for nearly a year now. I used Arctic Silver to glue it down and use dual fans on the radiator(push/pull setup). The 620 does reduce heat better than stock cooling choices, and I believe it helps, in some way, to reduce the heat on my Infini4.

[barnabas1969]

I wasn't complaining about the fans. They aren't too noisy for gaming. They would be too noisy for a theater room, but his gaming PC is in his bedroom. He likes to play first person shooter games, loudly. He often wears a headset too, so he wouldn't hear the fans if they sounded like a jet engine.

Water coolers leak too often to be worth the risk. When they leak, you ruin the whole PC. Oh... I know... you can use non-conductive coolant right? Well, what do you think happens when that non-conductive coolant circulates through your metal radiator and cooling blocks? That's right... it picks up small amounts of metal in the coolant, which makes it conductive. Did you know that distilled water is non-conductive? It becomes conductive as soon as it picks up some impurities... like when it touches your skin or something metallic, salty, etc.

[werds]

Water coolers leak too often to be worth the risk.

My experience mirrors most people that have gone watercooling, and I have never had a leak in any of my WC setups that I did not cause myself out of stupidity, and I have been using WC in my main rig for going on 6 years. Heck last year I was on average tearing down and rebuilding my water cooling loops about 2 times a month (I was going through a ridiculous bout of hardware upgrades and testing lol).

The only way a custom made cooling system will leak is if you use poor materials in the loop (say a cheap reservoir for example) or if you improperly place the loop together (didn't fit the proper tube sizes lack of clamps etc)... or the one that usually causes the leak - is a failure to TEST the loop for an extended period before actually turning on the computer (this will almost always let you know if there is an issue that needs to be resolved beforehand) . I always test run my loops for a 24 hour period by jumping a spare psu to power the pump in the cooling system.
That said I only use watercooling on my rig and that is because I enjoy the relative silence and the ability to crank either my gpu's or cpu to max without worrying about heat.

But then again, getting wet is a personal choice and yes you are correct there is an inherent risk involved - but not as high as most would believe if relatively simple steps are taken.

[The Mac]

Closed loop (factory sealed) water systems are pretty idiot proof.

I dont know that ive ever heard of one leaking.

[Crash2009]

Closed loop (factory sealed) water systems are pretty idiot proof. I dont know that ive ever heard of one leaking.

I was hesitant when I bought my 620. I seem to remember that there was/is a 2 year warranty on leakage. My original plan was to try it out until the warranty was just about up, then dump it on ebay and get a new one.

[staknhalo]

I looked into water cooling when I was heavily into gaming a few years ago - needing to clean a reservoir and stuff - bleh. I already have to do more than enough with all my computers/devices.

[Crash2009]

I looked into water cooling when I was heavily into gaming a few years ago - needing to clean a reservoir and stuff - bleh.

These little Mickey Mouse units from Corsair and Antec are pretty much idiot proof, and maintenance free.

[glugglug]

I got a InfiniTV6 PCIe when I thought I might have broken the 4 tuner, as I was planning to upgrade anyway with the new PC I built.
The 6 tuner card runs cooler than the 4 tuner ever did. Could be because my 4 tuner was the early bulkier version or it could be because the new machine is in a much better case. Haven't moved the 4 tuner to the new machine yet to see them in the same environment.

[romperroom]

Is Ceton planning on making a USB version of the InfiniTV6?

[glugglug]

Is Ceton planning on making a USB version of the InfiniTV6?

I'm kind of surprised you can get 4 tuners on USB. 6 would be really asking for trouble.

While USB2.0 claims to support 480MBps, in reality, the upper limit is closer to 160Mbps, maybe 200Mbps max. And typically multiple USB ports are really on a hub internal to your motherboard, so any other USB devices will be soaking up some of that 160Mbps.

USB3.0 would have enough bandwidth for it, but is plagued by bugs/compatibility issues with recent Intel chipsets.

[mcewinter]

Never the less, they offer the InfiniTV6ETH to fill the bill. USB can be problematic for more than one reason while the ETH, being a networked tuner, offers a better and more future proof experience in my opinion. With that, I doubt they'll adapt it to be USB capable.

[romperroom]

I don't really want to network my tuners. I physically want the tuners right at my HTPC. Whether I'm an old 'coot who's stuck in his ways or not may be debatable, but I like what I like! I have no problem with the USB version of the InfiniTV4 I have right now.

[MeInDallas]

My InfiniTV6 will be here tomorrow, I'm so excited! I hope I dont lose my recordings just by upgrading from 4 to 6.

[richard1980]

Is Ceton planning on making a USB version of the InfiniTV6?

I'm kind of surprised you can get 4 tuners on USB. 6 would be really asking for trouble.

While USB2.0 claims to support 480MBps, in reality, the upper limit is closer to 160Mbps, maybe 200Mbps max. And typically multiple USB ports are really on a hub internal to your motherboard, so any other USB devices will be soaking up some of that 160Mbps.

USB3.0 would have enough bandwidth for it, but is plagued by bugs/compatibility issues with recent Intel chipsets.

The maximum possible throughput requirement for 6 US TV streams is only 120 Mbps (20 Mbps per stream).

[glugglug]

Is Ceton planning on making a USB version of the InfiniTV6?

I'm kind of surprised you can get 4 tuners on USB. 6 would be really asking for trouble.

While USB2.0 claims to support 480MBps, in reality, the upper limit is closer to 160Mbps, maybe 200Mbps max. And typically multiple USB ports are really on a hub internal to your motherboard, so any other USB devices will be soaking up some of that 160Mbps.

USB3.0 would have enough bandwidth for it, but is plagued by bugs/compatibility issues with recent Intel chipsets.

The maximum possible throughput requirement for 6 US TV streams is only 120 Mbps (20 Mbps per stream).

It's actually closer to 115Mbps. While this is below the 160+Mbps you can get out of USB2.0, it is not what I would call "comfortably" below. What happens if someone tries to use their USB printer or webcam while a recording is happening? Or windows does a directory scan of some SD card or external drive?

[The Mac]

My InfiniTV6 will be here tomorrow, I'm so excited! I hope I dont lose my recordings just by upgrading from 4 to 6.

nope, its tied to the readyplay installation, not the tuners.

[MeInDallas]

That whole set up went surprisingly well. 6 tuners is so nice! I did notice my signal levels are a lot higher now than before for some reason.

[richard1980]

It's actually closer to 115Mbps.

I generally use 20 as the base number even though it's actually 19.39. It just makes it easier to calculate without having to break out a calculator. Of course, 19.39 isn't actually correct though, because the ATSC spec defines 1 Mbps as 1,000,000 bps, when in reality 1 Mbps is 1,048,576 bps. Adjusting for that, the maximum bitrate per stream is actually 18.49 Mbps, which puts the total for 6 streams at 110.95 Mbps.

While this is below the 160+Mbps you can get out of USB2.0, it is not what I would call "comfortably" below. What happens if someone tries to use their USB printer or webcam while a recording is happening? Or windows does a directory scan of some SD card or external drive?

There would be plenty of bandwidth left for other data. Even with 6 max-bitrate streams, that's only 70% utilization (assuming 160 Mbps is the real-world throughput you get from USB 2.0), and real-world content isn't actually encoded at the maximum allowed bitrate anyway. Most high-bitrate streams fall in the 12-15 Mbps range (though I have seen a couple of streams as high as 17 Mbps), so the utilization wouldn't actually be 70%. And even if there were bandwidth issues, you can put different devices on different USB controllers.

[glugglug]

Actually, we both kind of assumed that cable would not be exceeding the ~19Mbps allowed on OTA. But cable is generally QAM256 instead of QAM16, normally having at least 2 channels per QAM. The cable providers could use a whole QAM for one channel and send at ~38Mbps, especially for 3D. I realized looking at file sizes today that I have some Showtime and HBO recordings right at the 19Mbps OTA limit on FIOS. Which is especially strange since the HBO satellite feed is actually 8Mbps H.264, but I guess for now FIOS only wants to send H.264 on lesser used or new channels so they don't have as large a number of people running to upgrade their set top boxes.

[rantanamo]

Actually, we both kind of assumed that cable would not be exceeding the ~19Mbps allowed on OTA. But cable is generally QAM256 instead of QAM16, normally having at least 2 channels per QAM. The cable providers could use a whole QAM for one channel and send at ~38Mbps, especially for 3D. I realized looking at file sizes today that I have some Showtime and HBO recordings right at the 19Mbps OTA limit on FIOS. Which is especially strange since the HBO satellite feed is actually 8Mbps H.264, but I guess for now FIOS only wants to send H.264 on lesser used or new channels so they don't have as large a number of people running to upgrade their set top boxes.

This is correct and they have stated as such.