All Kinds Of Issues With My InfiniTV 6 ETH

[seangrimes]

Trying to see if I can get some help from someone in this forum who may be having or have had the same issues as I am.

I purchased my InfiniTV 6 ETH back in Sept. of 2013 and have in been constant contact with the support at Ceton trying to get to the bottom of the issues I'm having which I'll list in a minute.

Charter is my Cable Provider.
I have an M Cable-Card and a Motorola TA that sees all of my tuners.

I have 3 PC's that connect to the InfiniTV 6 ETH device:
Server PC that has 16 GB of Ram with an Intel Core i5-2500 Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz processor(used EXCLUSIVELY to stream to 3 Xbox Extenders)
Family room PC is a Zotac Zbox ID80-Plus with an Intel Atom D2700 2.1 GHz dual core processor with 4G of ram
Bedroom PC is a Zotac Zbox ID34BR with an Intel Atom D525 1.8 GHz Dual-Core with 4 G of ram

I've tested all of my LAN connections with a tester I purchased on my gigabit network and they are all good.

Here are some of the issues I have on ALL PC's and extenders:
1 - I go to tune a channel; I get black screen for 15 or so seconds; I then get "service unavailable" which will change to "no subscription"; finally, station will tune
2 - I go to tune a channel and get "tuner conflict" or "no tuners available" message when no other tuners are in use
3 - I'll be watching a station and all of a sudden, I'll get a "tuner conflict" or "no tuners available message"
4 - I'll be watching a station and all of a sudden, I'll get a "SDV error 1" message
5 - tuning to channels can take up to 1-2 minutes at times
6 - Everything will work fine for a day or two and out of the blue, I'll get a "service unavailable" or "no subscription" message

The only way I can fix issues 2-4 and 6 is to either stop and restart the WMC receiver service or reboot the computer.

Please help.

[seangrimes]

I just wanted to add the following because I was not allowed to edit my initial post.

I've been in touch with the support at Ceton, but no one has really been able to pin point the issues I'm having. However, one of the tech guys recently told me that I could possibly have a defective Tuning Adapter which makes sense for SOME of the issues I'm having, but not make sense for other issues I'm having. I've been sending in A LOT of diagnostics to them lately, so hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this soon.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Crash2009]

Has anyone suggested re-seating or re-placing the CableCARD?

[seangrimes]

Has anyone suggested re-seating or re-placing the CableCARD?

I've re-seated the card more than a few times, but it hasn't been suggested that I replace it yet.

I think I know what may be causing some of my problems after an incident that happened today.

My wife was watching TV upstairs from one of the WMC PC's. Everything was fine. I went downstairs and started playing around with the WMC PC I have in our family room. As soon as I tried to tune to a station, she yelled down that something happened to the TV and that she got a "service unavailable" message. I also got the same message on the PC I was messing with. Is it possible that the PC I was on was trying to use the same tuner that my wife was using? I exited out of WMC on the PC in the family room, went upstairs and was able to get the message to go away after attempting a few channel changes.

I'm beginning to think that this has something to do with the tuner pooling feature. I don't really start having issues until more than one PC or extender tries to grab a tuner from the InfiniTV 6 ETH.

I've also been getting a lot of "weak signal" messages today that will come up for about 2 seconds and then go away. This is VERY strange to me because I'm within specs of what Ceton considers to be acceptable. I played around with a splitter in the basement today and started receiving a signal level of -1.5 to -4.5 dBmV on tuners that were in use. My SNR is about 36-37 now. Those seem to be be really good values from what I researched so I'm not sure why WMC would say it sees a weak signal.

Something else I must add. I've been having problems with my unit since I purchased, but I didn't have as many problems up until about 2 weeks ago. One of the techs at Ceton noticed that I had the most recent firmware installed that supported tuner pooling. He suggested that I set each PC to install all tuners available in WMC because the InfiniTV 6 ETH would handle it. Up until then, I was only assigning 2 tuners to each of the 3 PC's I normally use. I would have the same issues I'm having now, but I would go longer periods without having any issues. Ever since I started using the tuner pooling feature, I'm having to reset things once or twice EVERYDAY!

[Crash2009]

I thought I read somewhere that Weak Signal Error was a sign that the CableCard is about to fail. Apparently Weak Signal can point to a lot of different things.

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 440#p67440

[adam1991]

The first rule of troubleshooting: go back to step 1, simplify, then add complexity a step at a time.

So: what happens when you just go back to having one single PC use the tuner?

(Extenders. They work.)

[seangrimes]

Thanks Crash2009 and Adam1991.

Days like yesterday make troubleshooting even more difficult for me to narrow down what may causing my issue(s). Everything worked fine with no problems whatsoever yesterday. Even channel change time was pretty fair (5 to 15 seconds). I'm going to be even more stumped if when I return home from work and everything is in working order. My wife usually complains the first thing in the morning that the TV isn't working.

What I've found is that if I do ever have any problems as I mentioned in the starting post, all I have to do is stop and restart the WMC receiver service. WMC will then search for available tuners for about a minute or so after going to LiveTV and then the station will finally tune. I know it's not a fix, but it's better than going through LiveTV setup as I was doing in the past.

Crash2009, I did mess around with a splitter in the basement the other day and started receiving a signal level of -1.5 to -4.5 dBmV on tuners that were in use. My SNR is about 36-37 now. Prior to that, my SNR was around 39 and signal levels were about -4.5 to -8 dBmv on tuners that were in use. I know both scenarios are acceptable according to Ceton, but I think where my signals are at now is more acceptable.

I may try something outlined in the link you sent me Crash2009. As of now, I have my Win 7 server PC with WMC and the InfiniTV 6 ETH connected directly to my Gigabit Router. I'm going to connected both of those directly to my 16 port Gigibit Switch. It may not matter much, but I'll give it a try if I start having issues again.

I've also asked Ceton something about my setup on 2 occasions, but haven't gotten a response from them. 2 of my PC's have Atom Intel processors which actually don't fall into the specifications required according to their website. Those PC's also only have 4G of ram. I've noticed that if one of those PC's runs LiveTV for an extended amount of time, the video will become VERY laggy, sluggish and hardly any sound can be heard. When I find a PC in this state, I simply stop liveTV and then restart LiveTV to fix it.

[tad]

Pick up a couple of HD Homerun primes. Problem solved. I have had zero issues with mine, and I think any other Silicondust user would concur. Once you get it setup, it's stable.

[Ryan]

I've also asked Ceton something about my setup on 2 occasions, but haven't gotten a response from them.

How long ago did you contact Ceton? It's been just about three weeks since I updated my support ticket, and I still haven't heard back.

[RyC]

PM erkotz, he should be able to get your ticket going again if it's been three weeks.

[seangrimes]

I've also asked Ceton something about my setup on 2 occasions, but haven't gotten a response from them.

How long ago did you contact Ceton? It's been just about three weeks since I updated my support ticket, and I still haven't heard back.

Hey Ryan. Ceton response time is actually very good. However, some of my tickets have been pretty long and ranty. I'm sure they're busy answering other tickets too. I think it may have been an honest mistake that they skipped over one of my questions in 2 of the tickets I sent in.

[barnabas1969]

Pick up a couple of HD Homerun primes. Problem solved. I have had zero issues with mine, and I think any other Silicondust user would concur. Once you get it setup, it's stable.

Hey... I didn't say it!

[seangrimes]

Pick up a couple of HD Homerun primes. Problem solved. I have had zero issues with mine, and I think any other Silicondust user would concur. Once you get it setup, it's stable.

Hey Tad. I've thought about doing this, but I want to give my device a fair try first. Things have been working ok for the past couple of days.

In all honesty, do you think that the InfiniTv 6 ETH can handle the load when 4-6 tuners are in use? Whenever all tuners are in use, picture quality is either:
1 - good on all PC's and extenders
2 - choppy on some PC's and good on some PC's and extenders

From my understanding, the HD Homerun prime is the only device that is in competition with the Infinitv 6 ETH at the moment and it only has 3 tuners. There must be a reason for that. In 2011, silicon did release a 6 tuner device, but it was actually 2 - 3 tuner devices in one which had 2 Cablecard slots and 2 Ethernet connections:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/23/6-tu ... ale-today/

That device appears to have been discontinued though. It appears that people are now simply buying 2 - 3 tuner HD Homerun Devices. From what I'm learning, it seems to me that Ceton is forcing one device to handle the network load and Cablecard capacity that 2 devices should be handling. Does that sound accurate?

When I get a chance, I'm going to load my device down and see if I have any more issues. The only problems I've had lately are problems that I created intentionally by unplugging the network cable to the Infinitv 6 ETH.

[RyC]

Buy the Prime from Amazon so you can return it without any hassle if it doesn't work. But I can record/watch 6 shows on the ETH without any picture problems so it's not like it can't handle it.

[seangrimes]

Buy the Prime from Amazon so you can return it without any hassle if it doesn't work. But I can record/watch 6 shows on the ETH without any picture problems so it's not like it can't handle it.

Hey RyC. How long does it take for a channel change to occur for you using the Ceton Infinitv 6 eth setup? A channel cnahge for me can take anywhere from 3-5 seconds all the way up to a full minute or even 2 minutes. Does that sound like a Tuning Adapter problem to you?

[RyC]

Buy the Prime from Amazon so you can return it without any hassle if it doesn't work. But I can record/watch 6 shows on the ETH without any picture problems so it's not like it can't handle it.

Hey RyC. How long does it take for a channel change to occur for you using the Ceton Infinitv 6 eth setup? A channel cnahge for me can take anywhere from 3-5 seconds all the way up to a full minute or even 2 minutes. Does that sound like a Tuning Adapter problem to you?

Hey Sean,

I just tried a bunch of stations (SDV, not SDV, copy once, copy once and SDV) and they were all 5-6 seconds. For me when the TA needs to be reset, it's maybe 10 seconds or so before I get an error message. I can't remember if it's "no signal" or "channel not found" though. A minute/2 minutes to tune is waaaaaaay too long.

[seangrimes]

Buy the Prime from Amazon so you can return it without any hassle if it doesn't work. But I can record/watch 6 shows on the ETH without any picture problems so it's not like it can't handle it.

Hey RyC. How long does it take for a channel change to occur for you using the Ceton Infinitv 6 eth setup? A channel cnahge for me can take anywhere from 3-5 seconds all the way up to a full minute or even 2 minutes. Does that sound like a Tuning Adapter problem to you?

Hey Sean,

I just tried a bunch of stations (SDV, not SDV, copy once, copy once and SDV) and they were all 5-6 seconds. For me when the TA needs to be reset, it's maybe 10 seconds or so before I get an error message. I can't remember if it's "no signal" or "channel not found" though. A minute/2 minutes to tune is waaaaaaay too long.

Here is what will happen sometimes when I perform a channel change:

I try to tune to station 741 for example
After about 10-15 seconds, I may a "service not available" message
After about 15 more seconds, that message may change to "subscription required" message
After about 15 to 30 seconds, I may get a "Weak Tv signal" message
After about 15 more seconds, I'll begin to hear sound and then about 10 seconds later, the picture will come in crystal clear.

My SNR is about 36-37 and my signal level is around -1.5 to -4.5 dbmv. That's pretty good according to Ceton's standards.

On other occasions, it may only take 5-10 seconds for a channel change. It seems to be an intermittent problem.

[adam1991]

You assume the problem is with the InfiniTV. It's worth getting a cableco STB to test with. If their own box has problems, that's very telling.

[smcmillan2]

Here is what will happen sometimes when I perform a channel change:

I try to tune to station 741 for example
After about 10-15 seconds, I may a "service not available" message
After about 15 more seconds, that message may change to "subscription required" message
After about 15 to 30 seconds, I may get a "Weak Tv signal" message
After about 15 more seconds, I'll begin to hear sound and then about 10 seconds later, the picture will come in crystal clear.

My SNR is about 36-37 and my signal level is around -1.5 to -4.5 dbmv. That's pretty good according to Ceton's standards.

On other occasions, it may only take 5-10 seconds for a channel change. It seems to be an intermittent problem.

Check your temps on the 6 ETH. See g0dM@n's post #842 at http://www.avsforum.com/t/1472563/lates ... thread/840.

[mldenison]

I'm wondering about what other ETH owners have for temperatures. One of mine runs around 46 degrees while the other one runs around 39 degrees. Swapping the physical positions doesn't seem to make much difference.

I've not experienced any issues, so far, with either as far as recorded/live TV save for the occasional brief 'Subscription Required' message occasionally.