Multiple Issues with InfiniTV ETH 6, anyone else?

[th83]

I am having random media center crashes since installing the Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH, have tried on 3 different PCs with 2 different devices. I am also experiencing random PlayReady update issues also apparently caused by the InfiniTV. The symptoms of both issues are listed below.

Crashes: At random times (sometimes 2-3 times in a day, other times every few days) media center will just crash/close and will have to be manually restarted. I have tried on multiple PCs and have even reinstalled Windows 7 from scratch TWICE on my HTPC and run with no other applications and this still happens on every PC where I attempt to use the Ceton 6 ETH. This DOES NOT happen with the SiliconDust HD HomeRun Prime. It appears that when the issue becomes more frequent, rebooting the Ceton ETH helps the issue to become less frequent again (but not completely go away). Based on this, I can say with relative certainty that this is an issue with the Ceton drivers or firmware. I am running the latest drivers and firmware. Driver version is 13.6.3.1088, firmware is 14.4.6.21. Nothing is logged in the Windows Event Log when this happens.

PlayReady issue: Occasionally (maybe every 1-2 weeks) I stop being able to tune any premium channels and get a message that the last PlayReady update was incomplete. At this point, the PlayReady update fails even after resetting DRM and rebooting the PC multiple times. I found the ONLY fix is to reboot the Ceton InfiniTV ETH 6, at which point the playready update runs perfectly and I can tune premium channels again after restarting the Media Center Receiver service. Rebooting the ETH works every time to fix this, so it is definitely related to this device, NOT to DRM or Windows/Media Center. This issue DOES NOT happen on my HD HomeRun Prime. Also, when this happens, EVERY PC connected to the ETH gets the same error until the ETH is rebooted.

I have spoken with a friend who uses a 4-tuner USB Ceton tuner and he has never had these problems, so it definitely appears to be firmware and/or driver issues with this device. These issues are happening at my home, where I recently switched from an HD HomeRun Prime to this for the extra tuners. This is also happening at a customer's home where I installed one of these tuners, and he is now wanting me to take the device back as it simply does not work correctly. I'm getting very frustrated with this product, which is clearly not ready for prime time.

[th83]

Ugh, after reading through these forums and looking at more reviews on Newegg, I'm beginning to think I wasted $300 on this thing. I'm guessing Ceton Support is going to tell me it's a PC or Network problem even though I've tried this on multiple PCs in multiple locations, and other people seem to be having the same issues.

[CrunchyDoodle]

Well, Ceton may tell you that it's your fault, however, it's theirs. Though not as bad as yours, I have had similar poor experience with the Ceton ETH 6. I had been using SiliconDust HDHRs and a Prime for years and rarely had any problems related to the tuners. SiliconDust stuff is very solid and stable. Sure, they are not perfect. I had more than one failed AC adapter and one original HDHR that died after some years of service. Because TWC is going full encrypted digital on September 16th, I had to do something. If SiliconDust made a six channel CableCARD tuner for $500, I'd buy it in a second. I could rent two more CableCARDs from TWC and have my two six channel CableCARD systems with SiliconDust Primes. If it gets any worse for me with Ceton, I'll do that.

Bye.

[mldenison]

Ugh, after reading through these forums and looking at more reviews on Newegg, I'm beginning to think I wasted $300 on this thing. I'm guessing Ceton Support is going to tell me it's a PC or Network problem even though I've tried this on multiple PCs in multiple locations, and other people seem to be having the same issues.

I have two ETH's. One works fine and the other is atrocious. I've been dealing with Ceton Support since April on this issue.

Here's my latest attempt with them:

===============================
I followed your suggestion about disabling Sleep. While this alleviated the occasional lost tuners issue, I am not pleased with leaving the HTPC on 24/7. None of the other IP devices on my network have issues with Sleep – 5 CCTV cameras and my Davis weather station, to name a few. All my IP addresses are statically assigned in my router.

Here are my results over the last month since we’ve communicated. I have not included any diagnostics since you’ve made no mention, good or bad, of previous diagnostics submitted sent to you since May, with the same exact problems. Additionally, since I don’t know there’s an issue while recording until the next day, the diagnostics are probably of little use. The ones I’ve previously submitted should show you anything you’d like to see.

It would appear that your diagnostic test does not show the quality of the video/audio sent to the HTPC.

I have run each ETH, by itself, over the last month (showing the maximum number of simultaneous records per busiest 1 hour time slot):

Week 1 – ETH #1
Day 1: 2 shows – minor intermittent pixilation and audio problems but mostly watchable.
Day 2: 3 shows – 2 channels watchable with minor intermittent pixilation and audio problems. 1 channel completely unwatchable with major continuous pixilation and audio problems.
Day 3: 1 show - minor intermittent pixilation and audio problems.
Day 5: 5 shows – 2 channels watchable with minor intermittent pixilation and audio problems. 3 shows completely unwatchable with major continuous pixilation and audio problems.
Day 7: 6 shows – 1 channel watchable with minor intermittent pixilation and audio problems. 3 channels completely unwatchable with major continuous pixilation and audio problems. 2 channels failed to record.

Additionally, I received 1 to 6 ‘Weak TV’ messages when some channels start to record, after which the channel would start to record except as mentioned above. Twice I got a ‘New CableCard Detected’ message during the week.

Week 2 – ETH #2 (using the same CAT5 cable, TV cable line and ETH power supply which were attached to the ETH #1)
Day 1: 2 shows – completely watchable.
Day 2: 3 shows – completely watchable.
Day 3: 1 show - completely watchable.
Day 5: 5 shows – completely watchable.
Day 7: 6 shows – completely watchable.

No ‘Weak TV’ or ‘New CableCard Detected’ message. No shows failed to record.

Week 3 – ETH #1 (using the same CAT5 cable, TV cable line and ETH power supply which were attached to the ETH #2)
All five days resulted in similar results as Week 1.

Week 4 - ETH #2 (using the same CAT5 cable, TV cable line and ETH power supply which were attached to the ETH #1)
All five days resulted in exactly the same results as Week 2 with absolutely no problems.

I retired a few years back, after spending some 25 years as a software engineer. However, my wife came to the same conclusion as me, that the ETH #2 has a hardware issue.

If you would have allowed me to RMA it last May, I would not now still be trying to get both of them to work.
========================================

Here's their latest response:

========================================================
Please do send an updated diagnostic. We can absolutely tell the quality of the signal coming in, the noise on the line, error inside of it, and the strength of the signal. There are so many causes to what you're experiencing, we need more data to help determine if its something new. If we're not mentioning the InfiniTV then we're not seeing an issue with it. 9 times out of ten it a configuration, hardware issues on the network or in the PC.
========================================================

I feel like the movie Ground Hog Day:

1. Ceton - Please install these Microsoft patches and disable sleep.
2. Me - This has been done but one ETH does not work correctly.
3. Ceton - Please send us a diagnostic. Let us know if we can help.
4. Me - OK. Here's the diagnostic.
5. Ceton - We see no issues. Let us know if we can help.
Go to #2 and repeat - for months.

Perhaps they're waiting for the unit to go out of warranty.

In each reply be me, I've asked for an RMA to swap out the ETH. In their replies to me, no mention is made of an RMA. Nor is there any information on their web site concerning RMA's.

I had purchased an InfiniTV4 PCI card which died after warranty. They offered to replace it for $125 but I decided to buy an ETH instead.

I also bought an InfiniTV4 USB unit which worked, for the most part, fine. Since the first ETH worked well I decided to replace it with another ETH.

I also have two Echo's which, for the most part, work fine.

So I'm probably north of $1000 in their products.

And this is the best their support can do?

[mdavej]

First thing I would do is reload the firmware on the bad one. I've had flaky ones that another flash fixed.

Could also be temps. Bad one may be running a little hotter.

[th83]

It's not the temp, I have it sitting on its side and it never really gets above 50 degrees C. The random crashing issue is the worst part for me, and is happening on all the computers connected to the Ceton. Anybody else had this? If they refuse to refund my money on these, I'm probably going to just ship the damn thing back and dispute the charge on my AMEX. This is too much money to have spent on a clearly defective product. From what I'm reading (and their first ticket response to me) their support is worthless and they have no quality control at all.

[th83]

Ugh, after reading through these forums and looking at more reviews on Newegg, I'm beginning to think I wasted $300 on this thing. I'm guessing Ceton Support is going to tell me it's a PC or Network problem even though I've tried this on multiple PCs in multiple locations, and other people seem to be having the same issues.

I have two ETH's. One works fine and the other is atrocious. I've been dealing with Ceton Support since April on this issue.

Here's my latest attempt with them:

===============================
I followed your suggestion about disabling Sleep. While this alleviated the occasional lost tuners issue, I am not pleased with leaving the HTPC on 24/7. None of the other IP devices on my network have issues with Sleep – 5 CCTV cameras and my Davis weather station, to name a few. All my IP addresses are statically assigned in my router.

Here are my results over the last month since we’ve communicated. I have not included any diagnostics since you’ve made no mention, good or bad, of previous diagnostics submitted sent to you since May, with the same exact problems. Additionally, since I don’t know there’s an issue while recording until the next day, the diagnostics are probably of little use. The ones I’ve previously submitted should show you anything you’d like to see.

It would appear that your diagnostic test does not show the quality of the video/audio sent to the HTPC.

I have run each ETH, by itself, over the last month (showing the maximum number of simultaneous records per busiest 1 hour time slot):

Week 1 – ETH #1
Day 1: 2 shows – minor intermittent pixilation and audio problems but mostly watchable.
Day 2: 3 shows – 2 channels watchable with minor intermittent pixilation and audio problems. 1 channel completely unwatchable with major continuous pixilation and audio problems.
Day 3: 1 show - minor intermittent pixilation and audio problems.
Day 5: 5 shows – 2 channels watchable with minor intermittent pixilation and audio problems. 3 shows completely unwatchable with major continuous pixilation and audio problems.
Day 7: 6 shows – 1 channel watchable with minor intermittent pixilation and audio problems. 3 channels completely unwatchable with major continuous pixilation and audio problems. 2 channels failed to record.

Additionally, I received 1 to 6 ‘Weak TV’ messages when some channels start to record, after which the channel would start to record except as mentioned above. Twice I got a ‘New CableCard Detected’ message during the week.

Week 2 – ETH #2 (using the same CAT5 cable, TV cable line and ETH power supply which were attached to the ETH #1)
Day 1: 2 shows – completely watchable.
Day 2: 3 shows – completely watchable.
Day 3: 1 show - completely watchable.
Day 5: 5 shows – completely watchable.
Day 7: 6 shows – completely watchable.

No ‘Weak TV’ or ‘New CableCard Detected’ message. No shows failed to record.

Week 3 – ETH #1 (using the same CAT5 cable, TV cable line and ETH power supply which were attached to the ETH #2)
All five days resulted in similar results as Week 1.

Week 4 - ETH #2 (using the same CAT5 cable, TV cable line and ETH power supply which were attached to the ETH #1)
All five days resulted in exactly the same results as Week 2 with absolutely no problems.

I retired a few years back, after spending some 25 years as a software engineer. However, my wife came to the same conclusion as me, that the ETH #2 has a hardware issue.

If you would have allowed me to RMA it last May, I would not now still be trying to get both of them to work.
========================================

Here's their latest response:

========================================================
Please do send an updated diagnostic. We can absolutely tell the quality of the signal coming in, the noise on the line, error inside of it, and the strength of the signal. There are so many causes to what you're experiencing, we need more data to help determine if its something new. If we're not mentioning the InfiniTV then we're not seeing an issue with it. 9 times out of ten it a configuration, hardware issues on the network or in the PC.
========================================================

I feel like the movie Ground Hog Day:

1. Ceton - Please install these Microsoft patches and disable sleep.
2. Me - This has been done but one ETH does not work correctly.
3. Ceton - Please send us a diagnostic. Let us know if we can help.
4. Me - OK. Here's the diagnostic.
5. Ceton - We see no issues. Let us know if we can help.
Go to #2 and repeat - for months.

Perhaps they're waiting for the unit to go out of warranty.

In each reply be me, I've asked for an RMA to swap out the ETH. In their replies to me, no mention is made of an RMA. Nor is there any information on their web site concerning RMA's.

I had purchased an InfiniTV4 PCI card which died after warranty. They offered to replace it for $125 but I decided to buy an ETH instead.

I also bought an InfiniTV4 USB unit which worked, for the most part, fine. Since the first ETH worked well I decided to replace it with another ETH.

I also have two Echo's which, for the most part, work fine.

So I'm probably north of $1000 in their products.

And this is the best their support can do?

That's awful. My biggest issue is that I sold this to one of my customers, so this is going to come back on MY head. There's no way I am going to spend months going back and forth over a broken product. Have you tried filing a complaint with the BBB? That's what I'm going to do if I can't get a full refund on both of my devices. It sounds like they're not honoring their legal obligation to fulfill the warranty. I'd love to hear from a Ceton rep on this, they seem to monitor these forums.

I don't understand how companies can operate like this, if I did business like that, I would be OUT of business.

[tzr916]

...The random crashing issue is the worst part for me, and is happening on all the computers connected to the Ceton....

I guess you are doing tuner pooling or something? Bring it down to only one PC for a while... Does wmc still crash?

[smassey22180]

I just spent a few weeks battling similar issues. It was not one problem. Here is what I found. First, the ETH 6 is not capable of cooling itself. Tuner temps above 60c make it even slower. Above 65c many odd things happen. Above 70c individual tuners go off line with no signal. Put a fan on it. Second, tuner pooling was not working for me. I re-ran WMC tuner setup and manually set up tuners 1-3 for only my first WMC. Then 3-6 only for my 2nd WMC. No issues since!

[mldenison]

First thing I would do is reload the firmware on the bad one. I've had flaky ones that another flash fixed.

Could also be temps. Bad one may be running a little hotter.

It'll be Monday or Tuesday before I try that ETH again. I've got some programs to record this weekend and don't want to wind up with the usual trash.

I here you about the temperatures. I use 2 80mm fans atop both ETH's which keep the temperatures down to 38C to 40C. The bad ETH runs around 5C hotter than the good one without the fans.

I'll try reflashing it then.

It appears ominous with the continuing 'sales' of the ETH. They're currently $199 on NewEgg.

Twin 5V 80mm fans

[mldenison]

It looks like I might need to eat some crow on this one.

I put the 'bad' ETH back in and ran another diagnostic log for Ceton.

In the meantime, I bought another ETH and swapped out the CableCard with ComCast.

This evening, I tried a number of recordings and most were badly pixelated.

So it looks like there's nothing wrong with the ETH.

I got a response from Ceton this evening:

==========================================================================
We have reviewed your diagnostic, and see no issues with your InfiniTV hardware. Your signal levels are normal, and everything is up and running. However, we do see serious high demodulation errors on your coax line, this will cause serious Pixelization.

Possible causes:

1. Bad splitters
2. Bad coax cable somewhere in your topography
3. The use of MoCA adapters / Bad MoCA adapter
4. Cap your exposed coax outlet plugs. They sell little caps for them (The exposed coax outlets act as little antennas picking up interference, the caps close them off)
5. External interference from something outside
6. Cable company Issue, it can and will happen from time to time.
7. Bad Cable Modem (They can flood the line with noise)
8. Bad signal amplifier

Any device attached to your coax topography can cause noise on the line. With this much noise this indicates something is attached to the line is malfunctioning
============================================================================

It looks like I'll be spending a few days checking all that stuff. I hope I get lucky because it's going to be a lengthy process.

[bds3151]

You may want to try replacing the Ceton issued power supply with one that has a higher current rating. I was having many issues including the cable card dropping out on the Ceton Diag application. I replaced the power supply with a 12v 3amp. and it has stabilized the eth6 a lot.

[kd6icz]

You may want to try replacing the Ceton issued power supply with one that has a higher current rating. I was having many issues including the cable card dropping out on the Ceton Diag application. I replaced the power supply with a 12v 3amp. and it has stabilized the eth6 a lot.

That's interesting... I hardly use my ETH because I always thought the receiver was not as good as my internal PCIe. I will try the larger power supply.

[kd6icz]

One thing that really helped the performance of my ETH was upgrading my Gigabit switch the PC and ETH were plugged into. I was using some $30 TRENDnet 8 port "green" switch. I switched it out for a $60 5 port Netgear ProSafe GS105E and it made a huge improvement.

[th83]

Now I keep getting a message that there are no tuners available. The only fix is to reboot the Ceton and the PC. It's happening about once a week and is really annoying (especially when it killed the recording of my wife's favorite program).

[smassey22180]

Now I keep getting a message that there are no tuners available. The only fix is to reboot the Ceton and the PC. It's happening about once a week and is really annoying (especially when it killed the recording of my wife's favorite program).

I am having the same issue. It is very frustrating and I really don't want to put much more time into troubleshooting this. Prior to this I had the same WMC w/ an OTA antenna w/ HD Homerun. It worked flawlessly and never missed a recording. I realize cable card would be more complex but this it a bit much.

[mdavej]

MB3 can cause this.

[th83]

One thing that really helped the performance of my ETH was upgrading my Gigabit switch the PC and ETH were plugged into. I was using some $30 TRENDnet 8 port "green" switch. I switched it out for a $60 5 port Netgear ProSafe GS105E and it made a huge improvement.

Has the dedicated business-grade switch helped with the 'no tuners' issue?

[kd6icz]

One thing that really helped the performance of my ETH was upgrading my Gigabit switch the PC and ETH were plugged into. I was using some $30 TRENDnet 8 port "green" switch. I switched it out for a $60 5 port Netgear ProSafe GS105E and it made a huge improvement.

Has the dedicated business-grade switch helped with the 'no tuners' issue?

I've only experienced that issue on my laptops. That's because I only use them with the ETH on occasion and it takes a tuner rediscovery and a couple reboots to get the IP addresses and WMDRM resolved.

On my dedicated WMC PC which stays powered up 24/7 I experience that on the internal PCIe on occasion when I have both my ETH and PCIe paired to my WMC PC. So what ends up happening is the ETH takes over. I haven't figured out what causes that problem yet. Not a big deal. I think I'm going to buy a server motherboard that had multiple NIC's and dedicate one NIC to the ETH tuner with a static IP and a crossover cable.

[nxsfan]

In case any of you missed it in my thread, I experienced some similar issues. During recordings or Live TV a glitch in the stream would cause WMC to grab a new tuner from the pool leaving the previous tuner unusable. This meant tuners would slowly be decommissioned until eventually I hit the "No Tuners Available" error which would be fixed by rebooting the InfiniTV Eth.

In my case the fix was simple: Disable "Energy Efficient Ethernet" in the network adapter properties on the WMC host.