Ceton Infinitv4 Installed! Pix!

Looks great, congrats!

so you don't have to have a technician show up if you have a cablecard already?

Good info, and thank you for posting the install pix.

I hope to get to use this next week. Even though I ordered from Zones before any other vendor was available as an option (3/15/10), it now appears that orders from those latter vendors will be shipped before mine, in direct contrast to the promise from Ceton. Interesting to note that as of today, Ceton removed Zones as a vendor... http://www.cetoncorp.com/buy.php

Just a bit of info on Ceton eliminating Zones as a reseller for this product, posted on TGB:

Yep, I received and installed mine today:









Had to remove it after updating it and proving it worked (in theory) because my FiOS install has not yet happened.

EDIT: I will also say the packing was wonderfully done by Ceton. Zones took their box and tossed it into a standard shipping box with some of that brown paper for packing. FedEx crushed that like the mostly empty container it was. But the Ceton box (shown in the first post) is actually inside another white box, which is inside the brown box. Inside that Ceton box is the card and such AND some foam protection. It was VERY VERY well packed!

I'm probably speaking for most of us but... I'm totally jealous!!!
-Jonathan

Might want to take some canned air to those fans while the case is open!

Agreed. I'm wondering how well this would fit in a half-height slot.. (ITX type case)

Yep, I closed it up for now, but am going to get some canned air. I bought this case when I first installed MCE2005...it has seen many changes since then.

I cannot say, but it comes with a half height bracket.

What exactly did you have to remove to get it to work? I got mine yesterday and I had an M-card sitting around that I picked up on ebay that I plugged into the card until I can get Verizon out to do a proper install. Are you talking about removing the cablecard or what? I'm also on FIOS and I ran it through the update with the latest firmware. Unfortunately, I ran into some glitches with Media Center after updating from 32-bit to 64-bit Win 7 so I'm in the process of reinstalling all of the software again.

I only have one free PCIe slot and my FiOS install has not happened yet. I do not have a cablecard to install in it yet so I cannot use it at all.

So out the card came until the FiOS tech shows up...then it goes back in and gets a cablecard.

Gotcha. I thought had read something about initially installing it with a CableCARD and then pulling the CC to enable it to be used as a clear QAM tuner, which is what I thought you were hinting at.

Yes, you definately can do that. You need to CC to do the initial setup right now (that is being worked on by MS and Ceton - hopefully will change in the future), but after that it can be removed.

Sadly, I do not have one to test that with. I opened my Comcast box but no card is in its slot.


As a note, a LOT of MS employees ordered this card, so that bodes well for continued support from MS...provided these employees work in the Media Center division. Most likely they do, though.

There isn't a 'Media Center Division' anymore.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/...ices-unit/5023

loving mine. called comcast and updated the host id and voila! Whole install took about 20 minutes including comcast call.

Mine is trucking along in the UPS system. Should be here wed. Got a truck roll from cablevision for one of their "professional installations of cablecards" extortion fees scheduled for Thursday

Congratulations on your install. What picture quality do you see vs. your old settop or DVR? What else should we know?

Thanks!

Just got FiOS installed today and have the cablecard up and running. It was VERY VERY VERY easy to do. The two hard parts were:

1. The card was a little to far to the side (most likely my mobo and case do not line up perfectly) and the cablecard would not slide in. Easy fix, remove the tuner and slide the card in. The label goes towards the CPU side of the mobo.
2. My mobo is OCUR ready, so it asked me for an OCUR key. I had already grabbed the one from TheGreenButton, so I was ready to put it it. Hard part was I could not copy and paste - it made me manually type it.

The install went smooth, Win7 detected the tuners and the cablecard. The lineup downloaded quickly and everything worked. Pretty simple.

The FiOS install tech was great. He did not know anything about cablecards though. But he did tell me that whenever he has one the homeowner always knows more about them than he does so he steps out of the guy's way and turns into a support tech for him. I was happy to hear it, since I did know far more about HTPCs than he did. He was eager to learn, so I did some impromptu training. Since I also work for Verizon (though in a completely different departement), I am listing that time as interdepartmental team building and training. It will look good on my review.

Sor far I love the card. I no longer have to worry about the HDHomeRun not getting a strong enough ClearQAM tuner to record. No longer have to worry about any of the myriad of little nagging issues when using multiple tuners of different technologies. I had an AverTV 780 analog and digital tuner and the HDHomeRun digital tuner.

I also vastly reduced the clutter behind the entertainment center. I removed several coax cables, several power cords, and an ethernet cable. Going to FiOS also allowed me to combine my cable modem and wireless router into only one FiOS box...which is actually quite small and nice looking.


So far I am quite happy with the move to the Ceton InfiniTV4. It also allows me to get all my HD channels directly into the PC in full HD goodness, rather than downgraded to analog via my cablebox. FiOS is also cheaper and faster than my old Comcast service.


It is faster tuning for me than with my AverTV to IR repeater to Cablebox setup. It is about twice as fast...or as my wife says "oh, that is much better".

That's strange. You should not have been prompted for a product key. Did you use the Digital Cable Advisor tool? That eliminates the need to enter a key.

True, but you have to actually RUN the Digital Cable Advisor tool. A new install of win7 will not even have the DCA tool for a few hours, too.

It doesn't if your bios already has the OCUR table populated. Many Asus boards do so the DCA doesn't work.

If you are going from an ATI DCT to the Ceton and your cable company is freaking out and they want to roll a truck... Call back and speak to another tech. Tell them you replaced your Tivo HD under warranty. This will put them in the mode that allows you to read the host ID to them. Time Warner wanted the serial # from the card, the Host ID and the cablecard ID. Once I gave them this info, they hit my card again and I was up and running. Install took about 10 minutes. 10 minutes on the phone and I was up and running. Ceton rocks! I haven't had to choose what show not to watch/record yet. Four tuners seems to be perfect for my household.

This is usually the case and it's what irks me about required truck rolls for CableCards. When I get mine, I'm not going to do a %&#@ thing. If the tech can't get it installed, I'll do it myself and then insist on the installation being free.

I'm not knocking the techs here. If the company is going to require a truck roll, then they need to train the person they are sending. (Not sure if FiOS required a truck roll or you just chose to have one but my cable company does.)