Latest Ceton InfiniTV 4 Info Thread - Page 46

Use hibernate instead of sleep. I Have the same problem with sleep mode on one of my harddrives. Using hibernate instead of sleep fixed it. You computer should wake up and record tv shows and then go back to hibernating. It saves me alot of power. but you do have to press the power button on your computer to wake up the computer. and it takes longer to boot up

I am having an issue. I am only using one tuner to record and while trying to watch another station it says all tuners in use. I go to the diagnostics menu and it tells me only one tuner is in use. Is anyone else having this issue.

Try running through TV setup again in Media Center. I've seen that when it is confused.

In the past, I would have just used the standard Windows networking sharing, but I have to admit, if you don't know what you are doing, it can be confusing. I set up my recordings with Homegroup, now that the latest version of Symantec Endpoint Protection supports it, and setting up to share the Recordings folder is very easy. I love seeing my recordings no matter which PC I'm on.

I'm wondering if the issues is because I'm using a WD 1TB Green drive and I know those can park themselves.

I use WD Green drives in a RAID 5 array and I've never had any issues with waking from sleep or anything that seemed related to their built-in power saving features. I'd suggest checking your BIOS settings to make sure you have the proper sleep state(s) available and enabled (S3 and S4) and then looking into the MCE Standby Tool to help you configure your system.

Couple questions, what percentage of recordings are "copy freely"? Also does anyone use this with mythtv?

I'm possibly thinking of setting this or hd prime up with mythtv and xbmc if there are enough copy freely programs.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Any hard drive with a voice coil actuator (anything made in the last 20 years) automatically parks its head when it is powered off.


I can't speak for the competing product, but the InfiniTV works with MythTV for copy freely content. What content is copy freely depends on your MSO - on TWC, it's almost nothing. On FiOS or Comcast, it's almost everything.

I have Comcast here. So the majority of programmig is copy freely? Is there certain programming or channels that have restriction? Do you have experience with mythtv? How is the GUI, interface, setup, control etc.?

You'll need to check with someone in the same market you're in who also has Comcast to be sure as it varies from region to region.


Premium channels like HBO will almost allways be Copy Once. Local over the air equivalents (the major networks, PBS, etc.) will usually be Copy Freely (they should actually always be, but some cable companies mark everything as Copy Once). Everything else depends on your provider and region. Typically "everything else" will all be Copy Freely OR all be Copy Once.


I've never used MythTV, about all I can say is that you would be limited to only getting Copy Freely content with it. Any discussion of MythTV beyond that (or specific compatibility with the Ceton card) probably belongs in a separate thread.

When those WD Green drives came out people were having issues with the head parking so there was a utility to run so it doesn't to it anymore.

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1367904

Good morning all,
I've owned my Ceton card for about 6 weeks now. I actually had to send it in for RMA but Ceton repaired it and got it back to me quickly. Aside from that, the card works great.

I'm not sure what the issue is, but lately, I've been getting a "No tuners found" message in WMC. Not all the time...just some of the time. To get it back, I have to uninstall from the Device manager, run through the reset procedure in the Diagnostics, reboot, and then go through the TV signal discovery process in WMC.

I have two possible culprits that I can think of. I set up the network tuner portion, so I can share one of the tuners with the PC in my office. I also rebuilt my HTPC with a new mobo, CPU, RAM and SSD drive. The new system performs beautifully, but the disappearing act of the Ceton is really starting to annoy me. I also would have to say that I only built the new system this past weekend, and it had started doing this act on the old system as well, after I set up the networking, and after I got the card back from RMA. The RMA issue was simply a broken coax connector, so I doubt that affected the dropping, but it could have. They had sent me the same card back repaired, so I didn't have to go through the whole pairing process with Verizon.

Anyone else have this happen? I also have to state that it usually happens after coming out of sleep, so I'm wondering if that has anything to do with it too...

Any solution?

PPV and channels like Encore and HBO are either copy never or copy once and will not play via Myth or SageTV.

Non-premium channels should not be marked as copy protected on Comcast per their corporate standards. As with any organization as large and spread out as Comcast is, communication from the corporate office to the locals can sometimes be a challenge, so some areas do incorrectly mark expanded basic channels as copy protected. In these cases, there are basically 2 options, either ask support for the phone number for the corporate office responsible for your region, call them, and provide a list of channels that are copy protected and ask that they work with the local people to get that fixed, or emailwe_can_help@comcast.com with the same list and request. Others on Comcast have reported success in getting the channels marked as copy freely, though in some cases it can take some time for the request to make its way through the system.

As to SiliconDust Prime you can access specific info or ask questions (not allowed to post links until I prove I am not a spammer), by going to their web site and clicking on support and them forums. You will see a Prime section at the top of the lists and a Linux/Myth section within it.

Newegg currently has the internal quad tuner for $220 shipped, which is close to the lowest price I've ever seen it at. I ordered a pair so get them while they're hot! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815706001

Nice price. Too bad I jumped on the dcr2650 yesterday instead ($124 at tigerdirect).

Hi,

After using Windows 7 Media Center with an InfiniTV 4 internal tuner for a couple of months, we're starting to approach the danger zone where we'll run out of hard drive space for new shows. So I went out and bought an external USB 2 drive, attached it to a rear USB port, and changed the WMC settings so that it would record there instead of the internal HDD.

I did this on Tuesday. Since then, my wife (who uses the system a lot more than I do) has noticed a variety of strange things happening that didn't before I made the change:

1) The first night, instead of recording the ABC and NBC evening news each in one chunk, it first recorded 7 minutes and then 41 minutes (we use a 10-minute "after" buffer to avoid the tuner conflict issue when taping consecutive shows on the same channel).

2) The second night, she got a "weak signal" message at the start of the ABC news broadcast and the program recording didn't begin for a couple of minutes. However, this time both news shows recorded in one piece, although not whole due to said weak-signal message.

3) Also tonight (Wednesday), she experienced very sluggish performance from the MC remote when changing channels or selecting menus.

4) The strangest thing is that tonight, we were watching a program on the live TV buffer when all of a sudden the channel changed by itself and we ended up watching completely live TV on a different channel! The remote was sitting two feet away from the nearest living creature's nearest body part when this happened.

Does anybody have a clue as to why these things might be happening? I posted it in this thread because of the channel and signal issues, but I suspect that the external USB drive has something to do with it since that's when the trouble started, so feel free to kick me over to the WMC thread if necessary.

We don't have a complicated setup, just a Ceton card (with CableCard) in an HP quad-core tower feeding the signal directly to a Samsung LCD via HDMI. No networked HTPCs or extenders involved.

Any ideas? I'd hate to think that our storage options would be limited to a second internal drive. Meanwhile, WAF is dropping like a stone.

Help!!

Hi, thanks. Good info

Dangit, it came back down. I should'nt of bit on Amazon at $270. Tested mine out yesterday though without the cablecard and everything worked great. I'm probably going to go see if I can pick up a card tomorrow and try to get it activiated and working over the weekend.

Personally, I wouldn't rely on the USB interface (not sure about USB 3.0, but definitely not anything older) for recording and playing back TV. I tried it several years ago with an entirely different DVR solution (accessDTV) and had pretty unreliable results. Switching to an internal (not USB) drive solved the problem.

Did you happen to get an external drive that also has an eSATA port? If so, check if your computer has an eSATA port on back and if it doesn't get yourself an inexpensive expansion card that adds an eSATA port and use that instead of USB. That should be just as reliable as an internal drive.

Same here. I had mixed results using external USB tuners. It wasn't so much the tuners themselves but rather the external hubs. I had issues with the tuners disappearing from WMC and BeyondTV, which I used for a couple years before taking the plunge with Win 7 Media Center.

I had been using six V-Box USB-A-3650 tuners in BTV and later with WMC before switching to four of the HP USB tuners and a better USB hub. I don't recall having the same issues with the HP tuners and the Targus hub, at least not with the same frequency as before. I eventually replaced the HP tuners with two Hauppauge 2250's and all is well. I also have two Ceton InfiniTV4's for a total of twelve internal tuners.

I think the main issue with using external USB tuners is that sometimes the USB interface becomes intermittent and loses connection. Keeping them internal via PCI-E bus maintains a solid connection.

My response was specific to USB hard drives, not tuners. Until recently, I had been using a combination of internal 2 dual ATSC tuners and 3 external USB single ATSC tuners (for a total of 7 tuners) for quite a while with BeyondTV and never had any issues. I'm now using 4 internal dual ATSC tuners and have eliminated the USB tuners in that system just to clean up cabling (1 less coax cable and 1 more tuner) and clutter in general. I still use the BeyondTV system, but pretty much only as a backup in case I miss a recording in WMC with the 2 Ceton PCIe cards. In the time I've had the Ceton cards running, I think I've only had to fall back to my BeyondTV backup once or twice and that was because of funky guide data - not a problem with the Ceton cards.

Basically, what happened when I needed to fall back to BeyondTV was TV schedules got shuffled around due to shows being pre-empted and then when the episode showed up a week or 2 later it was listed as a repeat and therefore didn't get recorded by WMC. That definitely isn't Ceton's fault, but the BeyondTV guide data seems to handle this situation better than WMC does.

On another note, I'm really curious to see what J River Media Center does with InfiniTV 4 support. They're apparently looking into / working on full support for the InfiniTV 4 so that we could use J River instead of WMC with no restrictions (the only potential problem might be using extenders for Copy Once recordings - I don't know if they're going to have a solution for that, but it doesn't really affect me for now as all of my channels are currently Copy Freely).

I use a Seagate 1TB USB external drive with my HTPC for recording/playback and it works fine, no issues. But I can see why some USB external drives are better than others, and why it's probably better to stick to internal only.

Like I said, the interface that's used is more important than whether the drive is internal or external. SATA / eSATA is higher performing and inherently more reliable than USB, so there should be fewer problems when using it. When there's a choice, I would always opt for SATA or eSATA over USB, using USB only if a better option isn't available.

This discussion seems to say USB is not good/reliable, do you think this is why the Ceton PCIe internal Tuner works but the Ceton USB Tuner does not work? In other words do you think the Ceton rebooting problem will never get fixed not because of Ceton but because USB should never be used for a TV Tuner? Thanks

I am having an issue that I am not sure if it is WMC, Ceton Card, Graphics card etc... I have WOW cable in Columbus OH and the InfiniTV USB. Some of the HD networks (A&E, AMC, History mostly) tend to have some effect that I can only describe as "stutter" in both Live TV and recordings. It can get really annoying and even unwatchable in some cases. The problems seems to always be on certain channels and with programs that are flagged as copy-once. Originally I thought maybe it was the 29/59 frame rate issue and upgraded to an Nvidia GT430 video card but the issue is still there. That along with the USB disconnect issue is driving me bonkers. I know I am not the only one with the USB disconnect issue and am waiting for that fix, but has anyone else had "quality" issues on copy protected programs?
Thanks

I'm ONLY talking about using USB for hard drives, which need more bandwidth when you've got a bunch of stuff going on (you could have 4 or more streams recording and multiple streams being used for playback). I'm not saying USB isn't good for anything.

Google the 29 59 glitch. On the channel with the stutter press 411 and the info button and scroll to the last page, I think, you'll see a field for the frame rate if you see it jumping between 29 and 59, that's your issue. The gt 430 card is one of the better cards to handle the problem you just need to tweak it a little. I have the same issue with CBS, Amc, and tmc in Comcast.

Can someone help answer this? Is it possible to watch all 4 Ceton Tuners at the same time with WMC or VLC? Can you have 4 instances of VLC open with each showing a different tuner? If not, any ideas for PIP workaround to show mulitple ceton tuners on a projector in split screen?
Thanks

On one display? No, I don't think so. AFAIK, VLC can't get access to the tuners (though it can presumably play Copy Freely recordings - I haven't bothered to try). The only ways I'm aware of to watch all 4 tuners at the same time is to watch on some combination of the main WMC box, extenders (ie: XBOX), and WMC boxes that have been given a tuner via network sharing. Those using MythTV might have other options if MythTV supports some sort of PIP type functionality.

The only solution I can think of for what you want would require the main WMC box, several XBOX's, and a HDMI matrix device that supports split screen display of the input sources (basically an HDMI version of this). I don't have a specific brand or model of device in mind as a quick google search didn't bring up anything that does this with HDMI, but I it wouldn't be cheap - most likely several thousand $$$ or more.

I just wanted to put in a good word for the Ceton support crew. I figure we complain when anything goes wrong, so we ought to speak up when something goes right.
The story is I managed to break the dongle that connects to the coax cable then to the card. I was moving something around behind my system and I managed to move the coax enough the break the connecter where it connects to the card. I sent in a support ticket and they got back to me and were willing to RMA the whole card, thinking that the part on the card was broken. I believe the dongle was the only thing damaged so they're sending that out to me free of charge. I just wanted to thank them for the excellent and prompt service. This looks like a company that wants to keep our business.