Latest Ceton InfiniTV 4 Info Thread - Page 56

Make sure to get the Low Pass Filter installed.

I think you only need that if you are using their Moca router and not if you got hooked up with ethernet.

I know I have gone thorugh my fair share of hoops (more than some less than others here), but I just wnated to add some on my personal experience and information after reading the last 10 or so pages of this thread.
1st. The PCIe card is in no way immune to the problems of the tuner rebooting. It may be less prone to it than the USB, but I have two InfiniTV4 PCIe cards and both do it.
2nd. In my troubleshooting I was almost certain I had one tuner that was a bad tuner and causing the problems since it was the only new thing in my system when the issues started to be noticed. This tuners address ended in 3f-71 and I started referring to it as my "dash 71" tuner to simplify my diagnostic reports. It was a much newer tuner orderd from the Egg in December. My other tuner is a "waiting list version" from quite some time ago. I have RMA'd the newer -71 tuner after several weeks of it becoming non-responsive and unavailable to Media Center. This was with the beta firmware from early January installed as well.
3rd. My other tuner, the older one, didn't seem to become unavailable anymore after the installation of the beta firmware, but now that it is the only tuner left in the system I am still getting tuner reboots and partial recordings, unavailable tuner messages, and all of the symptoms I was getting before.
4th. My coworker also got the PCIe tuner and he has had his tuners reboot on him as well. I since then gave him the link to the beta firmware and he also increased his signal strength with a PCT amp and relocating his PC to his cable closet. He hasn't had his tuner fail as often (if at all) since then. I had also replaced bad cables (thin Videoquest ripoffs) and improved my signal levels which helped with the tuenr reboot issues (a little).
5th. My WAF has been nicely bolstered by 7+ years of media center usage and (for the most part) successful recording of the shows we want. I have put my Hauppaugge 2250 dual clear-QAM back in to increase success rate. The majority of the shows from OTA networks are caught on that and some cable shows will fail all the way down to the SD clear-QAM, but that is still preferred to not getting the show at all. Of course the "partial" recordings are much more prevalent now and will undoubtedly kill the WAF quickly if it starts impacting her shows.

Thanks for the quick replies! I'm stumped too. Have you ever heard of this before? I just don't understand how my network speeds would literally be cut in half or more. I disabled firewall on the server and no difference. I checked event viewer and don't see anything related. This is disappointing because it is an ideal setup for me, but I don't want to lose my backup speed to my server.

Anyone else here bridge a gigabit network card and see any decrease in performance?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but it sounds like you've found a way to use the Hauppauge to record OTA and clear-QAM programs, and then the Ceton to record encrypted shows. How do we tell WMC which tuners to use to record what channels?

I have a Ceton PCI card only, so I don't have any experience with "mixed tuner" environments. But if what I think I heard is possible, I'll run out today and get a USB antenna for OTA!

Yeah, you are right.

I wanted to follow up on a post that I made months back and see if any other users are having this same issue. I have been working with Ceton since they started back in the fall but still haven't made on progress on them. I do very little TV viewing on the networks except for sports and Sunday nights on FOX. Most of the TV viewing I do are on cable channels. When football started back in the fall I began getting Tuner conflicts on the networks (CBS, FOX, NBC HD). There were no recordings being made at the time. I thought it was a time issue, for example at 1:00pm when the games started on Sundays I would have issues, but then I started getting them during the World Series and on Sat. when the college games were on. I also would have intermittent issues on Sunday nights when doing recordings on Fox. Lately, I've been watching more PBS-HD over the last month or so and started having the same issues. I started putting two and two together and have basically narrowed it down to the what these channels have in common on my cable system. These are the clearqam channels for my local TW lineup. (FOX-HD, CBS-HD, NBC-HD, and PBS's-HD.) I have shared this issue with Ceton and have sent captures and screenshot but have not made any headway. Has anyone else had problems with clearqam channels and tuner conflicts or no tuner available with the Ceton? I'm not sharing any tuners, my signal levels range from -3 to +1 and I have a TA that is up to date.

Hmmm, I've been having problems for months now with my PCIe InfiniTV, but I never associated it with ClearQAM channels. Signal level is decent (-6 to 0dBm ), no TA.

Here is an example of some of the problems I have seen. This is a slightly edited WMC log from Friday night.

7:56-7:57pm channel 1003, tuner 2, Chuck(1st ep) was not recorded. There was no TV signal when the show was scheduled to record [not recorded]

8:56-8:57pm channel 1005, tuner 2, Fringe was not recorded. There was no TV signal when the show was scheduled to record [not recorded]

7:57-9:10pm channel 1003, tuner 3, Chuck(1st ep) was successfully recorded

9:56-10:06pm channel 1260, tuner 2, Spartacus began as scheduled at 9:56pm and was manually stopped at 10:06pm for use by another component [partial]

8:57-10:06pm channel 1005, tuner 4, Fringe began as scheduled at 8:57pm and was manually stopped at 10:06pm for use by another component [partial]

8:56-10:06pm channel 1003, tuner 1, Chuck(2nd ep) began as scheduled at 8:57pm and was manually stopped at 10:06pm for use by another component [partial]

10:56pm-12:10am channel 1260, tuner 1, portions of Spartacus may not have been recorded. A signal loss occurred during the recording.


Despite those errors, my TiVo on the same splitter recorded all of the programs without any dropouts or glitches.

How do you find the logs? I can try a little experiment over the next couple days recording shows on ABC, CBS and FOX at night to see if I can replicate the problem on "non-sporting events".

I believe it is called "History" from the scheduled recordings menu.

After 4 or 5 days Comcast finally got my 2nd Cable card activated.

Was harder than the first, but in their defense they actually called me back without me really requesting a call back. I was going to put it off for next week when I had more time to deal with phone tag and dinking around with absurdity and a circus from hell. In short, they worked through it Saturday and finally Sunday after another call to me they got it.

I can't imagine an average Joe trying to attempt this with a Tivo or something similar. One would have better success trying to place a square peg into a round hole. Perhaps it is just my area.

I think they are catching on though. Saturday's call the lady walked me through going into the Ceton diagnostic utility (which of course is what you always have open looking to see if it gets paired correctly) and asking what items were messed up. In my case it is always the last item.

So on Sunday a guy calls me and asks me if it is working. Sure enough it was. After picking my jaw up off the floor and rushing out to buy a lottery ticket, I asked him why in the heck is this so difficult? His reply was that the activations need to happen on the headend. Which is basically what my secret extension guy has said before. He went on and said when you call the main number (which I have a hunch ends up overseas...wink wink) to activate your request, it may get backed up and not make it through. Who knows, not the last time someone blew up my skirt.

I didn't press the issue, but they've got problems. I understand why this isn't a priority. Funny thing is once you get passed the tier 1 stuff the employees actually give a crap. If they were like that for every problem they would be cable provider of the year.

Now back to your regular findings...

LMFAO...

About an hour after I posted this one of the cards dropped a connection.

Now step #6 on the 2nd card is saying "please ask your cable company to send a CCV signal to you CableCARD" Everything else is green.

Guess I didn't knock on wood enough.

Starting to get tired of this BS.

Ok, the last update to this fiasco...

I called the cable card activation line #. Finally got transferred to the Comcast NOC in Colorado.

The guy asks me for the magic 3 numbers again. After I gave him all of them the card went all green in regards to checkmarks instantly. He started laughing and said the first 3 digits of the data ID they had was totally different from what I said.

Amazed it worked for a day.

Moral of the story: Extreme patience. Knocking on a piece of lumber as we speak.

The hardest part of cablecards is getting the cable company to do what they are supposed to do.

Yup, true dat.

I did this very thing with 2 QAM cards in a non Ceton PC. One of the QAM cards can't tune CBS, so I told WMC to not use that card for that channel.

Here's what I did (and there may be an easier way):
Settings -> TV -> Guide -> Edit Channels ->

So, my theory now is that the tuner problems I have been seeing with my PCIe InfiniTV for several months now may have started with a firmware update sometime in mid-2011.

I am thinking this is the cause because I reinstalled Windows from disc and did not allow any windows updates (this is pre-SP1), and even installed older versions of the three drivers that I need (Intel network driver, NVidia graphics driver, Ceton InfiniTV drivers 20110118 v1.0.1.21), and NOTHING else was installed, nothing at all. Just the minimum needed for InfiniTV operation with 32-bit Windows 7 and my Intel DH57DD motherboard.

In other words, everything was back, as close as I could make it, to when I first got my Ceton InfiniTV in late 2010. I did not have any tuner problems during the first 6 months or so of having the InfiniTV. I don't remember exactly when the problems started, but it was in mid-2011, probably the second half of the year.

Well, when I reverted everything but the InfiniTV firmware to late-2010 era, I still am having tuner problems with WMC and InfiniTV. So I conclude that the tuner problems must have been introduced with a firmware upgrade.

I think I kept current with the non-beta firmware upgrades that were posted to Ceton's website, but I do not remember any specifically. I cannot find any links to old firmware versions on Ceton's website, and I cannot find a changelog anywhere.

What I'd like to try is to revert to a firmware from Jan 2011 (or earlier). I'm not sure what version that would be, or if Ceton's firmware flashing software will even allow downgrades.

Anyone have any suggestions?

An easy way to manage the WMC guide and set tuner priorities is with Guide Tool - http://1geek1tool.com/guidetool

You would need an OTA tuner to go along with an antenna and most likely that would need an RF connector for a feed.

Just a quick update on a little experiment im doing. yesterday i started recording a few primetime shows on the clearqam channels i have been having issues with. Last night i recorded 3 or 4 from 8 to 11pm with 1 or two recording at a time plus my normal live tv viewing i do on the normal "cable" channels i watch. Everything recorded with no issues, tuner conflicts, or partial recordings unfortunately I dont remember which shows and networks because i deleted them inexplicably but like i mentioned they were either on fox, cbs, pbs or nbc hd. Tonight I'm doing the same experiment, and had an issue recording ncis on cbs with 5 partial recordings while watching live tv, and a couple different tuner conflict messages. there was nothing else recording when it started shortly before 9pm. I plan on doing the same thing tomorrow night on the same networks, and on thurs and fri do the same thing on cable channels as kind of a comparison. I'll post full results at the end of this week and logs in case anyone is interested. On a side note, ive been working with Ceton on the issue and sent some event and app logs to them last week. the last email i got said they might have a determination on the issue and asked from some more logs. if anything comes back, ill post that as well.

Anyone here having problems with their Infinitv 4 PCIe card restarting?

I put a script in place to get the ceton uptime and report to me when the card reboots.

CrashLog.txt either shows an out of memory issue or segmentation fault then the card restarts.

[192363.190000] Out of memory: kill process 17959 (upnp_ocur_serve) score 6543 or a child
[192363.190000] Killed process 17959 (upnp_ocur_serve)

or

[26722.890000] Fault whee upnp_ocur_serve [3667]: segfaults at 75756000 pc=0008eb70
[26722.910000] Fault whee upnp_ocur_serve [3667]: segfaults at 75756000 pc=000fd6c4


Ceton is pretty sure this is a firmware issue, however, the have not yet released a new firmware that fixes the issue. The problem still occurs with beta 1.1.2.4.

Memory leak possibly? It'll crash when no channels are tuned and nobody is using it.

I have a feeling this issue was introduced with a previous firmware update as I don't remember having any issues initially. Possibly when they introduced the network tuner feature. Problem is, I don't have any of the older firmwares and can't find them to test.

I'm just curious if anyone else is having the same issue and noticed the same errors in the logs?

If you are getting partial recordings or the manually stopped for use by another component messages or tuner not available messages, check the CrashLog.txt in the diagnostics zip file and see if it's the same issue.

I wonder if this is the same issue that's being seen with the usb version as well.

Oh...The Infinitv card is not overheating in case you're thinking that's the issue. The temps stay under 41C on the card. It's well cooled in my system.

I really want it to be stable so I can get rid of my cable company provided HD DVR. I can't stand paying that extra $15 to $20 per month per HD DVR.

I just had a recording fail ("partial") at 9:33:22pm last night, WMC history says it was stopped for use by another component, which is nonsense because it was the only recording at the time, and I was not watching live TV.

I noticed today that the webpage system tab says that it has only 14 hours of uptime, despite the fact that I have not put to sleep, hibernated, or rebooted my computer for days. So clearly the PCIe InfiniTV crashed and rebooted itself.

I used the Ceton diagnostic to gather information, and checked CrashLog.txt as you suggested. It indicates a crash at 07:35:55 UTC today, which would be 11:35:55pm last night (I am in Pacific time zone). So I guess that the InfiniTV crashed at 9:33pm, then crashed again at 11:35pm. But I see no record of the crash at 9:33pm so maybe I am wrong about that. But it is suspicious that there was a documented crash about 2 hours after the recording failed.

I'm also wondering what are the units of "Up Time" 07420.923741, and if those are different than the timestamps like [42949376.550000]. If uptime is in seconds, then 7420.9sec = 2 hours and about 3 minutes. 9:33pm + 2 hours and 3 minutes = 11:36pm which is very close to the documented 07:35:55 UTC crash. So more evidence that there was a crash at 9:33pm before another crash at 11:35pm.

Anyway, here is the beginning of CrashLog.txt:

Well my card is now useless. Somehow the little coax cable adapter broke off. Not even sure how it happened. Just stopped getting service, looked behind my PC to see if the coax was unconnected and it was just hanging there. The thing is waaaaaaaay too fragile.

Open a ticket with us and we'll get you taken care of

Correct. The Up Time is in seconds. I don't know what the other numbers correspond to.

You're seeing the same segmentation fault and restart that I'm seeing with my card.

Also...It appears the Infinitv run on linux based firmware. If this is the case, they would be required to release the code per the GNU General Public License.

were you recording clearqam networks? im wondering if thats what im seeing as well...except mine dates back to Sept.

I'm not sure. How do you check?

I don't understand why Ceton has not fixed this long ago. Don't they have several units set up in their test lab that are always getting pounded on with lots of scheduled recordings? I would think something like that would be standard procedure for the QA people to monitor.

http://www.silicondust.com/support/channels/

usually abc, nbc, pbs, cbs, qubo etc....

Hmm, that link does not seem to tell me anything definitive when I enter my zipcode (89123).

The recording that failed last night was ABC, channel 1013, which the Ceton webpage says is frequency 663000 (QAM256), and it is "Copy Free". But I don't know whether that is enough to determine for certain that it is ClearQAM.

Anyway, a significant portion of my recordings are on ABC, NBC, CBS, but probably not more than 1/3. Still, I cannot rule out that every time I have had a crash that at least one of the tuners was on a clearQAM channel. Especially since I don't know which channels are clearQAM.

Eric (erickotz) is the QA Manager for Ceton. Let's ask him for an update on this issue.

Eric,

Can you provide more information as to the status of this issue? The segmentation faults with the upnp_ocur_serve process and subsequent reboots. It's been going on for a long time now. The beta firmware 1.1.2.4 doesn't resolve the issue. Sounds like it's a bigger issue than just a few people.

I'm on Time Warner Cable in Lake Wylie.