Latest Ceton InfiniTV 4 Info Thread - Page 58

Please give me your ticket # and I will follow up. We most certainly do have older versions, but strongly suggest that people *NOT* flash their InfiniTVs with a firmware older than what it came with. Depending on a number of factors, downgrading, especially to a much older version or a version that is older than your board, risks putting the InfiniTV in an inoperable state. For this reason, it is unlikely that we will ever post a historical archive of firmware.

Well, the ticket number for my PCIe InfiniTV issue is a bit of a puzzle. I have had a ticket open for my crashing USB InfiniTV since Dec 1, 2011.

But the PCIe InfiniTV that I also have is a different problem, so I opened a new ticket for that last week, and it was assigned #ZOE-653-32674. Now that ticket is gone.

I think someone at Ceton foolishly combined the ticket for my PCIe InfiniTV with the older ticket for my USB InfiniTV. The USB ticket number is #NAR-544-23220.

Yeah, I wasn't looking to go way back, just to the latest non-Beta version. I understand the possible issues with installing prior versions as Eric has already alluded to, was trying to get back to square one.

Not trying to jump the gun here on Eric, but I did receive an update on my ticket this evening:


So I am hopeful...

Thanks for the tip. Wife and kids won't figure that one out though. Especially with no keyboard connected. Guess I could make a batch file. Biggest ? though is why is it happening. I'm really not having much luck with this whole HTPC as far as running without a glitch. The 2 I have running seem to have one issue or another at any given time.

A batch file! Wow I have not heard that term in years. You must have been in computing as long as I have. Anyway, the first command must execute to completion before issuing the second command so you would need a pause or delay between the commands.

Hey guys I have a recurring problem and figured I'd ask about it here, I haven't gone through this thread because it is rather large.

Anyways, about 4-5 times while watching a live TV show for an hour or longer, either the Ceton card or WMC freezes. I hit stop, back, and whatever else but nothing happens, live TV continues to play.

Usually I have to hit ctrl alt del and exit that way, but last night it happened and all of the commands I tried to hit while it being frozen actual ended carrying through with the windows task manager on screen....

Anyways, I thought this was odd behavior, and I should mention this is on my main HTPC with the Ceton card installed. I haven't noticed this on other HTPC's in the house.

Thanks

Got my InfiniTV back today from Ceton (sent it to them last week) and I'm back up and running again. Thanks guys for the fast fix. I'm out of the doghouse with the wife now.

I received a USB infiniTV4 for Christmas and until tonight I generally have not had any problems. It had occasionally had a recording error (timeout?) displayed just to fall over to another tuner and record fine and usually I have no problem recording 5-8 streams including my analog and clear qam tuners. I do use the product a little different than other people as I haven't got my cablecard yet (it should be installed this coming week). Just last night I was commenting to someone about my infinitv uptime being reported as 18 days.

But tonight, I only had 1 scheduled recording during prime time and WMC reported no tuners available and it tried both clear qam tuners, all 4 infinitv tuners, and both analog tuners. I also know that I occasionally (maybe a couple times a year) had this problem prior to getting the infiniTV as well as another problem with low bit rate/week signal which I was apparently able to remedy by moving the live tv buffer to a separate drive from the recording drive (don't know why this worked as I have no problem recording 6 HD streams at once but if I have the live tv buffer on the same drive I start getting disk errors after a few hours regardless of which drive). With all the problems I've seen, it makes me wonder if all the problems people have been having isn't more media center related than ceton's drivers/firmware as I am constantly reading about people having the same types of problems with other vendors.

A few hours later, when I noticed the error I went to watch live tv and no tuners were available so I checked the infinitv's web page and it said WDRM Pairing: RED for all tuners and the uptime as approx 2.5 hours (it usually says green and a reboot brought back that green status).

I was curious if I should try to get the beta firmware (currently have 1.0.9.6) and/or if there was something I should do to prevent this from happening again such as regularly rebooting machine. Also is it likely that an infinitv error caused the other tuners to not work as I could use a separate machine for my other tuners.

How many different production versions of the PCIe tuner are there? There must be different versions if backwards compatibility of the firmware is a concern. Is there a version history available for reference?

Good question.

Ceton STILL has not gotten back to me about getting me a PCIe firmware from Feb 2011 or earlier.

Perhaps I missed it, but does someone have a reboot script that would fire off in the wee hours of the night if no tuner activity is going on?

I don't know about rebooting the ceton card via script but you can reboot your PC via script nightly and see if that helps. With the older firmware, when I was having tuner not available issues, I always had to reboot to get the infinitv card to start responding again. Because of this, I implemented a scheduled task to reboot my pc at 5 AM.

With the current firmware and the latest beta firmware, the infinitv card reboots itself. I'm guessing ceton put something in the firmware code to force a reboot when certain conditions are met instead of it just hanging up. This is great in that you don't have to bother rebooting your PC constantly but it's masking the problem for a lot of those who don't use it a whole lot.

For those of us who do use media center a lot, it's highly noticeable still.

In Windows 7, add a new scheduled task with shutdown.exe as the program/script and /r as the argument. Make sure you check the box on the first tab to run the task when a user is not logged in. Click ok then enter a username and password with admin rights. Set it to run when you aren't going to be using it.

For those who are interested, here's a list of infinitv uptimes I'm getting. I'm usually seeing 2 days +/- 10 hours or so before the infinitv card reboots. I'd be switching over to an HDHomeRun Prime if they had a 4 tuner version (That 6 (3+3) tuner version just makes no sense).

"Date" "Time" "PC_Uptime" "Infinitv_Uptime"
"1/31/2012" "09:50:01 AM" "2 days 5 hours 17 minutes 22 seconds" "2 Days 5 Hours 26 Minutes 46 Seconds"
"2/4/2012" "03:15:02 AM" "2 days 4 hours 18 minutes 56 seconds" "2 Days 4 Hours 28 Minutes 10 Seconds"
"2/6/2012" "12:30:01 AM" "4 days 1 hour 33 minutes 58 seconds" "1 Days 21 Hours 19 Minutes 38 Seconds"
"2/8/2012" "11:30:01 AM" "6 days 12 hours 34 minutes 6 seconds" "2 Days 11 Hours 8 Minutes 4 Seconds"
"2/8/2012" "10:00:01 PM" "6 days 23 hours 4 minutes 6 seconds" "0 Days 10 Hours 28 Minutes 46 Seconds"

Batch files are the bomb...you can do anything with them. So easy to use once you get the swing of them.

I have a problem...kinda. Every now and again Windows will report that it could not record my TV show while it is actually in the process of successfully recording my TV show. I have grown used to just clicking OK and checking...and sure enough it is there being recorded same as any other show records.

Anyone else run into this?

I was about to buy InfiniTV 4 tuner and switch from Tivo. But reading all these makes me realize that
1) The product is not ready to be prime time
2) Ceton has already moved on to its next product.

Eric: Please convey to your company that
1) It is lucky to have reps like you participate in these forums. A big positive
2) Stability is most important feature for Tuner. Everything else is secondary.

My 2 cents: I believe Ceton is facing these issues due to Window Media Ceter and Windows patches. The new Ceton "Q" media system is a step in right direction because it gives Ceton control on the patches and hardware on the box rather then rely on customer desktop and WMC

Good luck and keep up the good work.

cybersage,

I've had that issue as well. It is as if the tuner is not initially available but MC continues to try and finds the tuner and then records the program(s).

Love batch files. Became familiar with them when building my MAME cabinet and wanted to hide Windows.

I use a batch file on my HTPC to hide Windows 7. I always had taskbar and focus issues with Windows 7 when running WMC7. Wrote a quick batch file that loads during boot and problems solved.

Keep in mind that for every poster who posts about an issue, there are typically a LOT of people using the same product without any problem. I'm not saying things are perfect, but the people who are having problems are far more likely to post here than those who aren't having any problems.

I have 2 of the original InfiniTV 4 PCIe cards. My brother has 1 and a friend has 1. None of us are running into any major issues. Every once in a while, I get the "signal too weak" error in WMC, and I had 1 recording this week that failed (based on the message that popped up in WMC, it looks like it was either flagged as copy never or incorrectly detected as copy never).

For the signal too weak message, I've got a suspicion that there may be an intermittent issue with either my FIOS ONT (the box they run the fiber line into inside the house) or their feed. The output from the ONT goes to a quality 2 way splitter that then feeds the 2 Ceton cards. The ONT is about a 15 foot coax run to the rack where the PC is located and then the splitter has very short runs to the Ceton cards. I'm using Belden coax cable and Thomas & Betts Snap-N-Seal compression connectors (and the proper tools), so I'm pretty confident the coax cables are good.

Anyone discovered a way to edit the streams yet?

Anyone else having issues recording lately? I've received an error on both ABC and then NBC last night, saying the content was protected. My ABC recordings stopped, but even though I received the error for the office last night, it appears to have been recorded

http://experts.windows.com/frms/wind.../t/102818.aspx

That thread describes what happened to me the other night - Modern Family was the show I got the copy once error on. It was particularly annoying because I've got 2 InfiniTV4's and got the error message pop up for each tuner while I was trying to watch the Bruins game. It looks like this was widespread enough that it was probably a glitch in either the network feed or the service providers (I have FIOS).

Maybe I should add a few OTA tuners to my system as it should be possible to configure them as the first choice for the OTA channels or as backups for situations like this since WMC clearly tries each tuner before giving up. I do have a 2nd system running BeyondTV recording the OTA shows, so I have a backup anyway.

Thanks. I will keep monitoring this thread and make a decision.

I've notice this error happens when I have back-to-back recordings on the same channel and there are no additional tuners available when the 2nd program starts. Both shows are recorded, but the 1st show ends exactly at it's record stop time (i.e. without the additional 3 minute buffer). And similarly, for the second program, there is nothing prior to the record start time. I usually just hit "Cancel" to close the window. A minor annoyance.

I can assure you that we have not "moved on" to our next product, and in fact, Q is based around an InfiniTV card, so it would be foolish of us to stop InfiniTV development at this time. While we are actively working on Q and Echo, the developers working on Q and Echo are different than the InfiniTV developers.

I have a cetonInf4 USB version. Installed fine, worked fine until I went away for a week. HTPC (new) left on and no sleep mode set. Came back and the Inf4 showed unable to record and would not let me cancel out, so had to do soft reboot. Still no Inf4 but unlplugging it for a minuted worked as it came right back on line. Stupid question I guess, but if I want to use as DVR when I am away, is it a mistake to go out of WMC to the desktop or will the Inf4 record anyway? If WMC has to be open, then it was I who screwed up.

Thanks Eric.

You DVR function in Media center runs as a service, you do not need to have media center actually running, just need your PC turned on.

Really, is this something new, or a way to read up on it? I have always left my wmc open thinking it was driving the DVR functionality.

If this is the case, it might be worth programing the Harmony to open/close wmc when tunring on/off the rest of the system... should save on cpu power draw as well...

Watch the temps on the card. I have a fan blowing directly onto mine.