Latest Ceton InfiniTV 4 Info Thread - Page 75

Well, I gave it the old "commentator's curse" by mentioning it. Rebooted sometime around 5:00 this morning. But still, 4 days uptime vs. 1 or less is an improvement...

I have my HTPC go to sleep when I hit the Off button on the remote. It does not affect the reported uptime of my USB Ceton unit, but it may affect the PCIe cards.

Anyone find a fix for the premium channel video stutter? Most shows on HBO and Cinemax stutter horribly on both Live TV and during playback of recordings. I have FiOS and those channels are flagged copy freely so I can edit them with VideoReDo. If I save the recordings as H.264 .wtv at 70% quality or as MPEG2 .ts files I can play them back without any stutter. If I do a simple edit and save as .wtv it stutters. I've noticed when playing the shows that stutter, if I press the info button on my remote the on-screen overlay doesn't scroll left and right smoothly. My PC should be good enough to play any non-gaming video smoothly.
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InfiniTV 4 PCIe FW: 1.1.0.14, HR: 5124
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
Intel i5-650 (Clarkdale) Intel HD driver version: 8.15.10.2622
6 GB RAM
Shark007 32/64 bit codec packages
Samsung LN32D 450 series on HDMI (extended display) 1360x768 @60HZ
Dell IN2020M on VGA (primary display) 1600x900 60Hz (32 bit color)

This doesn't seem like it has anything to do with your tuner. Your hardware should be fine. The HTPC I just upgraded from was an i5-661 clarkdale, and it never stuttered.

If you have a spare hard drive, take out your existing one and install the spare and do a clean install of windows w/o anything you might have installed. If that doesn't eliminate the stutter then look at hardware. That's the easiest way to rule out a software issue.

Saw a new error with 1.1.5.2 tonight. WMC was recording three non-SDV channels at 7pm and gave me errors for each that it could not record.

It did, however, record the shows - and the Ceton did not crash.

Got a new error in the log - SDV 6:
Tuning adapter could not validate the cable card, make sure it is inserted properly

Again these were not SDV channels, and it actually did record.

Strange.. Not posting my up-time as it will surely jinx things, but other than this 1.1.5.2 has been good.

xnappo

I reloaded the Media Center OS and forgot to set the power settings to high performance so it was going to sleep on me. I just thought the ceton PCIe firmware was segfaulting and restarting causing my automated e-mails.

After a couple of days of this, I realized it was because the PC was going to sleep. When it wakes from sleep, the InfiniTV PCIe card loads up as if the pc were just powered on.

Your USB InfiniTV card is probably set to stay powered up when the PC goes to sleep.

Check the Media Center Eventlog. It will tell you what it reported as the problem.

If the card doesn't reboot, typically, the media center will try again and again to start the recording unless there's a later showing of it. If there's a later showing, it will just schedule it for the later showing and not try again.

If the card reboots, it considers it having been manually stopped as if you hit the stop recording option and it won't restart it for that showing. It should, however, record a later showing if there is one.

I've had the best uptime out of 1.1.4.5. I got 5 days with no reboot or out of memory. I then loaded with 1.1.5.2 and it started rebooting occasionally.

Yep, too many variables to keep track of. I'm no EE nor an expert on motherboard circuitry, but I have been through every setting I could find within the BIOS and in Windows 7 to shut off any and all power-saving options for the USB ports, don't know how sleep mode affects the PCIe slots.

Most times when coming out of sleep mode (remote is set to start Live TV automatically, idea is to make it as close to an appliance as possible) with the prior firmware I would receive "No tuners available" errors for the first minute or 2, then it would tune into the channel. I figure this is more of a problem with the TA than the Ceton, but don't know how to determine that as fact so I may be missing something.

On a side note, since upgrading to the latest - at the time - 295.73 nVidia drivers I am again occasionally seeing the flashing during darker scenes even after applying the changes noted in http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/archi...t-1243210.html, which worked for the prior version of the drivers. I see there is a newer nVidia driver version available, I'll try that before reverting back to 285.62. Just an FYI for those using nVidia GPUs (I have a GeForce 210)

Well, I just couldn't live with the Weak Signal errors any longer, so I rebuilt the system about a week ago now. I pulled out the original OS drive and replaced it with a SSD and reinstalled Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit from scratch. Since rebuilding, the system is a LOT more responsive than it ever was - obviously the SSD is to thank for that. I've seen people post about how great SSD's are, but until I started using them myself (I built another system with one several months ago), I really didn't appreciate just how big a difference they make.

So far, I have seen 1 subscription required message while watching a show (and it conveniently happened during a commercial break) and no Weak Signal messages. It's been long enough now that I think I can be confident that there must have been something screwed up in the configuration of the system. There were a few things installed that I didn't reinstall since I never used them - I'll just reinstall them if the need arises at some point.

Rather than use my schedule backup, I decided that starting from scratch was the smarter approach. So I've got some series recordings I'll need to keep an eye out for as shows are either out of season or are on hiatus because of something to do with college basketball.

Fingers are crossed hoping that this post doesn't result in Weak Signal errors starting back up.

That error was the error from the eventlog - it did exactly what you said it would do - thanks for the explanation of the logic it follows! I wish it would always try again since there is plenty of time with starting the recordings 2 mins early - I think it did this with The Walking Dead Sunday but then just waited for the next recording. It seems my channel tuning especially of SDV channels has gotten slower...

xnappo

Is there anything else that I could try before re-installing Windows? I won't be able to do that any time soon.

I want to thank Eric for pointing out how to access the event logs. I have been occasional getting truncated recordings. The event logs states "recording topped due to activity by another component". This was when I was at bed or at work and so nothing I was running. Anyone know how I can find out exactly what this "mystery component" is, so I can strangle it???

Well my good luck with 1.1.5.2 is at an end. After three days with 1.1.5.2 I got a reboot last night - luckily in the middle of the night this time so no ill effects.

xnappo

My 1.1.5.2 had an up time of over 8 days ... I then had to reboot the PC after installing updates. I had my first crash about an hour after the reboot. I suppose I shouldn't have touched anything!

Previous firmware would cause crash just about daily for me, so still liking 1.1.5.2 overall.

My biggest issue with this device is on copy protected programs. Some have reported pixelation issues which I may see some times but I mostly get a brief loss of audio and video frames (almost slow motion effect) that makes these recordings or live TV mostly unwatchable. I posted a couple of examples on youtube to see if anyone else has experienced this.
http://youtu.be/-gHi0s_gV30
http://youtu.be/CGHIA0Dk8AU

I have a signal amplifier and my signals are strong and clean. The issue is 100% with the copy protected channels. Could this be caused by a bad cablecard? that is the one thing I have not replaced in all of this.

Perhaps it is the card rebooting. Have you checked the logs?

You playing this on your HTPC or via extender?

I guess that is possible. You mean I should go to the actual Ceton logs for the time frames where this occurred?

Playing right off the HTPC and this is actually the second HTPC I have tried this in along with different video cards, upgraded wiring, signal booster.... USB version of InfiniTV. Thx

Did you check the uptime of your PC or have automatic updates installed? My system rebooted due to automatic updates last night.

I'm not saying you have to, or that it will even help. But it's the easiest thing to do to rule out some software that might have messed with things. Well that's just my opinion. Some people don't like to do windows re-installs. I do them often enough, so it doesn't bother me. It only takes like 10-20 minutes.

Using a spare drive is better, so you can go back to the old one if want, if nothing changes for the better.

Good point. I thought I turned it off but will check.

Is the only way to generate crashlog.txt to do the full diag zip file?

xnappo

I appreciate the advice and will keep that option in mind. I'm experimenting with Shark007 settings right now. Hopefully I'll find the answer there.

http://192.168.200.1/log.txt should do it. Substitute your ceton IP if you are using network tuners.

This may be of interest: From 4:45-6:10 on the 15th I got a good recording on Tuner 1. Tuner 2 started recording another program at 5:59 but stopped at 6;21 due to "use by another component". Last night I went to my logs and noticed that Microsoft was running a "security audit" which started at 6:20 (!!!) Coincidence? Then at 6:29 Tuner 1 starts to record but runs only to 6:31 showing an "unexpected failure" and code OxC0040524. I show that at 6:30 Win7 scans (daily) for latest updates. Further recording attempts later in the morning and afternoon all failed for "no tuners available" and there were none available when I got home last night. A 10 second AC power off (this is USB) and reconnect set things right. Anyone have any insight here? I do not know how to read the Ceton codes, especially the time and event stuff, but this seems hardly coincidental.

Look at your Infinitv uptime by pulling up the system tab: http://192.168.200.1/Services/System.html. Next go here http://192.168.200.1/log.txt and look for something about 10-15 lines from the top that says fault whee xxxx segfaults or Window whee xxxx segfaults.

Currently I have my OS on a 160GB partition and the data on a another partition.

Does anyone know if I move the OS to an SSD - is that going to kill the PlayReady protected files?

xnappo

If you copy the image, you'll probably be ok as far as PlayReady goes (don't modify the original drive until you confirm your recordings still work).

But I think the main concern is that Windows 7 sets things up differently when you're using an SSD (disables disk defrag, etc.) - I'm not sure if you can manually make all the changes that are needed after copying the image from your original OS drive or a fresh OS install is needed. You should definitely look into this before proceeding.

I would like to chime in here also - about 3 months ago, after running practically flawlessly since December 2010, my Ceton started having most of the issues in this thread - partial recordings, stopped for use by another component, no tuners available, etc. And I also agree that 1.1.5.2 has made my system once again pretty reliable - when before I had a partial/missed recording or more EVERY NIGHT, I now have gotten every recording since March 6th (right after I updated to this latest beta FW). I have had my Ceton replaced twice, so it wasn't the tuner card. My guess, and it is ONLY my guess, is Ceton, while trying to correct other issues, introduced some major bugs in the FW - how else could a system that has worked flawlessly since I got my card sometime in December 2011 go totally south? To their credit, they have worked tirelessly with me for the last 3 months, and I can't but believe all the hundreds of diagnostics that were sent in by everyone helped them at least narrow down the cause of the issues. Now some have said that they have made changes to the FW to mask the real problem - card reboots due to either the FW itself or some MS process, but I don't have the expertise to analyze the log files to determine if this is the case or not - all I know is my wife isn't bitching at me constantly! And I'm not bitching at her!

I'm almost to the point I feel safe returning that atrocious RNG-200N DVR from Comcast that I had to get so I could at least manage to watch some of the shows that were missed - gawd - I would rather rip my tongue out with a pair of pliers than have to use that for all my recordings!

Again kudos to Ceton for working their tails off to solidify this product!

Now if Comcast Houston could get their act together and fix the Subscription Required messages that pepper every premium show, that would be heaven!