Latest Ceton InfiniTV 4 Info Thread - Page 76

1.1.5.6 firmware is out in the wild.

Edit: Please don't post public links to it. I'm sure Ceton is trying to have a control group for testing firmware which I deeply respect. There's probably less than 20 of us that are messing with firmwares and seeing what goes on and know the dangers. Don't want to spoil it kind of thing.

I would ask that those of you with access to pre-beta firmwares not share it at this time. As WideNine mentioned, we are trying to have a controlled release, and 1.1.5.6 has already been superseded by a newer version. In the near future, we will be having an official beta release, and at that point, it will be open to those that wish to install it.

Eric,

I think I speak for most of us in wanting a solid product. It makes our lives easier (in regards to explaining to our loved ones on missed recordings etc...) and it ultimately helps with your company's success. We are all on the same team.

I appreciate your efforts. I take it by what you are reading the latest firmwares are a vast improvment for a lot of us. I extend my thanks to you and the Ceton team.

No whee xxxx segfault messages that I can see anywhere. Uptime was only 8 hours as of last night, now only up to 16. No goofed up recordings at least; 7 hours worth in last 12 all good. I did stop auto windows updates, but my short uptime suggest she's rebooting I gather, right? I am on Firmware 1.0.9.6 still; wonder if I ought to move up.

Why is my time listed as Jan 1 00:00:04 in that logfile??

When ever the Ceton card restarts, it set the date/time to a default (tuner doesn't have a time source). After some period of time, it will receive a date/time set message from the driver. Look for debugWriteStampFile in your log file.

If you crash before the time set is received, you will get the time since the tuner was rebooted.

As a note to people, unless you are experiencing problems, there is NO REASON AT ALL to seek out beta releases. I know it is exciting to be on the cusp at times, but with TV, it is supposed to "just work", as my wife puts it.

Any reasons why my device sometimes tell me there are no tuners avalible while nothing else is being watched or recorded ?

Read the last few pages - look at your uptime and look in the log for segfaults.

xnappo

So the short answer is due to a bug that causes the driver to crash.

thanks for the short answer ! lol


Wow my uptime was 3 minutes lol. It seems to correct it self after awhile however

Hi all-

I've had my ceton pcie card for awhile now and it's working great ... Although I just updated to fw 1.1.2.4 which seems like a bad idea now.

In any case I have my work machine upstairs from my htpc. I don't need all 4 tuners on my htpc so I was thinking of assigning one to my work machine so I could watch/listen to tv while working. How is the network sharing working these days? Anything I should worry about? Or should I just pony up 200$ for another tuner and 2.99 a month for the cablecard.

Also, if it works relatively well, do I need to do any re-activate with the cablecard?

Thanks
Chris

Exactly, I haven't touched the Ceton software since I've put it in my server about 9 months ago. Network tuning to 4 different HTPCs, haven't had a single issue. Only thing I have to do is power cycle the TA a couple of times. Great product!

Unfortunately many of us recent purchasers have newer buggy firmware and hardware versions that probably don't support the old stable firmware. Trust me - if it was working I wouldn't be touching the betas.

xnappo

newegg has the external version on sale for $179:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815706002

Is it just as good as the PCI card? Can you watch all four tuners simultaneously on different PCs?

Tempting... but I think if I wanted a external tuner, I'd go Silicon Dust HD Prime just because it's a pure network tuner that doesn't need a host attached to it for it to work.

My signal was tested by the cable company, and while fine, he replaced a few male/female connectors which boosted my signal. When he left the source signal was at 3.5 dbmV which he swore was more than sufficient, too strong a signal causes problems too. Now, my signal per Ceton tuner is between -5.8 and -10.8, I had -12 once (checking if I notice the distorted picture). Once it was -12.0 exactly. Signal to noise, 32-37.

The two times the picture was quite bad (1/3 of the screen whited out), the signal was relatively high, >-10db.

I still have the horizontal line and some apparent pixelation problems (occasionally, but, annoying) and not limited to premium channels. I fear those panning football shots will be affected more dramatically, giving a WAF of -1. I need to correct this problem before football season... I guess I could test with golf.

I have not added an amplifier, but, I appear to be operating within the required signal strenth/signal to noise ratio spectrum.

Signal level is only part of the story, as you have noticed, and also varies depending on a channel. A SNR is 32dB is getting low, but still may be workable, depending on other things.

Agreed. At this point I think I would recommend one of the amps we discussed earlier. Though is the SNR @32db coincident with the low levels(-10db) channels? If it is not, then it may be ingress.

Best way to tell if it is ingress is to see if the frequency of the channel (displayed in diag web page) on a bad SNR channel lines up with local VHF/UHF channels (see table here: http://www.csgnetwork.com/tvfreqtable.html)

For example, in Austin there is a broadcast station on UHF channel 36 - 602-608Mhz. At one point in time, TWC was using 605Mhz for HBO - and so if you had a nick in a cable somewhere you would see a reasonable signal level, but a low SNR due to the interference. That is called ingress.

xnappo

Hmm... I hadn't thought of ingress. It has been a while since I read up on the actual physics of this QAM tuning but it may be time to re-learn (physics, specifically E and M was my thing as an engineer, just haven't used it in 20 years).

The cable technician, who seemed quite informed relative to other technicians, felt amplifying was a waste (not to say I'm not going to try). The problem is we don't watch all that much TV, or, practically anything live so testing is sparse. I happened to record a Law and Order HD on 9 (709 for HD) and watched it shortly after and the phenomenon never arose. I don't know the frequency of each channel, but, will begin to record that and reference to determine the probability of ingress. What I should do is keep a little sheet with f where multiple Signal and SNR data points can be taken, and use a 1-5 scale for each measurement 1=0 interference 5 = frequent or more than just a line or two (half screen). See if there is any correlation. That should shed some light.

I know others are having this problem, but, it is being attributed to noise levels?

I think it is strange that this does not happen at all on the ATI tuners, however, their signal is not split 4 times.

Sure, that is the difference. The Ceton needs to be treated like another 4-way splitter(at least for a worst-case calculation).

So if I understand your setup correctly you have:

POE: 3.5db
3-way splitter at POE: -5.5db
2-way splitter to Ceton/ATIs: -3.5db
4-way splitter in Ceton: -7db

Which gives you a total signal at the Ceton of -12.5db.

I don't know why cable techs insist amps are bad - they ARE misused a lot, but if the incoming signal is good, the cabling is good, but the customer is just splitting the signal a lot, there is nothing wrong with them.

Your experiment sounds sound Can tell your engineering background from the design. There *have* been other issues with signal breakup attributed to protected channels. I have not experienced that - -perhaps someone else can chime in on how to tell the difference between that issue, and signal issues.

xnappo

Ingress can be an issue if any of the channels that you are having problems with use the same frequency as a local TV or FM station. Take a Ceton Diagnostic Dump and look at the Channel_Map.xml file. It will tell you the frequency that each channel is using on the cable.

In my case I had an ingress issue when our cable company started to use some frequencies that overlaid the FM band. They finally tracked the problem down to a 25 year old drop cable from the phone pole to my garage. When it was replaced the issue was resolved.

Amp it. You'll just be taking an already good signal and boosting it some.

I was in the same situation as you. My input signal was good enough for 3-4 TVs but I have 8 devices hooked up. The technician put in a +4 dBmV amp with return path but it was causing return signal issues with the TAs and the InfiniTV was showing -10 to -12 db. I replaced it with a Channel Vision CVT-40BID and adjusted the signals until everything was ideal. I have no TA issues anymore and everything is around 0 dBvM. SNR is usually around 34-37.

The Cable company also needs to check the SNR from the street and see if it's low there as well. If it is, they need to check the cabling and devices coming to your neighborhood. If it's good at the road but low when it gets to your house, they need to run you a new cable to your house.

I hope this actually helps others with their setup.

I had a problem with audio in Live TV. When windows 7 sound is configure in the control panel to 5.1, live tv wouldn't work. I was always forced to configure the sound as "Stereo" 2-channel in the OS in order for Windows Media center Live TV to work properly or to actually work.
The cause of this issue, is how many sound cards media center is trying to use. Normally we have two sounds cards the one in the motherboard and the one in the video card with HDMI. Windows media center defaults to the sound card in the motherboard which forces a delay establishing the sound, the output and WMC live tv just stops. In order to fix this issue you have make windows media center default sound card to the be video cards in my case ATI. This is not a setting you can alter using normal windows media center screens. There's program you can install and that you access from the windows media center Extras library to allow you to modify the sound card settings. After setting the ATI card as the default, i was able to configure 5.1 sound and even my channels are browsing/switching faster.

This is the link where i found this program:
http://www.hack7mc.com/2010/08/switc...r-updater.html

I hope this helps.

Not exactly but accurate enough... the 3 way heads to the ATI's 2 (so, they are in that 'series' if you will and therefore a very strong signal) and I believe to a two way (my brother in law, a commercial electrician wired that piece) one to the Ceton and the other to the modem. On the line to the Ceton there is a splice with 10 ft. of 59 wire just before the Ceton, that splice was replaced by cable, as was the connector in the wall socket. At that splice (RG60-59) the signal S/N was fine. However, I may replace the entire run (30ft or so) with 60 and remove the splice (amp might just be easier/cheaper/more effective).

He also did check the line outside and the POE there was not a higher level of loss than expected... he gave me all the numbers and I recall thinking, normal for that length run (had the wikopedia page with loss/ft chart open). I don't see myself replacing just that 10'... the whole run or nothing, would kill the splice if I take the time (the RG60 is behind drywall)... I don't think the 10' run of 59 is hurting me that badly relative to the splice.

Today when I 'spot' checked the four tuners my lowest S/N ratio was 34, and my weakest tuner signal was -10.8, strongest was -5.8, although I was in the 'popular' range, 4 channels (didn't record the f's yet) were CBS HD, CNN HD, CNBC HD and Nick HD. In a quick test (watched about 40 minutes of the CBS HD) no problems found were seen. So, I have some logical testing ahead (or, put the damn amp on and cross my fingers that obviates testing).
==============

On a completely different note (and, the note which originally caused me to research here). Occasionally (twice in the last 48 hours) while watching recorded TV I've gotten 'Windows has found a cable card tuner, would you like to configure: now, later, cancel' (not exact error).

Windows event log shows a recording event error (I keep an almost constant recording/s going while testing) which simply states the recording was manually stopped by another process. I'm assuming this is the segmentation error (or, something similar) frequently referenced in this thread but I do not know. I have only executed the Ceton software diagnostics once, and, it caused problems as I hadn't realized that my wife was watching on an extender and a recording kicked off shortly afterwards. I've used the diag tool within Media Center, but, only kicked off the Ceton one that once. I could not find log files in the Ceton directory, so, I assume when people reference the log files they are referencing those which are created by the Ceton tool (.zip file whose default save location was C:\\downloads).

I'm graduating to Ceton log point now (just built the new machine 3 weeks ago and haven't spent that much time on it, basic 'Assassin' config with Media Browser and MC Master.

I'm just really getting this thing up and running to retire the Vista 32 box, I have a few little quirks here and there. No deal killers, but, I'm also not retiring the old one just yet.

Thanks for all the help. Hopefully once I get edjumakated I can pay it forward.

Alternatively, if you are using the video card (or a discrete sound card) 100% of the time, you could simply disable/uninstall the motherboard's sound card in the device manager. This would prevent Windows from even having another device to try and use. This is how I'm set up (using a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS) and have never once experienced the issue you described. Windows is set up to use the analog outs for 5.1 sound, so I can't say how this might be different if you're using any kind of HDMI or digital output.

So why doesn't Ceton add built-in amps to bring the signal at the internal tuners up to the same level as the input signal?

An amp before the splitter probably would help from a signal point of view, but it would generate a lot of heat/use a lot of power.

In general you don't want an amp at the end of a line, because the signal has already been degraded and you will be amplifying the 'noise' portion too..

xnappo

Thanks for this. I ended up just disabling all my other sounds devices as jreese831 suggested, but this app helped me see that there was some weird stuff going on with the output switching around.

xnappo

I have a splitter in my source line because Verizon's FiOS is too hot. I need to drop its power level some.