Latest Ceton InfiniTV 4 Info Thread - Page 88

Just wanted to follow up in case anyone else with a Mac Mini comes across this thread...

Got this back from Ceton Support...
"Hi gthompson,

Unfortunately, there is currently a problem with MAC usb hubs. We are currently working with Microsoft to come up with a solution. However, customers have had success using the Keyboard Hub or purchasing a good 3rd party hub to act as an intermediary.

Please let us know if you have anymore questions.

Thank you,
Ceton Support "

I can report that using the hub in the Apple Keyboard works just fine.

Well I took the plunge and ordered the Ceton InfiniTV 4 PCiE board and a slot fan to be on the safe side.

I am on Comcast in a Detroit burb would like to hear from someone in the area for the best number to call for cablecard and card activation.

Will eliminate 2 of their DVR's and it should pretty much pay for it's self in a little over a year.

Thanks
Rew

Basically grab an M card from your local office. Should come with the phone number. But 1-877-405-2298 seems like a decent one. Don't turn in your DVR's just yet...as activitating is hit and miss.

Become familiar with the diag tool and how to find the three magic numbers you'll need as well how to test particular channels knowing that the card is properly paired with the tool.

Don't forget to run the DCT tool ahead of time. It is in the extras gallery in WMC.

Rew452, out of curiosity, which burb are you in? I have lived a couple different comcast networks in burbs of Detroit. I am currently in Walled Lake comcast sub area. Originally, i was in the south East MI network (Taylor).

Thanks for the info!

Should I install Ceton card first without the cablecard or not until I have cable card installed?

Rew

Auburn Hills / Pontiac area.

Rew

I moved my InfiniTV 4 USB from a slower machine to my gaming rig since I'm about to upgrade. The gaming rig has been up about 3 years and pretty much never bluescreens - I really don't remember last time it did.

I had a bit of trouble getting WMC 7 to see the USB device. After driver uninstalls, reinstall, reboots, resets, etc, I seemed to find the magic combination to make it all work. I think it ended up being related to the fact that the USB device had been in a network sharing environment, and I started that way here without resetting (including a manual bridge due to blinking red light).

The first time it was set to record it bluescreened (NDIS.SYS). I promptly upgraded my REALTEK drivers to the latest version and switched to a non-bridged/shared setup. Recordings seemed stable.

Later, I was ROBOCOPYing a bunch of files from the gaming rig to the old media center when a recording started up (on the gaming rig). It was a another NDIS bluescreen. When it rebooted, I didn't start the copy again and all recordings tonight were fine.

I was under the impression NDIS bluescreens were usually driver problems. In this case, I have the latest driver. It seemed it was related to network utilization, ie, the network was under heavy load when the recording started (I was pushing close to a Gigabit/sec at that point).

Is it even in the realm of possibility that the NDIS blue screen could be load-related? It couldn't be a video driver problem could it?

This is a higher end (aging) Core i5, not currently overclocked, with 4 GB RAM, dual Radeon 5770 in crossfire plus NVidia 9800 (yes, all 3 video cards in a single machine - it can be done) and dual gigabit ethernet adapters (only one is actually plugged in - other is disabled in device manager and not connected).

To me, the BSOD isn't worth opening a ticket with Ceton at this point. If I understand more how the bridged network for the USB device works, I may change my mind. But for now, I'll tinker.

Any thoughts?

Dollars to doughnuts one of your RAM sticks has gone bad. Test your RAM:
http://www.memtest86.com/

Second guess is something with your video card setup

xnappo

I got my infinitv4 card installed yesterday and after some time on the phone with verizon finally got all of my channels to tune in. Recording 4 channels at once works. The tuning time to change between channels is not as fast as the Fios HDDVR box but is faster than the DirecTV HDDVR box.

**All my drivers are updated from the Asrock motherboard website, this includes the ethernet driver**

The problem I am having now is setting up the bridge so I can access one of the tuners over the network. I noticed that the installer does not default to install the network tuner setup which is strange. So I went back into the installer and added the network tuner wizard.

I go in WMC7, Ceton and go through the process of setting up the network tuners and when it gets to the bridging step WMC locks up and the only way out is a 5sec hard power down. I bring windows back up and it locks up before it fully loads, another 5sec hard power down. Win7 starts the repair and now windows boots. The blue light on the Ceton card is flashing. If windows7 did not roll me back too far and the ceton drivers are still installed, I go into the diag tool and reset the network setting and have to re-setup TV in WMC and I can get back to live tv after about 15 min of re-setup.

The next thing I tried was going into network sharing center, adapter settings and creating a bridge between the Atheros AR8151 Gb PCIE ethernet adapter and the Ceton card. The bridge shows enabled however upon a reboot, the ceton card is not found by the diag tool. So I remove the bridge, clear network settings, and have to re-setup TV in WMC again.

The final think I tried was going into device manager, clicking on the ceton card, advanced, support bridging and select Yes. This creates a hard lock similiar to the first try. Need to reboot, windows repair, reinstall ceton drivers, resetup TV in WMC!

UGH! I am going to create a ticket on the Ceton site, but anyone have any advice? Thanks

I also have an ASRock motherboard and the lock up problem.
Went through 2 weeks of trouble shooting with Centon, still no luck.

I've tried the Centon in different slots, disabled the on board nic and added a pci nic. Centon sent me the latest beta firmware, but nothing has worked.

If you find a solution, please post. For now I've given up.

I had the exact same issue and same model board had the card RMAed by CETON. To use network tuners I had to follow a setup method suggested by mikinho few pages back. While it works (I can share 2 tuners across my network) it doesn't answer the question why the Asrock board/network tuner isn't configurable via the ceton wizard and causes the abnormal lookups.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...postcount=2562


Edit:added link to post

Anyone know the recommended temps for the ceton. Mine is at 52c.

65°C max.

thank you

So, it's not the memory - I think. I let the 4.0a test run about an hour with no errors.

I guess I'll upgrade to the latest video drivers and see what happens. More to come...

Ceton replied pretty quick to my ticket today which is impressive for a Sat. They asked me to get a dump file after the lock up happened which I tried but the file was never created... So I tried one other thing today...

I am using a AsRock H61M/U3S3 motherboard which has an onboard Atheros AR8151 nic. I disabled the nic in the UEFI and then installed a Dynek PCI nic and retried. I got the same lockup results both in WMC using network tuner setup and then going into device manager and turning on bridging support for the ceton adapter.

I was successful in manually creating a bridge by going to Control panel, Network and Internet, Network and Sharing center, Change adapter settings and selecting both the Ceton and NIC, right click and select bridge connections. After I did that, the internet still worked however I no longer had a signal to the ceton card. Even after I cleared the tuner configuration, discovered tuners and re-set up TV in WMC... no signal.

But what was interesting was that I was able to go into WMC, Ceton, network tuners and enable 3 tuners for the main HTPC without windows locking up. I then went to the bedroom PC and was able to pick up the last tuner using the network tuner setup inside WMC. However, this was useless as I still did not have any signal.

One last thing I tried back on the main HTPC was to go into device manager, clicked on the Ceton advanced properties, bridging support was set to no, I set it to Yes and windows locked up, ceton card flashed blue led. So I went through the windows repair, deleted the bridge, cleared the network & tuner config, discovered, re setup TV in WMC and now I have signal and all 4 tuners back but still stuck being able to network them.

Did you update the ip address settings on the ceton when doing the manual bridge? This maybe your issue with no ip. Go to the systems tab, network settings, uncheck default ip settings and then check dhcp client.

I have a silverstone ml03b case maxed out with three 80mm fans, and a low profile 6570 unfortunately obstructing some direct airflow to the ceton card, my temps can range from 65c to 69c after a few hours of viewing, it is in an open cabinet with a few inches air space on all sides, any suggestions? Perhaps a aftermarket cooler i can use?Should i bother, or just roll with the temps?

This s exact same thing I went through.

My opinion...

Leave it out on initial install. Get the driver installed, firmware updated, everything happy in device manager, etc. then plug in the cable card and hook up the coax.

Then do the digital cable advisor tool. This will do the play ready crap. And then run through TV setup (this is where you pick your region for guide downloads) within WMC.

At this point, it is probably safe to call Comcast for activation. Never tried it but I assume one could pick up clear qam local channels at this point???

Hopefully it goes well, but I will just say be prepared for a fiasco. Don't give up.

I spent all day trying to figure out the combination of things that would make the Ceton USB work. Every time I'd start live TV I'd blue screen. And if it didn't blue screen when live TV started, it blue screened when I'd stop.

I ended up moving the USB device to a second machine and configuring network tuners. Lo and behold it worked. The second machine is literally a proxy as it isn't Digital Cable ready. But it does a fine enough job acting as a tuner proxy. I ended up configuring 2 tuners for 2 machines (using all 4), and ran 2 recordings simultaneously on each. Nothing broke, but I have reviewed the video to check for quality.

So, it's a workaround, but it's not what I want. I want the USB device to not BSOD my main machine and not be forced into using Network tuners.

I noticed others are having issues with ASRock motherboards. Mine is an older one (P55 Deluxe) with REALTEK Ethernet.

I have a ticket open with support. Hopefully, they can show me the best method for it to dump and collect what they need.

I went into IPv4 & IPv6 properties for the bridge and both are setup to obtain IP automatically (which is dhcp).

Ceton is going to RMA the card so hopefully this is card problem and not a compatibility problem with my motherboard.

To change the IP address on Ceton tuner, you need to go to the device webpage, system tab, and then to the network settings. You may need to do this before creating the bridge, the card needs to have an IP address with in your routers IP range for the network sharing to work.

It really sucks that folks are having to go to this lengths to get the cards work, would be nice to know some of the data Ceton has collected over the past few months, like which motherboards and chip-sets are more problematic then others. Its not science, but for someone that is building a new PC for their tuner, would be nice to know which boards are having issues.

Tried your suggestions and got further than I ever have. (no lock ups this time). I manually set up the bridge, the bridge got an address from my dhcp server. Media Center sees the tuners in Centon - Network setup and lets me select the ones I want for the local machine. I then goto TV tuner setup and MC sees the 3 tuners I selected for the local machine and completes the setup. Looks like I'm good to go. But, no signal on any channel.
The Centon web page shows the card with the address from my dhcp server. All of the Centon device and cable card diagnostics show good to go.

Getting to this point and then restoring to a working setup killed about 2 hours yesterday. That makes about 15hrs of experimenting with this just to share one tuner. Don't think its worth it anymore.

If anyone is keeping track, mother board is ASRock extreme 3 gen 3

Ah ha! Thanks! Well I got that setup and could assign tuners without a lock up but still no signal like before.

ASROCK H61M/U3S3

I am going to give the RMA a shot but if that doesn't work I am going to return it and try another networked tuner solution, I spent the whole weekend trying to get it working.

Hey guys,

Not trying to hijack this thread, but seems like an appropriate place for it:
My thread: Ubuntu + MythTV 0.25 + Ceton InfiniTV 4 + Radeon HD Card

Again, sorry if it isn't the right place.

So what is the general consensus of this thing? I see a lot of problems on this thread but is it overall realiable.

I can live with hiccups in recording programing, I can fill whatever it misses by other means.

What i can't live with is if it craps out during a sporting event that i want to watch live.

Would really like to switch to this thing and eliminate all of my boxes and such...it would pay for itself over the long term.

With the latest firmware I am at 30 days uptime with hundreds of recordings successful without a hitch.

Like anything DIY, plan to spend some time tweaking, then fully expect it to take three times longer than planned

Once you get it stable it is great!

xnappo

I'm not having any issues with the card either, I've been running it now for two weeks in my WHS 2011, the card is flawless, I have a couple of tweaks I need to figure on my server hardware, but that's unrelated to the card, I don't have the reboots discussed in the tread, or BSOD. I have the older 4884 build, and i'm still running with the 1.095 firmware from last july

I was running the card in my HTPC, sharing tuners for about 7 months with out issue.

I've been seeing all kinds of weirdness (some posted in this forum). But now, here's what I'm seeing:

Last night, SDV channels recorded fine. This morning, there was no signal. I reset everything multiple times (power cycle TA, Ceton USB, PC) and still no signal. The diag tool said it could tune channels, but when I went to display them, there was no signal.

I decided to bite the bullet and move the tuner and TA to another PC and see what happens. I first went into network tuners setup and chose to reset to factory. When that was done, I setup 3 tuners on the local machine. I think at some point I did power cycle the TA (Cisco).

Diag tools says all is fine. I can tune SDV channels through the diag tool. I can even view SDV channels in WMC.

I went back to my main WMC PC and configured a single network tuner (since the other 3 are being used by the machine they're connected to). It came up fine. I can tune known SDV channels. The log shows this:

Jan 1 00:55:26 ocur[21]: ocur: octa_LookupChannel:1231 : [3] Starting TA[7] resolve for channel 1667
Jan 1 00:55:26 ocur[21]: libcetontrif: trif[7] Found channel 1667 in map
Jan 1 00:55:26 ocur[21]: upnp: Event(octa[7]): UDCPMessage, "AgEAHAEACAN4/gaD4iJrCsdZx0TRdj/1OIchyRo+tLg="
Jan 1 00:55:26 ocur[21]: ocur: mux_pid_union:329 : [3] Adding pid 0x0000
Jan 1 00:55:26 ocur[21]: ocur: mux_pid_union:329 : [3] Adding pid 0x1ffb
Jan 1 00:55:26 ocur[21]: upnp: [192.168.1.84] Calling Action(octa[7]) SendMessageToUDCP
Jan 1 00:55:26 ocur[21]: ocur: octa_LookupChannel:1271 : [3] Resolved channel 1667 -> freq 705000, prog 7102, modulation 16
Jan 1 00:55:26 ocur[21]: ocur: cas_hal_TuneChannel:3002 : [3] Tune to 1667 (mod=q256, freq=705000, program=7102, std=9)
Jan 1 00:55:26 ocur[21]: ocur: mux_SetProgramVariable:1804 : [3] Program number set to 7102, was 0

You can see the TA resolve is successful.

However, when I go to the device web page and click on Tuning Adapter tab, it says "Waiting for Initialization" and all other values are "Unavailable."

Any idea what would cause this? Clearly the TA is tuning, but the Ceton USB thinks it's not initialized.

Thanks