Latest Ceton InfiniTV 4 Info Thread - Page 92

I'm on my third card and now having issues again. On recorded and live content I lose video and audio, and get the subscription required message. Usually the audio will come back first in 30-90 seconds, then the video will come back. I notice this mostly on copy once channels, but do see it on copy freely.

The event logs show that a signal loss occured during the recording. It then re-records that program on the next viewing. It has recorded Horrible Bosses off HBO 10+ time since last weekend.

Is this the tuner crashing problem people experienced? I'm on my 2nd CableCard since July 2011. Ceton support is great, but at this point the WAF is about 0 and I'm losing patience. I'm on the beta firmware from March 2012.

Certainly it can be the crash - what exact firmware are you on? What does the event log say? How are your signal levels? Usually pay channels are at higher frequencies which means lower signal...

xnappo

Does Media Center Study have any sort of "reset MCE to defaults" function? Maybe cause FRUN to run again?


Unfortunately, sales information is confidential and I cannot share it

Firmware is 1.1.7.2 beta.

I will check the Event logs further when I get home, but I have never seen Ceton entries in the Event Log.

These signal levels are from last month:
Tuner 1
"Diag/OOB Signal Level","3.5 dBmV"
"Diag/OOB SNR","33.8 dB"

Tuner 2
"Diag/OOB Signal Level","3.4 dBmV"
"Diag/OOB SNR","34.2 dB"

Tuner 3
"Diag/OOB Signal Level","3.5 dBmV"
"Diag/OOB SNR","34.5 dB"

Tuner 4
"Diag/OOB Signal Level","3.5 dBmV"
"Diag/OOB SNR","34.4 dB"

Hey Eric,

Can you look at the info I am seeing below and confirm that a drop of about -7.5 db seem right for the Ceten PCIe turner?

Thanks
Rew

Tried that already with no luck. Tried to force WMC to update manually too. Also download the digital cable adviser separately hoping the install may make the menu appear. No luck. digital cable adviser is installed but no way to open and view it without this menu.

That is about right. It is essentially a 4-way splitter, which is -7db loss.

xnappo

That firmware is stable for me, and your signals look reasonable - but it is a bit hard to tell for sure because you didn't include the frequencies. If those are low frequencies and you have a long cable run, the higher freqs might become an issue.

Other than that - out of ideas. The WMC Windows event log might give you some clue - other than that I would open a ticket with Ceton.

xnappo

Thanks very much! That makes sense did not think about it like that

I wanted to make sure I don't overdue or under-due the amount of gain necessary to get good input levels to the board.

Rew

Yep - I went through the same thing balancing my splitters. Just treat the Ceton like a 4-way splitter in your calculations.

I ended up going from a 15db forward/10db return amp into a two way splitter with one leg going directly to the Ceton (long cable run) and the other to a 3-way splitter that then goes to the cable modem and other rooms.

xnappo

To cure the flashing issue: Uninstall the Nvidia driver you have. Download and install 285.62 and check the box for clean install during the new driver installation process.

That should fix it. Worked for me.

I am about to build an HTPC and have a similar setup where I will be moving the Cable Box to the Living Room. Doing so will force me to use a splitter where the 1st coaxial feed goes into the Cable Modem and the 2nd coaxial feed goes into the Ceton.

Is this signal-drop-during-internet-traffic a common occurance? Is there a workaround or fix?

Maybe it's a signal issue where the Cable Tech's need to come out and "boost" the signal somehow?

Yesterday I ran through the tv set up again because I could not see my hauppage tuner. After I was done now I cant see my ceton tuner. Even if I open the ceton tool it does seem like it detects the tuner at all.

How do I go about trying to fix this? uninstall the driver and start over? I cant seem to find the ceton card in the device manager either. Were is it?

Here are updated singal levels. These are from the Ceton web front end. I manually tuned a variety of channels.

Tuner 1

HBOHD
Frequency 567000
Signal Level -6.9 dBmV
Signal to Noise Level 35.8 dB
Temp 46.4 C


Tuner 2

CBSHD
Frequency 579000
Signal Level -6.9 dBmV
Signal to Noise Level 36.2 dB
Temp 46.5 C


Tuner 3

SpikeHD
Frequency 363000
Signal Level -2.3 dBmV
Signal to Noise Level 36.4 dB
Temp 47.5 C


Tuner 4

HistoryHD
Frequency 759000
Signal Level -3.9 dBmV
Signal to Noise Level 36.6 dB
Temp 47.8 C


Weird thing is that I just checked the MCE Event Logs and Horrible Bosses did record as scheduled last night. This is the first time it has gone two hours on HBOHD without experiencing a signal loss in several weeks.

I tried to repair the ceton driver with no luck. Had to uninstall and reinstall the driver for it to see the card. Then it apears the tuning adaptor is not working. I reboot it a couple time and try to call time warner. She had me check in the device manager for the TA (which was there) and said it was fine and contact ceton.

Any ideas?

Starting to get a lot of "No tuner available messages" as well as WMC crashing. Also, when I get the no tuner message WMC will often ask me to set up the cablecard again. Temps are fine and the system was running like a champ for a long time. Not sure what has happened.

You need to load the latest FW (1.1.7.2) if you haven't done so. It sounds like your tuner is crashing and restarting.

Yep, currently running 1.1.7.2. Gotta get this fixed before the wife puts me on the couch.

You guys that are having issues, do you have USB or PCIe version?

Sorry - no ideas. Your signal levels look pretty reasonable. Would definitely open a support ticket.

xnappo

Last night rebooted the PC and after a while it saw the TA and tersted fine in the ceton tool. I re-ran tv set-up in MC and still get the no service available error.

My up time is now even with my down time and Im only a week in.

Just wanted to give a final update on this issue that I have had since the fall in hopes that maybe it can shed some light on issues you other guys might be having...that erkotz has confirmed and thanks to him for a clear answer. I had problems viewing and recording what are determined clearqam channels on my lineup (nbc, abc, fox, pbs, cbs, etc.). I thought it was an issue with the ceton itself so I bought an HD Homerun to sort of "offload" those channels from the ceton and use the HD Homerun. NO luck as I still had issues with those channels. As a test, I hooked it up to my desktop and setup media center on a relatively new install of W7. HAD THE SAME EXACT ISSUE. So erkotz looked at my captures and notes from the tickets that I provided to ceton over the 6 or 7 months that I have been working with Ceton and provided an answer. I'll provide quotes from another thread on another board......

He basically said that people in areas of Upstate NY where I am (Utica, Binghamton, Albany, possibly Syracuse) were victims of "TV station putting out illegal MPEG, which is in turn blowing up ehrecvr". To further elaborate, he said "By illegal MPEG, I mean MPEG that does not conform to the spec - specifically, we were seeing conditions that never should happen according to the specification." he went on to say, "Also, this issue is not limited to the InfiniTV, I have reproduced it with competing OCUR devices, and believe it would affect ClearQAM tuners (and possibly ATSC) which you seem to have experienced.
Microsoft does have an in-house repro, but this sort of investigation moves slowly. To be honest, we just need to wait at this point."

So basically its an issue that I'll jsut have to deal with as there is no answer to fix them at this point. Just wanted to provide this info for those that are in Upstate TW markets as some issues you might be having are due to the stream provided by the provider. Again thanks to erkotz for clear answer


also to add, i havent tried OTA just clearqam through straight cable and those on my cablecard lineup....also, maybe someone can elaborate on how tv stations or cable providers can get away with transmitting out or spec mpeg signals...

I have the PCIe version. Ever since I got it back from Ceton (had to send it to them when the tiny coax connector broke off my card) it's acted funky.

Hmmm, franchise authority/FCC might be avenues you could pursue on this one.

What I find odd is that the DVR/receiver (which I'm thinking probably all have the same Broadcom chipset) to decode would struggle with it being out of spec.

The FCC is an interesting route that I hadn't considered, however, we would need transport stream captures from the customers in those markets showing that it happens on the OTA variants of the stations (which I'm not certain it does).
In this case, it has to do with SI information and not the video itself.

Also, FYI, Ceton has already provided Business Justification to Microsoft to request that this be fixed. We also have asked both Hauppauge and SiliconDust to join Ceton and offer their own Business Justification to Microsoft to try and get this fixed, and both confirmed that they were able to reproduce the issue, but so far neither has come through with sending a Business Justification to Microsoft.
Feel free to pressure them if you are experiencing this

And wouldn't you know it...

I go home for lunch and the wife meets me at the door because nothing's working. It seems WMC isn't seeing the InfiniTV any longer. Even the Ceton diagnostic tool isn't seeing the InfiniTV. Gonna try taking the card out, uninstalling all the software, and reinstalling everything from scratch to see if that does it. I've got a bad feeling though that it has bitten the dust.

I know you have probably checked, but maybe it just isn't seated well?

xnappo

I checked the last time I opened it up and it seemed to be seated all the way. I'm going to completely remove it and reinstall it this afternoon.

I wonder if posting this info in the respective threads
might get the ball rolling? and if needed I can possibly get ota captures as well

What a complete and utter disaster. I called back Sunday to the cablecard activation line and got tier 2 support, he said he would create a support ticket and call me back. He called me back a bit later and asked how long I would be awake (it was already 9pm) and said if he heard back from local branch or something he would call me back. Nothing. I called back after work yesterday and got a guy who actually knew what the infinitv was and was even aware of the Q and echo and said he knew someone who knew cablecards and he would contact them and get it running in an hour. He calls back 10 minutes later asking for the data id. I explained to him that its a SA card and motorola cards have data ids. He said ok give us an hour and it should be working.. Nothing changed.

That brings me to this morning. I call up and explain the situation he keeps me on the line for 10 minutes and I hear him whispering as he's reading notes, then says he needs to transfer me to the "cablecard department". He transfers me and a woman answers and I start all over again and then she says SHE needs to transfer me to the cablecard department, then transfers me again and I get hung up on. I call back this time to ask for a supervisor, and what do I get? "Thank you for calling T-Mobile, home of the triple play! oops I'm sorry, excuse me, thank you for calling Comcast etc." I explain I need a supervisor now as I'm ticked off. She says sure hold on, comes back and says her supervisor is busy right now but she will transfer me to the supervisor department. I'm on hold for 10 more minutes and the music stops and no one says anything so I said hello and she says "your support ticket please" I said I don't have a support ticket number.. Guess what? She hangs up..

I call back AGAIN and get a supervisor and explained the entire situation and got a credit for 5 days. She informed me she is not even aware of any specific department for cablecards in the first place. She said they would need to do a truck roll. I asked if I can simply just turn in this cablecard and get a new one instead because it's already been 4 days that the channels aren't working and I do not want to wait for a truck roll on my day off. She says yes. I go there and swap out the card and call the activation line and give all the card info, and he says the card has been entered as a cablebox into the system and he has to contact tier 2 support.. AGAIN.. right back where I started.. She didn't seem to know whats going on either and said she would call me back when she figures out whats going on instead of me waiting on hold.. This is quite possibly the WORST service I have ever received. I bet I'm going to end up having a tech have to come out which to me makes ZERO sense because he will just end up making a phone call to the correct people who can actually fix the problem on Comcast's end. Sorry for the long rant but this is just sad. I guess I'll see what happens when (if) she calls back this time.