Latest Ceton InfiniTV 4 Info Thread - Page 102

Do you have a support ticket open with us? If so, please PM me the ticket number? I would like to look into it.

oh ok i think i'm gonna do that. yesterday after watching the whole clippers vs memphis game and started watching the pacers vs heat game no tuners were available. Had to restart in order to continue watching. Was weird. Don't know if its related to overheating.

So I wrote to Zap2it as someone suggested. Here is their response: Anyone understand it? I sure don't. Cannot be that I will lose all my networks on the Ceton when Comcast drops the 200 series channels for these new 1000 series channels can it?

Hi,



Our lineup team looked into this and found that these are QAM channels.

We currently support only whole number positioning in our cable/satellite lineups so QAM channels are not included.

We have listed the channels on the same channel numbers of the analog lineup.

We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for being a Zap2it user.

The Zap2it Customer Feedback Team

Lost nothing - had to run a repair afterward to fix the boot record, but everything plays fine - well, had an error about a component that didn't start properly when I tried to modify my libraries. Googling talks about the library database, but the .db file they mentioned wasn't on my system, so I fired up WMP and set up the libraries there, and all is fiine now!!

Subscription required message
I had a ticket open, but it got closed. I know for a fact Comcast Houston has a Ceton tuner (it's my old one, and they have had it for probably 3 months) to try to troubleshoot - but gads, 3 months and NOTHING? I work in IT and I couldn't imagine a system messing up for 3 months and NOT A HINT of what the problem is - or they've found the problem and it is a big secret.

Ok great. This makes reinstalling Windows 100% less painful.

Look like some one gave your question about 1 second of their day, before responding. Or the new guy, second day on the job, was assigned your ticket

I'm pretty sure Zap2It misunderstood your request. Explain to them that you aren't using a ClearQAM tuner, and are using a CableCARD tuner, which receives a channel map from your MSO

I get ~10 of these errors a month, and a subscription required drop out (which I generally have to change the channel several times and then go back to) about every other night.

is the diagnostic capture is something that can happen after the event, or do I need to track something before it happens? I've been living with it for over a year now, but I am ready to start diagnosing if it has a chance of improving.

the more frustrating thing to me is not being able to simultaneously stream 2 HD streams to xbox360 extenders on my wired network while continually maxing the bandwidth meter, even though I've tried every trick I've seen on every forum to try to get it working reliably, including buying a new router.

Thanks, Eric. I'll go back to them as this made no sense and they have to be able to fix this issue.

so that explains why my GPU died on me, bad karma for the hit and run post on you. (in my case the heatsink wasnt properly mounted at factory and came loose.)

The cables

ok, i said 10 right?

1. your 1 slot above a GPU, which is common for them to idle and load warmer than CPUs now.

2. Your right below the VRM Copper Heatsink block.

3. The CPU Fan is a Stock intel fan which cools the CPU Heatsink will re-distributing the hot air through out the case, including down onto your ceton card. after going though the VRM Copperblock and picking up more heat.

3, 4. 5. 6. The wiring for various devices are hanging randomly in the case instead of being tucked away along the edges of the case, thus minimizing their impact on airflow. Times it by 3 for the HDD/SATA Cables, The 20/24 Pin Mainboard Power, the 4/8Pin CPU Power (which is what you have a fan hanging off of.. (innovation at its best, i've done that before.)

7. Fan Blowing on Ceton is angled down, blowing the heat onto the already Warm GPU PCB and merging the airflow with the already hot air coming from the HDD Bays. (i'd put a fan blowing on the Ceton from the forward section of the case and have the airflow go directly out the back via Vent bracket (or a slot with no bracket). the airflow should take some of the GPU heat with it.

8. PSU is mounted upside down, so cooling fan is pulling hot air into the PSU.
So Air comes in the front, over the HDDs picks up heat, goes into the space below the GPU card, picks up heat from the GPU and merges with the heated air coming from the Ceton Tuner and the downward airflow from the CPU Cooler, all that Heat is being directed into a limited airflow exhause Via the PSU.

9. Airflow from the right side and top of the CPU Heatsink is being deflected onto the Ram by the Heatsink fins, the RAM has no Heatsinks or Active Cooling, so Heat Pools up there with the ram. Airflow dead spot around the area of the ram behind Optical/5.25 Bays.

So that was 9 and some of them are prolly void because i dont know if you have case fans outside of the image borders.

But, from teh image, you have Active airflow in over the HDDs, under the GPU merging with Active airflow from the downward pointed fan sucking air from outside of the case and being exhausted via the limited airflow of the PSU.

then you have the rear exhaust fan sucking the heat from half the CPU coolers active airflow and from the open side of the case and out the back.

dont mean to nit pick. i'd just mount a 200MM fan to the case side blowing on the mainboard, GPU, Ceton, Ram, creating a large enough active airflow that gets split into going out the rear exhaust and PSU, and then all you'd have to worry about is the airflow moving from the front of the case to the back, which if the fan behind the HDDs was angled up (or a fan on the case floor) you'd have enough airflow moving up so that what it hits the ceiling its deflected towards the rear and pulled out the rear exhaust. and the increased pressure from the 200 mm fan would force dead spot air to be moved.

I might be concerned, but the RAM never gets hot, the GPU never gets hot, and the VRM never get hot. They get warm, as in I can put my hand on them forever and never feel the need to remove my hand.

If I flip the power supply over it will get no air at all (the intake fan would be on the top of the case). That would be bad, so even in my very very cool case I would never do that...let alone in a very hot case.

Also, the entire front and back of the case is perferated for airflow - there is no trapping of heat anywhere. The wife also likes the look of the case, so the WAF is high. I said that right, the wife actually likes the way the computer case looks...she thinks it looks cool.

I suppose if the HTPC was a gaming rig with an i7 in it pushed hard and an nVidia 690, then it may get hot. Other than the extra cooling needed on the Ceton, nothing else in the PC actually needs cooled. Even the HDDs don't need the fan I have on them - that is just left over paranoia from the old days. They are all "green" drives (except for the SSD) and never actually get warm.

All your listed items are good to do if you build a gaming machine. For a HTPC, it is all overkill. But thanks for replying, for dual use HTPCs (gaming and TV/movies) it is all sound advice.

There's a good chance that this is at least part of your problem. A PC case should have a clearly defined intake an exhaust, and be able to build (a small amount of) amount of pressure to push air through the case. All the holes in the case likely prevent proper airflow.

By this you mean why he needs the fan hack right? I am not so sure. I am in the same situation where I have two slots, and the card seems to work best in the slot right next to the on-board video heat sinks. There is no way flow-through air is going to cool well there, so I also have a fan blowing directly across the card too - 10degC difference with it - now running below 50C consistently. For me, I actually have an external 120mm fan powered by USB sitting on top of the case blowing across the Ceton. This can't be seen in my cabinet since I am 'lucky' enough to have a TA in front of that to hide it

xnappo

P.S. I do not have a degree in thermodynamics, but I trust temp sensors

It very well could be, though a lot of case makers are doing it. I think my heat issue is mostly due to the location of the tuner, but since add a fan that I already owned fixed it, and added extra cooling to my vid card (not that it needed it), I am not concerned. An extra completely silent fan is not a bad thing to have.

Before my mobo died, my previous one only had two pcie slots - one for the vid card and one extra, so my solution was created for that board. Now that I have extra space, I could move it, but no real need. I had hoped to prevent the loss of DRM by using the same mobo type (Asus P5Q-EM died, moved to an Asus P5Q Pro), so I put all the cards in the same slots. DRM was unsatisfied.

the entire front of my HAF 922 is mesh, its about airflow and having no dead spots where air doesnt move.

PlayReady doesnt like Changes to the HAL, whether it be adding ram, upgrading CPU, adding a HDD, setting up a new "ready boost" Flash drive, swapping mobos, changing Overclock settings, or chipset drivers..

Any changes and it has a fit. Which is the main and prolly #1 reason that i disabled every and any "auto-update" setting in every tuner box I've built for my friends, if it runs flawlessly they have no need to update it, they use it for TV and Internet TV, they all boot directly to Windows Media Center. I only had to goto one persons house after initial install to update a few things, none of which angered PlayReady, but if it did I was there to restore the Windows image back to the default image (I make a Drive image of everyone’s tuner box I built and keep them on USB Sticks in a Binder so if anything happens, just plug the USB stick w/ their name on it in, boot HDD utility, wipe, and do a clone from the USB Stick, restore / adjust boot.ini. reboot and boot from HDD back into WindowsMC, setup PlayReady again and back in business. They lose recorded shows, and about 35 minutes, but that’s it. No horsing around with windows setup, then running updates, then driver installs. (installing Windows and updating it to the final state usually takes 2 hours ish)

Thats more / less Microsoft's problem to fix, not Ceton's

That's one way to go.

Another is to have sufficient air intake fan pressure that you get moderate airflow going out all of the open areas of the case. That can work quite well as long as the air intakes are blowing on the hottest components.

Yet another way to go is with a case with lots of mesh openings, with or without air intake fans, and a large mesh opening at the top of the case. Then, natural convection currents can draw cool air in the bottom and carry the hot air out of the top. Most CPU coolers and GPUs will still need to have a fan, and that is where the disadvantage of this design comes -- with an open case, the fan noise is audible outside the case. Unless you build a completely fanless, natural convection system, with an iGPU and something like the Nofan CR-95C fanless CPU cooler.

That worked apparently. Here is Zap2It's reply of this afternoon:

Hi,
Our lineup team looked further into this and got approval to add the channels. They should display on the site within 48 hours.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
Our apologies for the inconvenience. Thank you for your patience and for being a Zap2it user.

Regards,

The Zap2it Customer Feedback Team
Many thanks to Eric and others for their suggestions. Hopefully there will be "pudding" to taste in 48 hours or so.

This is an exaggeration - I've added a Readyboost stick, added and swapped drives (including an SSD), and added RAM without Cablecard DRM issues. The main problem is a mobo swap, which is understandable because the BIOS changes.

Or rather, that is more / less Microsoft's problem to actually never fix...


I have changed HDDs as well without any issues. The BIOS is what got me. Now that I am on FiOS, I do not care about that anymore either - copy freely is nice.

Do you guys hear a loud popping sound when fast forwarding wmc recorded shows?
My HTPC is connected to the receiver via optical and my concern is that it will soon damage my speakers due to this frequent popping sound.

Any help is very much appreciated.

What AV Receiver do you have? I had a Denon 1611 (pretty sure that was the model) and observed this behavior with it. Supposedly they fixed it in firmware a few months later. I sent it back to can't confirm they fixed it.

Can you go HDMI?

I have a Yamaha RXV-2700 receiver.


I'm currently using HDMI going to the TV and optical going to the receiver.
This setup allows me to watch TV without turning the receiver ON but ofcourse there are times when we do serious watching and use the receiver.

I'm using my old Motorola HD-DVR and I'm not experiencing this kind of issue, same setup like my HTPC. Driving me nuts.

Okay so it isn't an HDMI switching AVR then. I'm thinking that using one of those might solve your problem.

Hmmm.. No trouble here with my Yamaha RX-V867. Are you running up-to-date firmware? (not sure if the 2700 is newer or older than my 867).


If your receiver supports stand-by passthru (my RX-V867 does), you might consider using that instead and going HDMI only...


It does seem like the PC world and AV world have trouble mixing.

Unfortunately, I have an older av receiver .. i believe its a 2006 model so there's no "stand-by passthru" feature.


Yeah, I'm more inclined to think that this is an issue with the HTPC side but everything looks good so far, its just this annoying pop during fast forwarding. It happens less if I press the regular "forward" but using "fast forward" make this loud pop to occur more often.

Thanks for the help guys!