Latest Ceton InfiniTV 4 Info Thread - Page 108

So long and thanks for all the fish.

This is (fingers crossed) my last post here. I'm throwing in the towel on WMC recording altogether. The WAF is just too low to go on.

I've missed too many recordings over the months. The Ceton firmware issue from earlier this year fixed most of the problems, but the no signal / weak signal error still pops up (and when it happens as Real Housewives or The View is scheduled, the WAF drops like a rock). The signal level and SNR are good according to TWC (and others here).

There seem to be several SDV channels which fail to tune from time to time. Sometimes, they eventually lock after a long delay. Sometimes its hours before the signal will lock again. Signal always comes back, but when you're trying to record, this is not a good thing. I've tried different cables, different cable cards, PCs, etc. I feel the whole technology is just not reliable - at least less so than a DVR from TWC.

I always hated the TWC DVR interface, but Tivo (with cable cards) has its own set of issues. We don't get Fios where I am. I refuse to get satelitte again. So that eliminates 4 TV options.

AT&T dropped by last week to tell me Uverse is finally available in the 'hood, so I'm going to give it a shot. If nothing else, reliability will increase the WAF. And a high WAF just makes life easier for all of us.

If Uverse sux like TWC/cable cards, I'm back to square one. Thus my fingers crossed comment.

I'll close with Eric and the folks from Ceton have been good to work with. They have a good product I feel is hampered by the overall reliability of cable with cable cards.

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Edited by thehobster - 6/25/12 at 11:48am

Uverse is reliable but their PQ is junk as they put the signal out that last mile or so over a pair of aging 22ga copper wire. They highly compress HD where it is full of macroblocking and artifacts. Their internet speed is only 20% or so of what cable can provide. By reliable I mean there was very seldom down time but it does happen too where you need to power cycle the DVR and the RG as well as sometimes the AVR and HDTV. This happens maybe once or twice a year but there's been many times that it hasn't come up right away because it was maybe down in the wee hours of the morning, IDK..

Good luck.. Uverse is very expensive after the promo expires. Then you can fight with them every six months or so to give you a new promo.. or cancel HBO/MAX for a few weeks to get it for free for three months. I got tired of the games and the crap quality of the service delivered and am now using an HDHR Prime with decent success on Charter.

Open a support ticket with us and we will get you taken care of.

Now that's customer service!!

I'm sorry to hear that its not working out for you, have you tired the HD Homeprime as an alternative? There's been some great deals on woot, $120, a few weeks ago for the 3 tuner.

Regarding Uverse, Good luck, when it was first released in my area 3-4 years ago, you had the ability to watch 1 HD program at a time, that's it, so while your trying to watch the game, or what ever in HD, but oh its too late, the wife is watching real house wives in HD. I believe they have figured out a way to compress the programing enough to get at least 2 maybe 3 hd channels now, but when I was looking to switch before getting the ceton tuner last year, I could not find anyone at ATT to confirm exactly how many HD channels could be watched concurrently (this includes recording too), and after the promos expired, I'd be paying more for uverse than Comcast with crap PQ, limited HD, and crappy internet service, I need all the help I can get in BF3, and trading my 20MB broadband for 6 was a no brainer. Think very hard about switching, cable is the lesser of the evils when it comes to cable TV.
Edited by dbailey75 - 7/1/12 at 11:42am

Earlier this year I posted a number of times, reporting "tuner unavailable" issues, usb involuntary reboots, curtailed recordings etc. I just wanted to let everyone know that once I got Ceton involved (filed a trouble ticket), sending them data and later on enhanced data, things got better fast. They responded numerous times and within 24 hours to each issue or my questions. Some of the problems were: drivers, Internet service interference and some related to usb driver corruption, but they seem now to have nailed all of them. My unit is now fully functional and I must say I was impressed with their responsiveness and competence.

Have to imagine I have a bad tuner on one of my cards. Been getting random tv signal issues/service unavailable/etc. Finally started to track it down and noticed #4 on one of the cards was showing 20's in SNR and a signal level all over(+7 to -20).

Took it out of the pool and things are more much happy. Now I have to decide whether to live with 7, or futz with an RMA.

This is probably a dumb question, but I couldn't find anyone having ever discussed it in this thread.

Is it at all possible to put the ceton infinitv4 card inside a fanless htpc case and have it run at reasonable temps?

I'm planning on getting a hdplex h5.sodd or hs.5 case, and the current h5 series website shows "typical" configurations for the case with a ceton pci-e 1x tv tuner card. Since I can't find any other ceton tv card I assume the infinitv4 is what they are referring to unless ceton had some ancient tv tuner back when the list was made, since it contains 2 generations old intel cpu's. Here is one of the configurations they list.

"- Motherboard: Zotac H55-A-E mini-ITX
- CPU: Intel Corei3 530
- Power Supply: Internal Mounted 150W Adapter+DC-ATX Converter
- Ceton PCIEx1 Turner Card
- HDD:1xWestern Digital 3.5" 1TB HDD +2xIntel 2.5" SSD
- Internal Mounted IR reciever with MCE Remote"

So has anyone tried to put a ceton in a completely passively cooled case with 0 fans? Was it able to stay under the 65C temp max? I feel like it should be able to since the usb ceton manages too, but just not sure since people with fans seem to talk about the thing overheating even.

why do you only have 150 watt power supply? you a 1000 watt ps would be more quiet. and 64c is kind of hot.I have 3 200mm fans in my gaming case.

Um I don't have that build. Like I said it is a recommended build. Also the case is only about 2-3" tall, it can really only take a special 80W psu or a pico psu setup. What does the wattage of a psu have to do with being quiet? Also 65C is the temp that ceton says is the maximum on their site. As I said before, that setup is just a recommended one, it is not what I would put in that case nor do I have those parts. I am simply asking if anyone who has an older h5.s or h5.sodd or anyone who has a fanless htpc in any other case, has managed to use a ceton infinitv4 without it overheating over the 65C spec max temp.

Something to be concerned about?

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizon-Starts-Enforcing-CableCARD-Restrictions-120141?nocomment=1

I'm not so much worried about DRM (it was good while it lasted). I'm more concerned about the "activation" part...

" A notice (pdf) being sent to FiOS TV users informs them that if their CableCARD "was not properly activated during the activation process, your ability to view certain channels might be affected on or after July 31, 2012."

AFAIK, it just means that they're now going to start enforcing pairing their CableCards to a tuner, which means we'll no longer be able to start moving them to different CableCard devices and expect them to work without calling in to pair them. And they're going to start marking more channels as Copy Once instead of Copy Freely. Basically, it's no big deal, as long as you're not worried about the DRM part (like you, I don't see it as that big a deal).

Ditto... Verizon folks will begin suffering from the DRM limitations like us TWC folks have for quite sometime now, lol! Perhaps an influx of extenders will now be purchased for Verizon CC/WMC customers...

I got that notice and I'm OK with the pairing. I am worried about the DRM part. I use VideoReDo to trim the extra from the beginning and end of movies from premium channels, and for cutting out commercials from movies on the regular cable channels. VideoReDo won't open any recordings flagged as copy once.

A 1000 watt power supply runs more quiet then a 150 watt power supply becouse a 1000 watt ps does not have work hard to make 150 watts and 150 watt power supply has to work very hard to make that 150 watts

also i only use 80 PLUS power supplys in my computers to save power

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_PLUS

I believe the power supplies have a range where they're efficient. I think it's around 20% to full load. So if you are only drawing 100 watts (10% of a 1000 watt supply), you're not going to get 80% efficiency. This would be one reason why you don't want too large of an oversized power supply.

Not if the 150w ps doesn't even have a fan

Exactly. I'm building a 100% fanless computer. Whether I have an 80W or 150W PSU, it will be fanless, there is no noise from this PC. The only potential for noise would be electric hum, but the PSU I use should be good enough to not have that issue, the asrockz77e mITX board I'm using is good enough too, and cpu's and ram don't make sound ever, and I have an SSD drive, so even electric hum should be non-existant to negligible. My only concern is if the ceton card will overheat in the case. If it will, I might just get the USB version and keep it hidden in the back somewhere plugged in, but since the case I am getting has the space for it, I think it should work, just wondering if anyone has put a ceton in a fanless build or near fanless build and how it did temp wise.

If you read through this thread, there are several people who found that they needed to direct a fan onto their PCIe InfiniTVs in order to obtain decent temperatures. So I'd say that makes it a bad choice to go inside a completely fanless computer. Even the USB InfiniTVs get rather warm in some instances.

I'll have to agree, the ceton generates some heat, and your going to need some airflow, my only suggestion, if your just starting your build, consider some cases with 120MM fans, you can run them either positve ot negative, low RPM and thy generate little noise, and should generate enough movement to keep the card in spec temps. Also, as a guy mentioned above, check out the 80plus PSU in you have an interanl PSU, they'll generate less heat, and some like the seasonic gold, the fan will not even turn on until the PSU reaches a certain temp.

I feel a little guilty mentioning it in here, but as someone else mentioned...have you tried the Prime? I have one and also have TWC and had some issues early on, but SDV tuning has been pretty darn reliable. Sometimes it does tell me it had trouble tuning, but it ends up being able to tune anyway. It's either trying another tuner behind the scenes or it just keeps trying forever and ends up getting it. I have tons of other issues, but it's most all with WMC itself.

Question about Playready and hardware:

Like many others within this thread, I was unable to install playready during WMC configuration of the Ceton PCIe tuner. This was true whether the card was physically located in the HTPC or as a client for the tuner located in another box on the network (my preferred method of use). In terms of hardware and DRM I think my mobo, CPU, and TV are fine (Asrock Z77 chipset, Intel i5-3750K, Vizio M220mv 22" HDTV). The mobo and TV are connected via HDMI and both support HDCP. My potential concern is the soundcard. It is the 7.1 channel Claro Halo XT and I'm using its analog outputs. I doubt that this card supports PAP so could this be the issue with the playready failure? I hope not because I like the sound enough that I'll forsake the ceton/WMC combo and move to OTA tuning if necessary.

Do you have an AVR in the mix?

If yes, why not just pass the audio untouched to the AVR for processing and use the intel graphics/audio engine?

No AVR in the mix. The idea is the use the Claro Halo to essentially turn the HTPC into a prepro negating the need for a AVR. I'm a lightweight audiophile and I'm very pleasantly surprised at how good the Claro sounds (better than most AVRs I've heard or owned-and I've been through a lot of them over the years). Again, if I'm forced to choose between the Claro and the Ceton I'll choose the former without hesitation. Make no mistake, I like ceton/wmc combo when it works (I have another AVR-based system up and running now) but cable TV is not something I must have.

First things first though: I need to definitively determine if the soundcard is the culprit or not with regard to playready.

Have you reset PlayReady?

So you pass the audio to your amp from the soundcard?

Without HDMI the best you can get is Lossy Audio. How is this better than Lossless Audio?

• No, I have not tried PlayReady reset yet but doesn't it make more sense to first determine if it will work at all with my soundcard? Or are you saying it will work but only with lossy audio? Wait a minute...Don't cable TV channels (HD and encrypted included) use lossy audio? For bluray I'll use ripped .mkv files and JRiver MC for playback and via this method, I'm not sure if JRMC will downrez the audio or not. I don't think it will but I'll have to look into that on their forums.
• Correct, I run RCA cables from the soundcard directly to a multi-channel power amp.
• You make a point about lossy vs. lossless audio and of course the former would not be better than the latter for video based soundtracks. OTOH for 2 or multi-channel CD-based audio my PC-prepro/amp combination is superior sonically to the AVR I have on hand for comparison (Onkyo TX-SR5008 which is no slouch in this department). Another potential advantage of the PC-prepro is that I've had annoyingly frequent HDMI handshake issues with the Onkyo AVR, HTPC (ceton with HDMI for audio and video), and the display (Sammy 58" plasma). As the PC-prepro will connect directly to the display for video I think it will eliminate this problem. Through web research and trial and error I've isolated the Onkyo as the culprit here.

Thanks for your feedback by the way.

The only way to get Lossless Audio is through HDMI and that card doesn't have it.

HDMI handshake issues are a PITA but I've been able to hammer them out in short order.

Sometimes handshake issues are due to how you have your video output set up. Other times you need an HDMI Detective or for me a $12 HDMI power booster from monoprice.

My Ceton ifiniti4usb works fine with my computer. Playback on my xbox 360 in both recordedtv or live tv is unwatchable. If I disable the Ceton, all the recordedTV plays back beautifully. Any fix for this?

A quick update on this. The playready problem had nothing to do with the soundcard. I forgot that I had changed some of the PC hardware (pre-Ceton install but this didn't matter either) and that was enough to break playready. I had to reinstall the OS to solve the problem but it is fixed. On top of this it took a full day's effort with Ceton tech support to get both PCIe tuners working in the server (separate from the PC with the aforementioned soundcard which is serving as a tuner client) but now the network-based Ceton tuners basically work. I had some signal problems with a few channels but I'll work on that tomorrow. I think this will be a nice solution in the end and kudos to Ceton for their outstanding technical support.

I don't think this will be true in my case. Since I'll be using J.River Media Center for bluray playback (the only source of high-rez audio I'll use for the foreseeable future) with a copy of AnyDVD HD running in the background, I should be able to playback .mkv's or a physical disc without any downrezing at all via the analog outputs. I'm focusing on getting the Ceton and WMC for TV to work right now (I'm 95% of the way there), but once this is fixed I'll try bluray playback and convey for those who are interested if the JRMC/Halo XT combo downrezes highdef audio or not.