Latest Ceton InfiniTV 4 Info Thread - Page 121

I would recommend you contact our support at this point.

Ceton's facebook said they have announcements coming regarding Ceton Q

Re-reading my post, I think I may have conveyed a negative impression toward the Q that wasn't intended. Where I wrote "I'm guessing we won't see the 6 tuner card available for purchase until after the Q ships, if ever", I wasn't intending to imply that the Q may never ship. Rather I meant that it's possible that they'll never sell the 6 tuner InfiniTV card separately. The obvious thing that comes to mind is that they could be concerned with cannibalizing sales of the Q. But at least in my case I have absolutely no intention of buying a Q but would most definitely buy 1 or 2 of the 6 tuner cards if they ever show up for sale. Just not for $1M, sorry Eric.

Cheapskate...

Yes, I'm still waiting, patiently, for the 6 tuner as well, I want to get all I can out of my single mcard.

Hey, can you buy an Mcard? The issue for me is comcast charges a rental fee for the second card, and I'm sick of paying rental fees, other wise I would just by a second card and tuner.

Probably not, but maybe.
From a technical angle:
Cisco CableCARDs require certificates to be loaded on the DNCS (headend controller for Cisco systems) that come with new CableCARD purchases. A random CableCARD off eBay won't come with those, and even if i did, I doubt you would manage to get to the headend engineer and convince him to load them.
Motorola CableCARDs actually have the CPMS (the PC that generates the CableCARD pairing data) download them, as needed, from Motorola. The CPMS then sends the pairing blob over to the DAC (headend controller for Motorola systems) This means that from a technical aspect, purchasing a random Motorola card can work.

From a Political angle:
Most operators will not allow you to own your own STBs, even if they are compatible. However, some do, and in fact Motorola actually sold some STBs at retail about 6 years ago. On an operator using Motorola equipment, you may actually get this to work if you are persists. Cisco is almost certainly a no. Also, on really old (10 year old, pre-CableCARD) DAC software releases, Motorola instructed operators to provision the cards as a DCT2000 (really old, basic STB). Someone might be able to convince their operator to do that more easily claiming it is a customer-owned box. However, that would only activate the card (not pair it) so you would only get Copy Freely content. Pairing would need the CPMS' involvement, which wouldn't be needed for a DCT2000, so a sharp technician would notice something up.

tl;dr: Probably not, but maybe

I noticed something strange about my Guide Listing in WMC. Fox channels have the NFL listed in Spanish and they only say "Another Important Game from the National Football League" (in Spanish of course) instead of the actual game in English (such as the Pittsburgh Steeelers vs the Philadelphia Eagles on Oct 7th - a VERY important game). While filling out the form on Microsoft Connect to get it fixed, it asked me to look in the About section of the Setup - TV - Guide - About. I noticed I have TWO sources listed there instead of only one. I have attached screen caps.




Should I have two providers? My only source for the HTPC is FiOS via the InfiniTV 4.

I noticed at the beginning of the season that some of my NFL listings were in Spanish. I don't remember if they were only that way on FOX or if the other channels listed them in Spanish too. My October 7 FOX listing for the Steelers/Eagles game says "Otro partido importante de la Liga Nacional de Futbol".

I also have FiOS and the InfiniTV 4, but I have a Hauppauge 2250 installed as well. Both tuner cards are on cable and I have two separate providers listed. One says "Philadelphia, Verizon Fios Philadelphia (Digital)" and the other says Digital Terrestrial Lineup.
Go Iggles.

I am getting the weak signal message when tuning either channel 106 (Komo-TV HD) or 107 (Kiro-TV HD), via Comcast (Seattle). Looking at the Ceton tuner info page, I got the following when tuning 107:

Signal: -7dBmV
Signal/Noise ratio: 35.8VdB

The tuner temperature was 53.3 C

Are those numbers bad? Anything I can do on my side?

Thanks
Daniel.

I have the same issue with multiple providers showing up in the "About" listings. I was messing around with Guide Tool and somehow added Dish's lineup, so now whenever Dish adds new channels (fairly frequently), they show up even though I obviously can't view them. I can't figure out how to remove Dish from my lineup, maybe I have to redo TV setup. I also have Digital Terrestrial showing in About, even though I've never had an antenna hooked up or set up an antenna, but the OTA channels never have appeared in my guide.

When I used guide tool to fix some problem listings that I knew would only be temporary (change of hd feed from east to west coast, and/or a new channel that wasn't added yet), I felt like it was more of temporary fix as once the right guide came in, it was easier to just rerun tuner setup to fix it.

Those numbers look fine, however they only tell the story at that point in time, more data would be needed to say.

im not sure but i think Cox Charges like $4.99 which is a lot cheaper than the $9.99 DVR Serv. $14/$17.99 Equipment Rental Fee + DVR Tax.


I was gonna get a Single 6 Tuner Q Box, and set it to share 4 of the Tuners, I have 1 Xbox 360, 2 laptops and my Studio PC.

I believe Comcast charges $7.99 monthly rental for the second card, but I'm just tired of paying rental fees, I'm happy to purchase the equipment, just provide me with the option. I'm ok with 4 tuners for the moment, I may look at an echo or maybe an Xbox 360 if I get into a crunch,or maybe after I win lottery, I'll buy one of Eric's 6 tuners for "One Million dollars".

Honestly, I'd just like to know if it's still in the works. I guess the first rumor of the infinitv 6 goes back to January 2011, that's a long time ago.

What should I provide Eric?

Open a support ticket, and provide a diagnostic capture after you experience the issue.

I have been using the InfiniTV for a little over a month now with FIOS and love it but have found it is lacking one important feature. Previously on my FIOS box with 2 tuners the box would automatically buffer(record) the two live chanels I would flip back and forth too. I have noticed with the InfiniTV it will only use one tuner unless you specifically record the two program. Is there a way to set it up so that the infiniTV will use two tuners when flipping between channels to automatically "record" the live tv but wont save it once the program ends? The main use of this is for live sports, i.e. FOX and CBS.

This is a Microsoft limitation. Microsoft only buffers the currently active show and resets the buffer when you leave it. I do not know if anyone has created a hack to change it. The only work around I know of is the one you mentioned, which is to record the two shows and then bounce back and forth between the recordings.

I doubt such a hack is really possible as it would most likely need to change fundamental functionality of Windows Media Center rather than simply tweaking a few settings. But yes, it's a limitation of Microsoft's Windows Media Center, not a limitation of the Ceton product.

petercrouch - The Ceton card is simply a tuner device that supplies up to 4 streams (1 for each tuner) at a time. It has no knowledge what those streams are being used for. It's up to the software that it's being used with to decide how to make use of the tuners that are available. Given that it's possible to record up to 4 shows at a time using a single InfiniTV 4 card, there's no limitation within the Ceton product in regards to being able to supply streams for 2, 3, or even 4 Live TV buffers. Even more streams would be possible if you were to add additional tuner cards to your system. The software being used could be designed to use those streams to buffer live TV buffers or to simply record the streams to be watched later. But until someone other than Microsoft writes DVR software that fully supports the Ceton (and/or SiliconDust) CableCard tuners, we're forced to live with the limitations of Windows Media Center.

The limitation I care more about is the "part of my second show records at the end of the first show when they are back to back" limitation. The only way around this is to set the record time to 10 minutes after...not "if possible", but force it. You will use two tuners then and each show will be recorded in full.

I really want that limitation fixed.

Something I've been meaning to try, though not elegant is that I believe you can split the tuners and force the first program to record on tuner 1 and the second on tuner 2... I know I used to do this to select between my stb and just recording analog or digital. Most of the time I encounter it, since it is often the locals and in clear qam, I can edit them correctly later... however I can no longer do that with SYFY which often has back to back recordings I'd like.

I know I had software in the past (prior to WMC) that would write to both recordings at once during the overlap period which is the way I prefer it but many years ago when I upgraded the software, and I noticed the feature removed, they told me that simultaneously recording the overlap for each recording was a tivo patent and can't be done anymore so they removed that feature rather than fight something that to me was so blatantly obvious and should not be patentable. I should do some research on that to see if that reason was true.

I would also love it if they could record more than one stream using one tuner (for instance here abc hd and cbs hd are on channel 73 programs 1 and 2) If I decided to record sd, I believe nearly all the main networks are on the same frequency. I used to be able to do this with my clear qam tuner but I'm not sure if the chips/driver the ceton uses allows such a function without specifying the sub channel.

This limitation has always bothered me as well. There is no good reason why the software could not take the output from one tuner and write it into two video files in parallel.

However, my TiVo XL, which I used before I got a Ceton InfiniTV, had the same annoying problem of not being able to do a "software split" of one tuner into two parallel files, so I tend to doubt that TiVo has a patent on this.

Agreed - it would be nice if they would fix, or change this depending on whether they agree it's a bug or not . Ideally, they would optimize use of the tuners, but I'd be happy if they continued to use 2 tuners but let me record just 2 minutes extra if that's all I want. In my case, I've got 8 tuners to work with and disc space is cheap, so this is a bug (or feature) I can live with indefinitely which seems likely.

I just installed my iTV4 for the first time tonight. I got to the CCard diag tab and I got ALL green checks (while on the phone with the cable operator) EXCEPT for "please ask the cable operator to send a CCV signal". I asked her to do this. She had no idea what I was talking about, so she escalated to her supervisor. He also had no idea what CCV ment, so we tried 3 more times to pair the CCard, but always got the red minus beside CCV. He gave up and scheduled a tech. I told him to make sure the tech brought a handful of CCards in case this one was bad....
... tech will not be here until next week...

For the heck of it, I opened the guide and saw ALL my channels, but I couldn't tune to anything. "subscription required" error on all channels.

sigh :-\

If you happen to have Charter this is normal. It is completely impossible to activate a cable card for anything besides a Tivo over the phone with them. They never ask for all the data that is required. And if you volunteer the information, they have no idea what to do with it. But you don't need a tech visit either. They're usually clueless about cable cards as well. All you need to do is go to their website and open a support case, and your card will be working sometime tomorrow.

done! I just opened a Ceton support ticket.

and it's Insight Cable (see myinsight.com). They are clueless.

You need to open a support case with Insight Cable to get it done. They are the ones who need to fix your subscription.

There is a tech coming out. My only fear is that they will give up after trying to pair it a dozen times and say it's a problem with my PC/iTV4 and that's that... back to the STB DVR.

At least you have some ammo. You can keep the diagnostic screen open and show them it hasn't activated. Insist that they input all the numbers on your screen (Card ID, Host ID, Data and Serial) into their system and send another hit. Don't let them leave until you get that green check mark by the cable card. As soon as you get the hit, and the data is correct (no typos on their end), it will go green. Then you'll want to cycle power on your PC and the tuning adapter then check all your channels.

I was hoping to possibly get one as well. Wanted to be able to have 6 tuners run off a single M-card in order to avoid Comcrap "rental" charges, but unfortunately, it looks like this 6-tuner DVR has pretty much been canned. Oh well