Ceton USB Experiences

I'm curious to know the results of this poll as well. Like you, I pre-ordered my 1st InfiniTV 4 from Zones literally within seconds after receiving the e-mail from Ceton announcing it. I have since bought a 2nd InfiniTV 4 for a total of eight tuners. I had the notion of sharing tuners with one or two other PCs, but after a previous bad experience using extenders and a flaky HTPC I was hesitant to set it up.

A few weeks ago, the SiliconDist HDHR Prime went on sale at J&R Music for only $169 so I grabbed one. It seems to be the perfect complement for my setup. I now have additional tuners available to the primary HTPC if I need them and I can also use them with the satellite PCs. If the main HTPC goes down for any reason I won't catch any grief because everyone else is still up and running with TV reception from the SD HDHR.

The idea of a central hub for distributing TV sounds like a good idea until something goes wrong. It becomes the weak link in a chain that affects everyone.

Anyway, back to the subject of USB tuners. I have used numerous USB tuners over the years and liked them fine until the PVR app decided to lose them. I used to use BeyondTV and Win XP and the USB tuners had a bad habit of disconnecting themselves, resulting in lost recordings. It appeared to be due mostly to intermittent issues with external USB hubs that I was using. I don't recall having the same issues with Win 7 and Media Center. The rumors I've been hearing about the USB version of the InfiniTV 4 seem to be isolated to reviews posted on Amazon or Newegg or simply rumors. Let's hope this poll gets you some actual feedback that is meaningful.

Have you been following the InfiniTV4 thread here? It's way more than just 'rumors', there are plenty of reports that the USB adapter resets on a regular basis.

No, I haven't, but I'll check it out. Thanks.

My PCIe is great 98% of the time but it's that 2% that's making me look for an alternative.

I really wish I could know for sure that the USB version won't suffer from the same issue my PCIe version is suffering from. I'm hesitant to get a usb version since it's the same firmware running the PCIe version. I just can't chance having the same problems.

Post the top 20 lines of your ceton usb logs and we will tell you if you are having same errors / problems or not (default is http://192.168.200.1/log.txt).

Think of it like this...if your car worked fine 98% of the time you drove it but just dies for no reason 2% of the time, you're going to bring it to the dealer to get it fixed, correct? You're going to keep bringing it in and demanding it be fixed. Why should it be any different for those of us having the PCIe segfault and memory leak?

Don't let the facts get in your way then.

I voted mostly satisfied. For the $299 I paid for the USB version, I really would like to be more than 'mostly satisfied'.

I've had mine for 3 months. For the first month it was very unstable, with frequent tuner crashes and partial recording errors. After updating to the beta firmware V. 1.1.2.4, it is much more stable.

However, it is not stable enough to return my cable co. DVR. Mine is not a dedicated HTPC, it is my everyday triple-monitor desktop. So for the time being, I am 'relatively' satisfied using it to watch HDTV on one of my monitors, while using my PC for everthing else.

I was considering building a dedicated HTPC, but my USB tuner is not stable enough for that yet. Hopefully future firmware updates will make it so. If not, I'll try a HomeRun Prime if they keep dropping in price.

Gary