Reliability of ITV4 vs HR Prime

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lucasbuck

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Reliability of ITV4 vs HR Prime

#1

Post by lucasbuck » Thu Aug 01, 2013 1:25 pm

I bought an ITV4 a last Feb and have had certain channels that drop in and out (says subscription required). I opened my first (of several) support tickets in March, a month after purchase. It's been a year of back and forth, 4 visits from the cable company to check signal strength, beta drivers, tons of diagnostics, etc. I've pretty much been in constant contact with Ceton. Now, they say the card is malfunctioning and I'm out of warranty. So I can either pay to have it repaired, or get a refurb for a reduced price. Needless to say, I'm a little disappointed. Maybe I just got a rare bad unit, but the service disappoints me.

So my questions are:
1 - Are the Primes more reliable? Or are they about the same and I got a bad one.
2 - If I switched to a Prime, how much trouble is it to switch over? Just uninstall the Ceton software and setup the Prime through WMC?

Thanks for any help.

barnabas1969

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#2

Post by barnabas1969 » Thu Aug 01, 2013 1:48 pm

First off, if you have really been having continuous trouble, and have opened tickets with Ceton over the course of the past year, and they now say that the ITV4 is defective. Then, I'd escalate to someone in management at Ceton and insist that they replace the card at no cost to you. It seems to me that they misdiagnosed the problem for a year, and now they've determined the card is defective. That's not your fault, and you shouldn't have to pay for it. I'm sure if you make this clear to someone at Ceton who has authority to make the decision, they will gladly send you a new card.

Regarding the reliability, I've seen several threads here that say something about the onboard flash memory going bad on the ITV4 (making it impossible to upgrade firmware, and sometimes rendering the tuner inoperable). I've never seen such a thread regarding the HD HomeRun Prime neither here nor on the Silicondust forums.

Switching from the ITV4 to the HDHRP is as simple as you stated in #2 above.

I've had two HDHRP's for 15-16 months without a hiccup. I switched from an ITV4 because I just liked the HDHRP better. I actually sold my used one-year-old ITV4 on e-bay for more than one brand new HDHRP cost me.

lucasbuck

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#3

Post by lucasbuck » Thu Aug 01, 2013 3:15 pm

Thanks for the reply. The ticket got escalated from repair to warranty service. I'm not sure how I could escalate it further. I pointed out all the other tickets but they said the best they could do was $25 repair and I pay shipping or something like $125 for a refurb card. It's an odd problem. There's like 3 channels (BBC America, Logo, something else) that the wife watches. Sometimes it says subscription required and I have to pop out the smartcard, reinsert, then it will work for a few days before going out again. I'm kind of worried that it would happen to do it while they were repairing it, so I'm afraid I'd end up with the same problem.
I was just thinking about switching to a HR if the service and reliability were better.

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#4

Post by barnabas1969 » Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:23 pm

Do you have a Tuning Adapter, meaning that your cable provider uses Switched Digital Video (SDV)?

lucasbuck

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#5

Post by lucasbuck » Thu Aug 01, 2013 10:16 pm

No. My provider, Insight, was recently bought by Time Warner. We transitioned over and no mention of needing one yet. Just a cable running into the Ceton.FYI, Ceton did agree to repair it for free after some more grumbling. But that means I'll be without one for awhile, which won't go over well with the family. So I'm going to go ahead and buy something else (still not sure if another Ceton for a Prime), then when the other comes back keep it for a backup. I'm not too confident it will work correctly anyways (due to it being an intermittent problem).

How does the adapter come into play with the decision?

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STC

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#6

Post by STC » Thu Aug 01, 2013 11:26 pm

TA's add more complexity into the mix, which means more attention is needed in-home as to how you have everything wired up.
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barnabas1969

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#7

Post by barnabas1969 » Fri Aug 02, 2013 12:38 am

lucasbuck wrote:How does the adapter come into play with the decision?
People tend to focus on the signal strength/quality of the tuner. They forget that the signal strength (both the receive AND transmit) and quality (receive) of the TA is important too. If your TA is struggling to communicate with the cable company's system, you'll see all kinds of error messages.

malong335

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#8

Post by malong335 » Fri Aug 02, 2013 12:13 pm

After 6 months of various issues with the USB version of ITV4 and 2-3 system issues a week that required a reboot/reset of the PC, TA and ITV4, I bought an HDHR Prime about 4 weeks ago. It has been smooth sailing with no reboots or issues since. For me, the difference has been night and day.

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#9

Post by lucasbuck » Fri Aug 09, 2013 1:07 am

I'll have to see how the repair holds then see what to do. It's worked well except for those handful of channels going in and out. Thanks for the information!

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