Anyone have any degree of reliability with InfiniTV 6 ETH?

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curtis

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Anyone have any degree of reliability with InfiniTV 6 ETH?

#1

Post by curtis » Tue Jul 21, 2015 8:16 am

I got a Ethernet 6 last year to use with a NUC (win 8.1) with our main TV and have regretted the expenditure every day since. I've had rare issues with my old 4 tuner pci, rarely having a record issue, but I can trust the Ethernet 6 to fail more often that it works. I regularly get a message that new tuners have been found and have to re-set up or we come back to endless "X failed to record" messages to cancel and can't tune any station. Less often it fails a few times and then records or fails entirely but checking stations would show tuning still works. Most of the time the only way to get it working again is to use the Ceton software to deregister, then reregister and go through Media Center TV setup again. The PC has been set up not to sleep and none of these issues align to reboots or updates. I've had to keep my 4 pci tuner duplicating all recordings because it is so unreliable.

Has anyone had reliable experience with this tuner? If so, have you had it with win 8 or win 7?

RyC

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#2

Post by RyC » Tue Jul 21, 2015 8:39 am

Working great on Charter with a TA since 2013 on Windows 7 (on a VM even)

EZEd

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#3

Post by EZEd » Tue Jul 21, 2015 3:20 pm

Mine going strong since 5/2013 as well. TWC/moto tuning adapter has been source of all problems for me. ETH6 is always okay.

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#4

Post by EZEd » Tue Jul 21, 2015 3:21 pm

EZEd wrote:Mine going strong since 5/2013 as well. TWC/moto tuning adapter has been source of all problems for me. ETH6 is always okay.
Edit: Win7 x64 here

smassey22180

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#5

Post by smassey22180 » Tue Jul 21, 2015 8:05 pm

PCI is going to be more reliable than the eth 6 because it is simpler. There is no network layer to fail. If any part of my network reboots, all PCs that use my eth 6 will also need a reboot to work instantly. Many will eventually get them selves working but that could take hours. This is more of an issue with WMC than the eth but it is worth mentioning. Other items needed to make a ETH 6 work include a fan on the unit and a rock solid network.

While I dislike my ETH 6 and the fact that it is not reliable, I hate the $18 per month per box that Comcast would charge me otherwise.

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#6

Post by Mpgrimm2 » Wed Jul 22, 2015 12:53 am

I went through t the exact same problem for several months after switching to the TA.

I found that my PCI iTV4 was more unreliable with the TA than my ETH 6 due to differences in MB USB chipsets likely where as the ETH6 will be using the same USB/TA driver and chipset Ceton intended.

All my ETH 6 problems came down to my router, random router reboots, etc which I was able to isolate by moving all my tuners, media centers, and extenders over to the 8 port switch I had. Now all good. Even swapped out the router a few months later for a new AC router but kept it all on the switch.

My layout is diagrammed in one of my posts if I ever find it.

Win7 x64

curtis

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#7

Post by curtis » Wed Jul 22, 2015 6:01 am

Thanks for the replies!
I'm on Comcast so no Tuning Adapter. My 6 is between a switch and the NUC so no data should need to pass through the router and I don't have any issues with the PC or Xbox One so I don't think hardware there would be the issue.
Additional info on the issues I see is that almost all of the time that it fails to record & tune any channel, the Ceton software says everything is fine and there are no problems tuning a channel. Occasionally the Tuner itself needs to be power cycled. Sometimes a reboot resolves it, or setting up the 'new' card found, but most of the time the only thing that fixes it is the 'Clear Tuner Configuration', then 'Discover Tuners' option in the Diagnostics Tool then re-setup the TV info in Media Center.

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#8

Post by beggehorn » Wed Jul 22, 2015 4:33 pm

Bought a Infinitv6ETH a year or two ago and have had nothing but problems...

Running on Windows 8.1 x64 (fully updated)

I've been through the mill with Ceton support:

- Uninstalled Plex/MCEBuddy per their recommendations that these have been known to cause issues
- Updated all mobo drivers directly from component manufacturer websites
- Performed several extended RAM tests, tried using only 1 stick of 4GB at a time
- Performed multiple system stress tests using various ASUS and 3p tools
- Swapped out all hard drives
- Swapped power supply
- RMA'd motherboard
- Performed 3 clean OS installs

My system will completely lock up at least once a week and require me to hold the power button to restart. This only happens during recording or watching live TV and if the Ceton is removed from the system, it never happens.

I also suffer from no tuner available messages that require frequent rediscovery of the tuners.

The availability of a single CC 6 Tuner HDHomeRun Prime will likely provide my only relief to these problems.

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#9

Post by Billyray520 » Wed Jul 22, 2015 5:31 pm

No problems here with the Ceton Eth6 since adding a 120mm fan to the top of it. Consistently runs 29-30 degrees C. I did have problems with TWC signal, but they did something to resolve that. My setup has been in operation since February.

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#10

Post by Starflare5 » Wed Jul 22, 2015 5:47 pm

I'd like to let you know that I have one of these tuners, and, it is a great tuner and can be reliable, but, even brand new and out of the box, you can have issues. Below is some information on what common issues can occur, how to resolve them, and what precautions you should take.

Here's the common issues and ways to resolve or work around Ceton InfiniTV6 ETH tuners:

Random No signal errors
Random No connection and no tuner available errors (can also cause Windows Media Center to ask to update Play Ready)
SDV errors
Tuner Overheat


Take note that this is a network tuner and anything affecting your home network might affect it as well. The convenience of having a tuner on any computer plugged into your network is great though if your main system that is the DVR goes down.

First of all, and this is extremely important in my experience, verify that you are using ALL 1 gigabit (1000 mbps) or higher network equipment and adapters on your network. Absolutely NO 10/100 adapters or devices. These devices can cause a serious bottleneck in your network. If you have devices that only have a 10/100 port or card, see if you can connect them by WiFi instead. This is the leading cause of the No Signal, and No Tuner Available, and the Update Play Ready Errors.

I cannot stress enough to use a surge protector with coaxial connections. Your cable service person will often take this out of the loop if you are using your own equipment. Take note that your cable company wants to fry your equipment so that you have to use theirs and charge you more for it. They do not care how much you paid for your equipment and do not consider it their responsibility if the equipment fries due to them removing the surge protector and the device gets hit by lightening via the cable line. If the surge protector fries, all that you will lose is some channels. Replace the protector, and your channels and signal will come back.

Ask your cable company for a filter. If you also have a cable modem connected, ask for 2 filters. Connect one to the cable line to the modem, and the other to the cable line to the Tuning Adapter or Ceton tuner. If you must use a Tuning Adapter, run your cable line to it, and then the tuner. Your cable company must provide the filters and the Tuning Adapter free of charge.

No signal and no connection, no tuner available, and Update Play Ready errors can be easily resolved and this problem and issue may re-occur every time your cable company sends an update to their service or to the Tuning Adapter. If this issue occurs, and you've verified that all of the above is working fine, follow these instructions step by step:

1. Shut Down the system that is the main DVR completely to the point of removing the power cord from the back, and press the power button in front to remove residual power.
2. Unplug the power from the tuner and leave it unplugged until later advised to plug it back in.
3. (If no tuning adapter, skip to step 4) If you have a tuning adapter, unplug the power from it for 5 seconds and plug it back in and wait for the blinking green light to go solid. This should take only a couple of minutes to half an hour.
4. Plug the Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH tuner back in and pay attention to both in and the network lights on the router or switch it is connected to. Verify that the network lights on the back of the tuner start flashing a moment before the blue light goes solid and the router or switch is showing that the tuner is connected at 1 Gigabit (1000 mbps)(usually the connectivity light will be green or blue depending on router or switch).
5. If it is connected at any other speed or color (Amber or red), unplug the power from the tuner for 5 seconds, plug it back in and wait. If you have a tuning adapter connected, this may cause it to blink. Wait for it's light to go solid also before proceeding to the next step.
6. Plug the system back in that is the DVR, and power it on and wait for it to boot.
7. Once fully booted, go directly into Windows Media Center, and test the connection. A few seconds after you open Windows Media Center, verify that you get a spinning ring, and, depending on the system and where it is in the network, this ring should only last up to 30 seconds, but, can take as little as 2 to 5 seconds. If you do not get this ring, repeat steps 1, and then 5 through 7.
8. Go into your guide, and attempt to tune in some channels. Depending on the system, tuning may occasionally be slow. If you get an error, repeat steps 1, and 5 through 8. You may also have to reboot your network router and/or switch.
9. If you get and SDV error and have a tuning adapter, repeat all of the above steps.
10. If you have more than one system connected from this point with the Ceton software installed, simply restart/reboot all subsequent systems.

Another common cause of these errors can be the tuner overheating. The best way you can resolve this is make sure it is in a cool, freestanding and open area, however, if that is not an option, people have attached cooling fans to the top of these tuners, or, if it is in a cabinet of some type, you may have to install an additional cooling fan in the rear of that cabinet. For example:

I have my tuner and media server in a former drawer slot in the bottom of a TV stand. On the back of the TV stand, using door knob hole drilling tools, I drilled 3 large holes (one for the wiring in the center, and 1 other on each side for cooling fans). I installed 2 large CPU cooling fans on the rear and have them powered through a 2 conductor wire via the media server. This cools both the system and tuner by sucking in cool air from the front and exhausting the hot air out the rear.

I hope this helps you in determining your purchase and I hope this helps others resolve their issues as well.

Starflare5.

kd6icz

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#11

Post by kd6icz » Wed Jul 22, 2015 7:00 pm

Above is all good info. I've used a PCIe 6 exclusively since the day the came out. For the most part my system ran trouble free.

However tax day 2014 Ceton had a sale so for the heck of it I bought an ETH just to play with. At first it was frustrating. All the issues you stated. But then I slowly started to upgrade and simplify my network. Just in the past week I've now stopped using my PCIe 6(s) and now switched exclusively to the ETH. So far it's awesome! I'll list what I've done to make it rock solid.

First, my signal was OK but the tuning adapter was struggling with talking to the head end @ +41dbmV . I found that the AC adapter the cable company supplied was under sized. I installed a beefy 12v 3a power supply and now it hits the head end every time. I also installed the same model AC adapter for the ETH 6.

I Installed a Holland sub-band filter at the input of the ETH6 to help improve SNR. This filter allows 54-1000 MHz to pass filtering out the Uplink frequencies. I have two Holland band pass filters (a.k.a. MoCA filter) in my system. One at the main entrance and one at the input of my splitter. This is just to make sure any external noise or harmonics are reduced. If you use any type of drop amplifier make sure it's bi-directional or "active return" and I would highly recommend a sub-band filter on both inputs.

As far as my network I use a business grade gigabit switch. (NETGEAR ProSAFE JGS524E 24-Port) I ran CAT 6a shielded cables throughout the house and to everything in my equipment rack. I also picked up a couple of small desk fans from my local Walmart that just happen to mount to the rack very nicely providing constant airflow to the ETH6, TA, and modem.

Doing all that made my ETH reliable and fast!

Also you must have a PC that has enough umpth to handle 6 streams of video. I don't know if any NUC has that... I've done some testing with a few different models and I've only found one configuration that was tolerable. It had an i7 with 8GB RAM and a Samsung 2tb (32MB cashe) 2.5" drive. With 4 streams of HD it was BARELY able to keep up. 3.5" drives are more suitable for video use.

curtis

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#12

Post by curtis » Thu Jul 23, 2015 4:40 am

All good replies though most of the trouble shooting items here would apply in my situation. The issue isn't getting a signal (with the exception of a few occasionally troublesome stations), it is the Tuner Conflict/No Tuner available which again, happens despite Ceton Software says all is great. Media Center isn't getting the message..
No tuning adapters to have issues with. Switch is netgear pro gigabit and cabling is only 2-3 from card to switch to PC. Cable line is through a surge suppressor as is power. Tuner is in well vented cabinet with no other devices (and again, rarely is the issue in regards to even the Ceton software not seeing it.) The only other software I run on it is anydvd, My Movies, and Emby.

Given most replies here don't seem to be having the same issues I am, I'll wipe it sometime this week and try downgrading to 7 just to eliminate possible OS issues.

@Kd6iz - These tuners don't need much of anything other than an ok HDD as the cpu doesn't get involved, the system is just writing the MPEG 2 stream. My i5 NUC is using a M2 SSD which can write over 500MB a second so I could hook up another 4 of these without taxing the system though the gigabit Ethernet wouldn't be able to deal with it.. ;)

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#13

Post by tzr916 » Thu Jul 23, 2015 1:49 pm

curtis wrote:...The issue isn't getting a signal (with the exception of a few occasionally troublesome stations), it is the Tuner Conflict/No Tuner available which again, happens despite Ceton Software says all is great. Media Center isn't getting the message...
How often is this happening?

It's no secret that the most unreliable thing about the ETH6 is that it spontaneously reboots after some random amount of up-time 3 hrs, 3 days, 3 weeks... and the "memory leak" will always cause the ETH6 to reboot some time after that. When this abnormal reboot happens, it can take out normal WMC functionality despite the Ceton software says (if you go into the tuner setup, you will notice that WMC only sees 3 or 4 of the 6 tuners). The best way to recover is do a manual reboot of the ETH6, wait for it to come back up, then reboot the PC. Many people just preemptively do manual reboot of the PC and the ETH6 on a schedule (ie once a week).

kd6icz

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#14

Post by kd6icz » Thu Jul 23, 2015 2:53 pm

curtis wrote:My i5 NUC is using a M2 SSD which can write over 500MB a second so I could hook up another 4 of these without taxing the system though the gigabit Ethernet wouldn't be able to deal with it.. ;)

You're using an SSD for your video drive???? I do not advise that. That drive won't last long.

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#15

Post by curtis » Fri Jul 24, 2015 2:13 am

tzr916 wrote:
curtis wrote:...The issue isn't getting a signal (with the exception of a few occasionally troublesome stations), it is the Tuner Conflict/No Tuner available which again, happens despite Ceton Software says all is great. Media Center isn't getting the message...
How often is this happening?

It's no secret that the most unreliable thing about the ETH6 is that it spontaneously reboots after some random amount of up-time 3 hrs, 3 days, 3 weeks... and the "memory leak" will always cause the ETH6 to reboot some time after that. When this abnormal reboot happens, it can take out normal WMC functionality despite the Ceton software says (if you go into the tuner setup, you will notice that WMC only sees 3 or 4 of the 6 tuners). The best way to recover is do a manual reboot of the ETH6, wait for it to come back up, then reboot the PC. Many people just preemptively do manual reboot of the PC and the ETH6 on a schedule (ie once a week).
I'm not watching shows on it every day so I can't say for sure how often but it is at least once a week and often many times. Rebooting the Ceton usually doesn't resolve the issue unless it is a case where the software doesn't see it. A reboot of the PC does sometimes and of course there is the other times where it requires removing, re-adding, and re-setting it up. Some of the times where it pops up with 'new tuners detected' message, I have gone through the this step and noticed it only showed 4 of the 6 but not every time. Again, the issue is the 'conflict/no tuner found' message so even if there were reduced tuners, I should still be able to tune something. I rarely have more than 3 shows recording at once and don't recall any failures of one recording while others at the same time succeeded.
So it is possible it is some combination of two or more issues involved this memory leak reboot and some issue with in 8, just not clear on how to track it down other than starting with reformat to win 7 to eliminate one possibility.

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#16

Post by curtis » Fri Jul 24, 2015 2:19 am

kd6icz wrote:
curtis wrote:My i5 NUC is using a M2 SSD which can write over 500MB a second so I could hook up another 4 of these without taxing the system though the gigabit Ethernet wouldn't be able to deal with it.. ;)

You're using an SSD for your video drive???? I do not advise that. That drive won't last long.
Whoops, no, I lied. :) Got my head stuck in the specifics of the NUC for a second.. On that system I'm actually saving TV to a HDD in a dock connected via USB 3. That NUC is only 256gb SSD so there is not enough room. Though, I'd not worry much about doing so given how much we record and the life of good SSD's (according to Anandtech's tests). Even if it started to die before it came time to upgrade the computer, with the rapid increase in size and decrease in cost, a much larger replacement shouldn't cost much.

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#17

Post by tzr916 » Fri Jul 24, 2015 1:40 pm

curtis wrote:... Some of the times where it pops up with 'new tuners detected' message, I have gone through the this step and noticed it only showed 4 of the 6 but not every time. Again, the issue is the 'conflict/no tuner found' message so even if there were reduced tuners, I should still be able to tune something....
This sounds exactly the symptom of an abnormal reboot by the ETH6. When WMC detects only 3 or 4 of the 6 and tries to tune to a channel, it often chooses one of the missing tuners resulting in the 'conflict/no tuner found' message.

Suggestions:
Keep track of your ETH6 uptime carefully. Next time you get the the 'conflict/no tuner found' message, see if the ETH6 has reboot since the last time you watched tv.

Do a weekly preemptive reboot of the ETH6 and PC.

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#18

Post by smassey22180 » Fri Jul 24, 2015 3:29 pm

kd6icz wrote: Also you must have a PC that has enough umpth to handle 6 streams of video. I don't know if any NUC has that... I've done some testing with a few different models and I've only found one configuration that was tolerable. It had an i7 with 8GB RAM and a Samsung 2tb (32MB cashe) 2.5" drive. With 4 streams of HD it was BARELY able to keep up. 3.5" drives are more suitable for video use.
The above NUC is one of my current WMCs. To keep everything happy, I have 3 tuners locked just for that NUC and 3 for the downstairs WMC. That prevents overworking the NUC an also seems to prevent conflicts.

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#19

Post by kd6icz » Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:58 pm

I currently use two NUC's in place of two Echos. They are Celeron based Gigabyte units with 1tb AV 25 Western Digital hard disks. They are fine with up to 2 tuners locked to them but any more than that they don't like it.

Where the NUC's croak are when you have more than 4 tuners. You can forget about extenders! The 2.5" hard drives simply can't keep up.

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#20

Post by DavidinCT » Mon Aug 03, 2015 1:03 pm

beggehorn wrote:Bought a Infinitv6ETH a year or two ago and have had nothing but problems...

Running on Windows 8.1 x64 (fully updated)

I've been through the mill with Ceton support:

- Uninstalled Plex/MCEBuddy per their recommendations that these have been known to cause issues
- Updated all mobo drivers directly from component manufacturer websites
- Performed several extended RAM tests, tried using only 1 stick of 4GB at a time
- Performed multiple system stress tests using various ASUS and 3p tools
- Swapped out all hard drives
- Swapped power supply
- RMA'd motherboard
- Performed 3 clean OS installs

My system will completely lock up at least once a week and require me to hold the power button to restart. This only happens during recording or watching live TV and if the Ceton is removed from the system, it never happens.

I also suffer from no tuner available messages that require frequent rediscovery of the tuners.

The availability of a single CC 6 Tuner HDHomeRun Prime will likely provide my only relief to these problems.
Dam, System LOCKUPs seem like hardware issues. Check for conflicts in your system, you could be on a IRQ or even com port that is conflicting with another device that would cause that type of thing.

If this just does it after a week of use, did you ever think of putting a automated reboot into scheduled tasks ? I still have a 4 and after a few weeks it does get a little funky, what I do is create a scheduled task and have it wake the computer, reboot it and this refreshes the system, I have mine set for 4:30am on a Wensday.

The Odds of someone watching TV or recording something in that time frame in my home just would not happen. And there is even a little program that will prompt someone that the WMC machine will be rebooting and they can cancel it if they are using it.
-Dave
Twitter @TheCoolDave

Windows Media Center certified and WMC MVP 2010 - 2012

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