InfiniTV reboot issue

[jwill42]

[This is a new thread split from the Ceton internal vs USB thread - STC]

The mini-coax connector on the PCIe InfiniTV is much more likely to break than the full size coax connector on the USB InfiniTV. If you search, you can find many people who have broken the mini-coax connector on their cards.

But the USB InfiniTV seems to have even more problems with intermittent reboots and partial recordings than the PCIe card.

But really, neither one of them is very reliable. I've got a PCIe InfiniTV, a USB InfiniTV, and a TiVo HD all hooked up to the same splitter, and the TiVo never misses a recording. The InfiniTVs can sometimes go for several weeks without missing a recording, but then a week will come where they fail to record half of the programs for that week. The Ceton crashlog.txt shows that the InfiniTVs are crashing and rebooting intermittently. Some have speculated the firmware has a memory leak. Those problems have been around for months, and Ceton has been unable to fix them. Ceton is a small company, and I suspect that they have devoted all their resources to their new product development (Q, Echo) and have mostly abandoned supporting existing products (although they deny it, of course).

If you want a rock-solid, completely reliable DVR, neither InfiniTV product fits the bill.

[toddos]

The mini-coax connector on the PCIe InfiniTV is much more likely to break than the full size coax connector on the USB InfiniTV. If you search, you can find many people who have broken the mini-coax connector on their cards.

But the USB InfiniTV seems to have even more problems with intermittent reboots and partial recordings than the PCIe card.

But really, neither one of them is very reliable. I've got a PCIe InfiniTV, a USB InfiniTV, and a TiVo HD all hooked up to the same splitter, and the TiVo never misses a recording. The InfiniTVs can sometimes go for several weeks without missing a recording, but then a week will come where they fail to record half of the programs for that week. The Ceton crashlog.txt shows that the InfiniTVs are crashing and rebooting intermittently. Some have speculated the firmware has a memory leak. Those problems have been around for months, and Ceton has been unable to fix them. Ceton is a small company, and I suspect that they have devoted all their resources to their new product development (Q, Echo) and have mostly abandoned supporting existing products (although they deny it, of course).

If you want a rock-solid, completely reliable DVR, neither InfiniTV product fits the bill.

On the other hand, I've had one Ceton PCIe card for a year and a half (launch card) and it's literally never missed a recording. I loved it enough that I just replaced my ClearQAM HDHR with another Ceton PCIe.

Perhaps the difference is that I have my HTPC configured to automatically take Windows Updates, which means the PC gets monthly reboots. If it is a slow memory leak that causes failures after multiple weeks of uptime, I would never run into it.

Also, I've never broken a mini-coax connector. How often are you taking it on and off? Since getting my first card, I've maybe removed and re-plugged in the connector 5 times at most.

[STC]

Jwill42, this is your first post and it is one that consists of largely inaccurate and misleading information.

Have you opened any tickets with Ceton?

[barnabas1969]

I thought of a possible new PRO for the USB version: Since it is always on, it may not take as long to become ready when your PC wakes from sleep. This is just a guess, but it's possible.

@jwill42: Your problems are more likely due to Windows. Rebooting frequently is a good idea on any Windows machine. I have mine set to reboot nightly. I never miss recordings. There is also a bug in Media Center that sometimes makes it think that you have more tuners than you actually have. This can cause conflicts and cause missed recordings. It is easily solved by going through all your channels and disabling any tuners that don't really exist. For example, you may see 8 or 12 CableCARD tuners assigned to a particular channel, when you really only have 4. I have personally seen this issue on my setup... and I simply edited those channels to disable the phantom tuners.

[newfiend]

Now that the USB Version is $199 I was thinking of adding it to my setup. I don't have another PCIe slot open so I thought about adding a USB version to get another 4 Tuners for a total of 8. Now I am wondering If I should just wait for the 6 Tuner internal instead? I have never really had any issues with my InfiniTV 4 PCIe.. It's been really solid. I have had mine since the first batch of cards hit the shores here and It just works.. I am not sure why there are so many complaints on how it works.. I know some people have had issues but for all the cards they have sold I think the issues are pretty minimal.
newfiend~

[jwill42]

Jwill42, this is your first post and it is one that consists of largely inaccurate and misleading information.

Have you opened any tickets with Ceton?

It is all accurate, and yes, I have opened tickets with Ceton, but it does no good. Ceton asks for additional diagnostic info, I provide that info, and then nothing happens. I am an experienced computer troubleshooter, and I have put many hours into testing the source of the problems. It is not my HW or OS that is the problem. It is the Ceton firmware without a doubt.

[barnabas1969]

Jwill42, this is your first post and it is one that consists of largely inaccurate and misleading information.

Have you opened any tickets with Ceton?

It is all accurate, and yes, I have opened tickets with Ceton, but it does no good. Ceton asks for additional diagnostic info, I provide that info, and then nothing happens.

Have you checked to see if your tuners are duplicated on some channels?

[jwill42]

Have you checked to see if your tuners are duplicated on some channels?

I'm not using network tuners at all.

[barnabas1969]

Have you checked to see if your tuners are duplicated on some channels?

I'm not using network tuners at all.

Neither am I. This has nothing to do with network tuners. It is a bug in Media Center that causes the tuners to be recognized more than once. It doesn't happen to everyone, and it doesn't happen on all channels. You have to go edit each of your channels and then edit the tuners available for that channel. You can enable/disable tuners here, or move them up or down to establish tuner priority for each channel. If you see the same tuner listed here more than once, disable the duplicated ones.

[jwill42]

@jwill42: Your problems are more likely due to Windows.

Definitely not. I have spent many, many hours testing and troubleshooting. It is the Ceton firmware crashing and rebooting without a doubt. Many people have the same problem. It can be easily identified by checking crashlog.txt for crashes like this:

[ 7597.400000] Fault whee upnp_ocur_serve [767]: segfaults at 00000000 pc=00074674

[barnabas1969]

@jwill42: Your problems are more likely due to Windows.

Definitely not. I have spent many, many hours testing and troubleshooting. It is the Ceton firmware crashing and rebooting without a doubt. Many people have the same problem. It can be easily identified by checking crashlog.txt for crashes like this:

[ 7597.400000] Fault whee upnp_ocur_serve [767]: segfaults at 00000000 pc=00074674

I don't doubt that your tuner card is crashing. Do you leave your PC powered on all the time? If you rebooted occasionally, it would probably take care of the problem. Honestly, even in my work... I've never seen a Windows server that could run for longer than 30-45 days without a reboot. Every Windows machine I've ever seen will crash after running for some period of time without a reboot. When you add a system-on-a-card, which is what the Ceton tuner is, you're just adding yet another complexity to the mix. Try rebooting daily. Then tell me I'm wrong.

[jwill42]

When you add a system-on-a-card, which is what the Ceton tuner is, you're just adding yet another complexity to the mix. Try rebooting daily. Then tell me I'm wrong.

I've seen the crash occur more than once on the same day after I booted my computer.

I don't think you are getting the point, I have spent many, many hours troubleshooting this. Installed Windows cleanly multiple times, 32-bit and 64-bit. Ran for weeks with nothing but Ceton and WMC. Tried different driver versions, turned on all the possible debug logs and sent them to Ceton multiple times. If the solution were simple, surely Ceton would have told my already, or I would have discovered it myself.

And I am hardly the only one having these problems. I have seen posts from a number of people with the exact same issues, and many of those people have also opened support tickets with Ceton, some months ago. But there is no solution forthcoming from Ceton.

[crawfish]

I don't doubt that your tuner card is crashing. Do you leave your PC powered on all the time? If you rebooted occasionally, it would probably take care of the problem. Honestly, even in my work... I've never seen a Windows server that could run for longer than 30-45 days without a reboot. Every Windows machine I've ever seen will crash after running for some period of time without a reboot. When you add a system-on-a-card, which is what the Ceton tuner is, you're just adding yet another complexity to the mix. Try rebooting daily. Then tell me I'm wrong.

I go weeks and weeks between reboots of my 7x64 system, and when I do reboot, it's because I installed something that forces it. Though I sleep it at least once a day, it's on a good 12 hours/day. It's my general purpose PC used for software development, office, Internet, etc that also serves as my HTPC. It has zero stability problems, and my HD Homerun Prime just works. I think if you have to reboot your computer daily so that it will work reliably, yes, you do have serious problems with your computer, and it's not necessary to put up with it. Daily reboots certainly should not be considered SOP or a solution to anything. As for my Prime, it doesn't need to be rebooted either.

[barnabas1969]

Jwill42, Has Ceton replaced your card? Have you tried it in a different computer/motherboard with a different chipset? There are so many variables to account for with PC's. You really can't be sure until you've tried different motherboards. I've seen lots of weird incompatibilities with computer hardware over the years. That's actually the point I was making above as a "con" for the Ceton USB. The USB hardware adds more possibilities for incompatibility. In fact, due to this, I would avoid having a PCIe and a USB Ceton tuner in the same system.

[barnabas1969]

I don't doubt that your tuner card is crashing. Do you leave your PC powered on all the time? If you rebooted occasionally, it would probably take care of the problem. Honestly, even in my work... I've never seen a Windows server that could run for longer than 30-45 days without a reboot. Every Windows machine I've ever seen will crash after running for some period of time without a reboot. When you add a system-on-a-card, which is what the Ceton tuner is, you're just adding yet another complexity to the mix. Try rebooting daily. Then tell me I'm wrong.

I go weeks and weeks between reboots of my 7x64 system, and when I do reboot, it's because I installed something that forces it. Though I sleep it at least once a day, it's on a good 12 hours/day. It's my general purpose PC used for software development, office, Internet, etc that also serves as my HTPC. It has zero stability problems, and my HD Homerun Prime just works. I think if you have to reboot your computer daily so that it will work reliably, yes, you do have serious problems with your computer, and it's not necessary to put up with it. Daily reboots certainly should not be considered SOP or a solution to anything. As for my Prime, it doesn't need to be rebooted either.

Mine sleeps/wakes several times a day. I'm pretty sure that reboots the PCIe tuner. Like I said, I've seen some Windows machines run for 30-45 days without issue... but never more than that (Unix/Linux systems, on the other hand, can run for months and months without a problem). In my job, we actually schedule monthly reboots for all the Windows systems. We coordinate that with patch loads, but we reboot them for a good reason. Windows gets squirrely after a while. I just think it's a good practice to reboot Windows periodically. Daily may be overkill, but it works. As for Windows Updates... my HTPC is just that... an HTPC. I don't use it for anything else, and there are too many things installed on that machine that can be messed up by Windows Updates... so I have them disabled.

[STC]

It is the Ceton firmware without a doubt.

If it was firmware we would all be experiencing your issue(s). We are most definitely not.

[jwill42]

It is the Ceton firmware without a doubt.

If it was firmware we would all be experiencing your issue(s).

That does not follow logically.

Code can have a bug that does not become apparent in every situation. In fact, if the code producer has done any testing at all, then any bugs will, by definition, not be apparent in every situation.

Nevertheless, the Ceton firmware has some serious bugs, and I am far from the only one to be bitten by them. Ceton has even acknowledged that the issue is probably with the firmware. But after several months, Ceton has been unable to fix the firmware issues.

[barnabas1969]

It is the Ceton firmware without a doubt.

If it was firmware we would all be experiencing your issue(s).

That does not follow logically.

Code can have a bug that does not become apparent in every situation. In fact, if the code producer has done any testing at all, then any bugs will, by definition, not be apparent in every situation.

Nevertheless, the Ceton firmware has some serious bugs, and I am far from the only one to be bitten by them.

I'll agree with you there. That's why I asked if you tried the card in a different motherboard or different computer that uses a different chipset. Have you?

[jwill42]

Jwill42, Has Ceton replaced your card? Have you tried it in a different computer/motherboard with a different chipset?

No, Ceton has not replaced my PCIe card. I have only tried the PCIe card on one motherboard, but since it is a standard Intel motherboard (and I have kept the BIOS updates current), any incompatibilities are almost certainly Ceton's fault. Besides, other people have seen the exact same crashing/rebooting issue with the PCIe InfiniTV, and they do not all have the same MB that I do.

[barnabas1969]

Jwill42, Has Ceton replaced your card? Have you tried it in a different computer/motherboard with a different chipset?

No, Ceton has not replaced my PCIe card. I have only tried the PCIe card on one motherboard, but since it is a standard Intel motherboard (and I have kept the BIOS updates current), any incompatibilities are almost certainly Ceton's fault. Besides, other people have seen the exact same crashing/rebooting issue with the PCIe InfiniTV, and they do not all have the same MB that I do.

I'm trying to give you some suggestions of things to try. If you're unwilling to try anything, then I understand why Ceton has been unable to help you.