My experience with HD HomeRun Prime vs. Ceton InfiniTV

[barnabas1969]

I've been having macroblocking issues with the Ceton InfiniTV tuner for quite some time. I've assumed that it was the same issue that others were having, but mine seems to happen more frequently (or so I'm told). A few days ago, I installed the Ceton tuner in a different computer, and in a 1-hour test, I did not see the issue. This seemed to indicate that the problem was in my HTPC, but this is not completely conclusive. I do tend to see it every 10-15 minutes on channels that use the Ceton tuner on the HTPC, but going an hour without a glitch doesn't conclusively indicate that the problem is with my HTPC. The HTPC works fine with my ClearQAM and ATSC tuners.

I've already bought the HDHR Prime tuner. So, I swapped out the Ceton tuner and installed the HDHR Prime. It might be interesting to see if my problem goes away, so I'm starting this thread to document my experiences.

The HDHR Prime installation was painless, except for the call to the cable company. I was assured by a BHN employee (on DSLreports.com) that Brighthouse Networks' people were now trained on CableCARD, but I had to explain to the support rep that the card needs to be paired with the host. It only took 15 minutes on the phone this time, compared to 2+ hours last year. However, the average consumer would not have known what to tell the support rep, so I had an advantage. That's unrelated to this thread, however.

So... the card is paired, and the tuner is working now. The HDHR Prime device is much smaller than I expected... about the same size as the Ceton PCIe card. It's smaller than my 8-port network switch. It connects to the switch at gigabit speed. Not sure why SD decided to make the 6-tuner device use two CableCARD's and two network ports. Anyway...

Tuning seems SIGNIFICANTLY faster on the HDHR Prime compared to the Ceton. Even on SDV channels. Less than 2 seconds to change from one SDV channel to another SDV channel. That's at least twice as fast as the Ceton, maybe more. I'm impressed with the speed of channel changes!

It's too early to comment on the macroblocking issue. I'll let you know in a day or two.

EDIT: Oh, by the way... the HDHR Prime is connected to the same cable TV coax that the InfiniTV was connected to. Signal strength on Comedy Central HD shows 0.4dBmV and SNR 36.0. That's very similar to what I saw on the InfiniTV.

[joevulture]

Please definitely keep us up to date on this; I replaced an InfiniTV 4 PCIe card with an InfiniTV 4 USB in part because of the macroblocking and am considering a HDHomeRun Prime, despite losing one tuner. I just want something that works!

You're on Brighthouse, are you in a SDV market? I'm curious to know how stable the Tuning Adaptor ends up as this was a big issue with the Ceton drivers in the beginning.

[barnabas1969]

I started three simultaneous recordings on the HDHR Prime tuner. No problems so far.

[btracy]

Yes keep us updated. I am very interested in seeing how it works for you over the next few weeks.

[adam1991]

Not sure why SD decided to make the 6-port device use two CableCARD's and two network ports.

Because it's simply two of the three stream devices in one case with one power supply.

[barnabas1969]

Not sure why SD decided to make the 6-port device use two CableCARD's and two network ports.

Because it's simply two of the three stream devices in one case with one power supply.

Yeah, I get that. I just assumed that they stopped at three tuners because the ethernet interface was 100Mbps. That was the only reason I could think of to stop at 3. That would make sense for why they made the 6-tuner device have two separate ethernet interfaces. But it's definitely gigabit. Too bad they didn't go for the gusto and make the 6-tuner device use a single CableCARD. I would have paid the extra money for that!

[richard1980]

Even if the HDHRP used 100 Mbps ports, each port could support a minimum of 5 simultaneous streams. The stream limit is 20 Mbps, although nobody ever goes that high. The highest I've ever seen is about 18 Mbps, but most average 12-15 Mbps.

[Scallica]

Not sure why SD decided to make the 6-tuner device use two CableCARD's and two network ports.

I think the answer is because if they made a true six tuner device, it would require re-certification/approval from CableLabs which takes a lot of time and money. To avoid that, they just plopped two triple tuners in one chassis. I could be totally wrong though.

By the way, what firmware are you running on your HDHR Prime?

[barnabas1969]

Even if the HDHRP used 100 Mbps ports, each port could support a minimum of 5 simultaneous streams. The stream limit is 20 Mbps, although nobody ever goes that high. The highest I've ever seen is about 18 Mbps, but most average 12-15 Mbps.

Yes, but when network usage exceeds 80%, things get dicey. So, the real-world throughput of a 100Mbps network is 70-80Mbps.

[barnabas1969]

By the way, what firmware are you running on your HDHR Prime?

Firmware version 20120405. I assume it's the latest available because I let the installer update it.

[Diverge]

Are there any improvements in the time it takes windows to find the tuners when waking the HTPC from sleep? Or is windows the limiting factor of that?

[barnabas1969]

Are there any improvements in the time it takes windows to find the tuners when waking the HTPC from sleep? Or is windows the limiting factor of that?

I haven't noticed yet. I'll try to pay attention next time. I've been told that it's Windows. I'll let you know.

[barnabas1969]

I've been seeing an occasional glitch on the HDHomeRun Prime that looks very similar to the line of bad blocks that I was seeing on the Ceton card. It's not as frequent, and it looks different. Instead of looking like a line of small squares, it's a jagged black line. However, it's similar enough that I'm beginning to wonder if my machine has some problem that was causing the issue with the Ceton card. I'm really feeling bad for slamming Ceton so much.

My ATSC and ClearQAM tuners do not have this issue, so I think that eliminates everything in the machine except for network settings. Both the Ceton and the HDHRP are network tuners... so maybe it's one of my network settings? Any suggestions are welcome.

I'm also seeing something new on the HDHRP. The video and audio occasionally "pause" for a split second, and then it resumes like nothing happened.

I just logged into my HTPC remotely and disabled network throttling. I never disabled it because my extenders work fine... I wonder if this could have been causing the problem with the Ceton? I also turned off "green ethernet" on the network adapter and rebooted the machine. I'll try to watch some TV later tonight and see if things have improved. There are other settings I can try changing, but I don't want to change too many things at once.

Since I got my new AVR and the RCAware HDMI-CEC Bridge (and installing Event Ghost), I've been playing with them so much that I haven't gotten back to testing the HDHRP. I'd like to try watching some TV on my other PC, using the HDHRP as the tuner. I'll definitely get to it this weekend. I may end up getting a 2nd CableCARD and TA so I can run both the Ceton AND the HRHRP... maybe in separate machines, recording the same shows.

[mcewinter]

For your reference...

http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5877

[barnabas1969]

I saw that and bookmarked it earlier today. I'll definitely do the packet loss test.

[barnabas1969]

I didn't do the packet loss test last night. I didn't get home until almost 9pm. I did watch some TV though... and even after disabling network throttling and turning off "green ethernet", I saw one line of bad blocks while watching Comedy Central. It looked exactly like the problem on the Ceton this time... but it took 2 hours of TV watching to see one glitch vs. 10-15 minutes with the Ceton card.

Disabling network throttling did seem to fix the problem where video/audio would "pause" for a split second every once in a while though.

I'll do the packet loss test tonight.

[mcewinter]

Strange, I've only seen that line of blocks on a downloaded torrent but never sourced on my system. I wonder if some of what you're seeing is just from the source (pre HTPC).

[barnabas1969]

Strange, I've only seen that line of blocks on a downloaded torrent but never sourced on my system. I wonder if some of what you're seeing is just from the source (pre HTPC).

I'm not sure. I'll have to do more testing with a different PC. Hopefully, I can do that this weekend. My daughter's birthday is coming up soon... and she wants me to take her clothes shopping this weekend. We'll see how much time I have to play with Media Center.

[barnabas1969]

I tried the network packet loss test. I ran it on all three tuners simultaneously for 10 minutes. Not a single packet lost. And, I purposely picked both local channels that transmit in 720p, along with one in 1080i. The reason for choosing 720p channels is because the bit rate should be higher.

[mcewinter]

It sounds like things should be tip top. Any other PQ issues?