Ceton InfiniTV 6 PCIe vs. Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH

[ceton 6]

Ceton InfiniTV 6 PCIe vs. Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH

Does anyone have a working Ceton InfiniTV 6 PCIe that can record all 6 channels at the same time without issue. I am trying to find out if all the defects are with just with the Ethernet version Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH.

My Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH loses TV Signal and pixlates when more than 4 channels are used at the same time and Ceton has had me change the firmware with no resolve.

[The Mac]

I have the pcie 6, can do maybe 3 beofre they become unwatchable.

[haydongreenbutton]

Does anyone have a working Ceton InfiniTV 6 PCIe that can record all 6 channels at the same time without issue. I am trying to find out if all the defects are with just with the Ethernet version Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH.

Yes. I can do it. I'm beginning to believe a lot of these issues are due to poor drivers/software on people's computers. But Ceton can't go blameless because they knew lots of people wrote lousy drivers/software on Windows. They should have enough buffering/whatever to account for this.

I've never tried tuning all of them to the same channel though. I suspect that would end in misery.

[barnabas1969]

I'm beginning to believe a lot of these issues are due to poor drivers/software on people's computers. But Ceton can't go blameless because they knew lots of people wrote lousy drivers/software on Windows. They should have enough buffering/whatever to account for this.

Please explain what the heck you're talking about. The drivers come from CETON for the PCIe version. With the Ethernet version, there are still drivers for the tuner from Ceton, and also drivers for your NIC. The "software", as you put it, is Windows Media Center. I'm not sure to which other software you are referring.

As for the NIC drivers, well... I suppose that's a possible problem... but there are people who have reported no problems tuning 6 channels on competing tuners (Silicondust HD HomeRun PRIME), but they have problems with the InfiniTV6-ETH.

[kd6icz]

That was the first thing I tested when I installed my PCIe 6. Recorded 5 and watched one live flawlessly. All HD and all SDV.

I forgot to add I am also using a WD RED 3TB drive which is NOT the recommended 7200 RPM spindle speed. It works flawlessly!

I did update my motherboard to the latest bios. It only has SATA II.

[EZEd]

Because of all of these issues raised I tried this last night to see if it behaves the same as when I initially received the tuner.

ITV6ETH - recorded 5, watched 1 (on main PC), all HD channels (w/SDV) - checks good no stutter
- recorded 4, watched 1 on main PC, watched 1 on extender - checked good no stutter
- recorded 3, watched 1 on main PC, watched 1 on other PC, watched 1 on extender - checked good no stutter
Didn't try 2 extenders ( I do have 2 but only tried with one)
Didn't try 2 PCs and 2 extenders (I do have 3 PCs and 2 extenders sharing but did not try this combination). Other caveat is that I switched from 10/100 network to Gbit since I originally got the 6ETH so may be the reason why this all works now. Previously I had only tried the experiment that kd6icz tried (Main PC record 5 and watch 1 - which worked) while using 10/100 network. Didn't try all of these combinations with 10/100 network.

PCs are a combination of Gigabyte GA-MA770-S3 with AMD 4800 dual core, 4GB RAM custom build, HP P6-2310 (6GB RAM) and HP DC7600 (2GB RAM) off the shelf. DC7600 has HD3450 Radeon (added PCIe), custom bldg has HD6450 Radeon PCIe. HP P6-2310 is using onboard video (not sure what kind exactly but is AMD based)

Extenders are 1 ea Linksys DMA2100 and DMA2200

[richard1980]

I forgot to add I am also using a WD RED 3TB drive which is NOT the recommended 7200 RPM spindle speed.

If you ever see anybody recommending a specific RPM, that's how you know they are full of crap. Which makes it surprising to see Ceton listing it as a requirement. They should know better.

[haydongreenbutton]

I'm beginning to believe a lot of these issues are due to poor drivers/software on people's computers. But Ceton can't go blameless because they knew lots of people wrote lousy drivers/software on Windows. They should have enough buffering/whatever to account for this.

Please explain what the heck you're talking about. The drivers come from CETON for the PCIe version. With the Ethernet version, there are still drivers for the tuner from Ceton, and also drivers for your NIC. The "software", as you put it, is Windows Media Center. I'm not sure to which other software you are referring.

As for the NIC drivers, well... I suppose that's a possible problem... but there are people who have reported no problems tuning 6 channels on competing tuners (Silicondust HD HomeRun PRIME), but they have problems with the InfiniTV6-ETH.

Really? Okay, well a list of some drivers that Ceton doesn't provide on your system are:
NIC drivers, storage drivers, video drivers, USB drivers, WiFi drivers, audio drivers, Bluetooth drivers, etc.

I had a serious issue with trying to use Intel RAID with WMC several years back. I'd get frequent pixellation and other artifacts. Intel's storage driver stunk at the time. There was a bug (actually, it was bug ridden) where DPCs would go unserviced for a looong time. Thus screwing up everything. It was also easy to see when doing drive benchmarks and looking at the access times. At the driver level there are many other ways of messing up your system.

[JohnW248]

Really? Okay, well a list of some drivers that Ceton doesn't provide on your system are:
NIC drivers, storage drivers, video drivers, USB drivers, WiFi drivers, audio drivers, Bluetooth drivers, etc.

I had a serious issue with trying to use Intel RAID with WMC several years back. I'd get frequent pixellation and other artifacts. Intel's storage driver stunk at the time. There was a bug (actually, it was bug ridden) where DPCs would go unserviced for a looong time. Thus screwing up everything. It was also easy to see when doing drive benchmarks and looking at the access times. At the driver level there are many other ways of messing up your system.

That's why it is important to really understand where the problem is when dealing with a picture issue. For example if you see pixilation on your computer but not on a Linksys or HP extender (or for that matter the HBO 29/59 issue) then you can work on video driver issues. MPEG error correction (concealment) for pixilation is graphic card related and not tuner or storage issues if the program will play on extenders but not on the host box. USB drivers are known to produce issues with TAs and tuners that are connected via USB to the host. They are not an issue for TAs connected to a Ethernet tuner. Storage/Raid drivers and controller cards as well as HD issues can all pose problems. With drive errors, MC will crash in many instances. I've run into that a couple of times and had to have a valid drive or remove the bad drive before I could get MC to open and stay open. I've also had problems trying to run a Raid tower (raid 5) as a recording drive with more than one tuner in use. setting the same tower and controller (RocketRaid 642/644) as JBOD have no problems with Sata3 3TB drives in a Sans Digital 5 tower case. Don't use Bluetooth for anything tuner/MC related and while I do have a Win8Pro machine on WiFi that can accesss network tuners, it is not a configuration I'd recommend to others.

Things like pixilation are not easy to pinpoint as one thing, but with a Ethernet based tuner, make sure you have the latest NIC drivers and have a look at Silicon Dust's Forms for recommendations on NIC card settings. Also things like routers and switches and cables can cause issues as well. The number one issue I've seen causing problems is a third party AVS.

[ja216]

I have a new infinity eth unit and have successfully recorded 6 hd shows a few times. ( I just got mine the other day). Clarity is fine and I do not have the lag that some people have reported. What I do have is heat and surprisingly that was made
much better by simply standing the unit on it's side. The difference in temperature is quite amazing. I am now looking to purchase or make some stand that will give it more stability ( read that protection from falling over).

I will add that I removed my infinity pcie4 prior to install so the ETH install went perfectly.

[tletourneau]

I have an Eth 6 and have recorded 6HD, watched 1 HD (Xbox) while recording 5HD and watched 2 (Xbox) while recording 4HD all without problems. My Eth 6 is on a shelf in a fairly cool mechanical room. After reading previous comments I am going to make a stand for it as a preventative measure.

[bilditup1]

I'm beginning to believe a lot of these issues are due to poor drivers/software on people's computers. But Ceton can't go blameless because they knew lots of people wrote lousy drivers/software on Windows. They should have enough buffering/whatever to account for this.

Please explain what the heck you're talking about. The drivers come from CETON for the PCIe version. With the Ethernet version, there are still drivers for the tuner from Ceton, and also drivers for your NIC. The "software", as you put it, is Windows Media Center. I'm not sure to which other software you are referring.

As for the NIC drivers, well... I suppose that's a possible problem... but there are people who have reported no problems tuning 6 channels on competing tuners (Silicondust HD HomeRun PRIME), but they have problems with the InfiniTV6-ETH.

Really? Okay, well a list of some drivers that Ceton doesn't provide on your system are:
NIC drivers, storage drivers, video drivers, USB drivers, WiFi drivers, audio drivers, Bluetooth drivers, etc.

I had a serious issue with trying to use Intel RAID with WMC several years back. I'd get frequent pixellation and other artifacts. Intel's storage driver stunk at the time. There was a bug (actually, it was bug ridden) where DPCs would go unserviced for a looong time. Thus screwing up everything. It was also easy to see when doing drive benchmarks and looking at the access times. At the driver level there are many other ways of messing up your system.

I'd like to thank you for pointing this out. I thought my drivers were all updated but as it happens never really thought to check for my NIC driver. Lo and behold it was two years old, and after grabbing the latest ones, using a Ceton Echo Extender with the ITV-6ETH stopped causing random bluescreens. (Well actually, I ended up debugging memory.dmp but props all the same.)

My new problem is that five tuner at once doesn't seem to work.

[epayson85]

pcie 6 and a hdhomerun prime recording 8 shows at once and watching one live with 0 issues. Even went back to watch all the recordings and they were all fine. That is on a WD green 3tb drive so not the recommended 7200 rpm. I will say so far the pcie 6 has been much better than the 4 I used to own. No more tuners are missing errors and so forth. I hardly ever reboot my htpc anymore.

[erkotz]

Please explain what the heck you're talking about. The drivers come from CETON for the PCIe version. With the Ethernet version, there are still drivers for the tuner from Ceton, and also drivers for your NIC. The "software", as you put it, is Windows Media Center. I'm not sure to which other software you are referring.

The InfiniTV 6 ETH does not use (nor require) any drivers (outside of your NIC drivers, which are not provided by Ceton). The software installer installs services to assist in the discovery of tuner and configuraiton of Windows Media Center, but there are no drivers for the tuner itself, and you can actually set up the Ethernet InfiniTV without installing any Ceton software on the PC.

I forgot to add I am also using a WD RED 3TB drive which is NOT the recommended 7200 RPM spindle speed.

If you ever see anybody recommending a specific RPM, that's how you know they are full of crap. Which makes it surprising to see Ceton listing it as a requirement. They should know better.

Agreed that spindle speed is not everything, but it's something consumers can easily recognize. If we don't say anything, someone will find an ancient hard laptop hard drive somewhere that can only move 15mbits/sec and complain to us when it doesn't work. You laugh, but at one point I remember getting a support ticket from a customer that stated his PC wouldn't boot when the InfiniTV was installed. After a lot of troubleshooting, we determined that his PC was about 8 years old, had no PCIe (only PCI) slots, and he was cramming it into a PCI(non-E) slot, hence why his PC was unhappy.

[blueiedgod]

You laugh, but at one point I remember getting a support ticket from a customer that stated his PC wouldn't boot when the InfiniTV was installed. After a lot of troubleshooting, we determined that his PC was about 8 years old, had no PCIe (only PCI) slots, and he was cramming it into a PCI(non-E) slot, hence why his PC was unhappy.

PCIe requirement is what prompted me to upgrade our circa 2004 MSI Mega 180 based HTPC (originally with XP MCE, patched to Vista WMC) to the newer one when InifniTV4 came out in 2010. We were using it with 2x ATi DCT's (1 internal via USB header and 1 external via USB).

Now that we are on InfiniTV6 ETH, I have been toying with the idea of bringing Mega180 back to life, but there is no Windows 7 support for it. And it is not powerful to drive 6 TV's. But, it is cool as heck, with OLED front panel. I might make it into a "Stand alone DVR"

[Sea3]

...
The InfiniTV 6 ETH does not use (nor require) any drivers (outside of your NIC drivers, which are not provided by Ceton). The software installer installs services to assist in the discovery of tuner and configuraiton of Windows Media Center, but there are no drivers for the tuner itself, and you can actually set up the Ethernet InfiniTV without installing any Ceton software on the PC.
...

Can you share how to setup the Ethernet InfiniTV without installing Ceton software or point to a reference on MSDN or wherever that explains the setup?
I am mainly curious but little bits of info like this sometimes can become useful.

Thanks.

[erkotz]

I don't have any formal directions, but the below should suffice:
1. Disable Windows Firewall (you can just punch some holes, but offhand I don't recall what they need to be)
2. Run %systemroot%\ehome\ehprivjob.exe /ocurdiscovery /ex
3. Run TV setup in WMC

Unless you have the Ceton software or Tuner Salad (or the AEP) installed, you will be limited to 4 tuners.

To clarify, this is not considered a supported configuration by us - but it should work.

[weaslyd]

So have we resolved anything in this thread, or are we just resolving to drop it?

I have the same issue when attempting to record more than 4 streams at a time. When recording 4 channels, I can switch between any recording channel or view later in Recorded TV, and they look fine. When doing the same thing with a fifth recording added, or switching to a channel that is not one of the four being recorded, thus requesting a fifth feed, the recording/playback is corrupted to the point of being unwatchable.

I can confirm that my drivers are all up to date, including the gigabit nic drivers and the video card drivers. Has anyone else resolved this issue or have other possible fixes I might try ?

[kd6icz]

pcie 6 and a hdhomerun prime recording 8 shows at once and watching one live with 0 issues. Even went back to watch all the recordings and they were all fine. That is on a WD green 3tb drive so not the recommended 7200 rpm. I will say so far the pcie 6 has been much better than the 4 I used to own. No more tuners are missing errors and so forth. I hardly ever reboot my HTPC anymore.

Give it time. The tuners will disappear. Other than that it's great! I'm also using a WD 3TB that's not 7200. I chose the Red NAS model and it's fine.