Ceton InfiniTV, HDHomeRun, or just TiVo?

[Ravynmagi]

I bought the Ceton InfiniTV 6 Eth a couple days ago and I'm pretty disappointed with this thing so far. It takes 5 to 10 seconds to tune into a channel and on Windows 7 it seems I can only use 4 of the tuners.

What I do like about the InfiniTV is that I am able to watch all of my cable channels, including HBO.

I was considering the SD HDHomeRun Prime, but when I click on the supported channel list for my cable provider is only shows about 50 channels. It's a CableCard box, is the channel selection really that limited? I wonder why the Ceton can get all the channels and this can't?

If I can get all the channels on the HDHomeRun Prime then I'll probably order this, because people say it tunes channel much faster than the Ceton.

I guess if both of these boxes suck, I might just need to buy a TiVo. It'll still be cheaper than the outrageous fees my cable company charges for cable boxes and DVR service. I could live with the $15 a month fee, though I'm puzzled why TiVo charges a monthly fee on the TiVo Mini extender box too.

 

[hennessy1]

I can't speak for the infinitv 6 version but I have 2 of the infinitv 4 cards in a single pc sharing 8 tuners so it is very possible that their drivers/hardware being new are having an issue. As for the tuning it varies sometimes I get a quicker tune to one channel than the other but I had that issue on comcast dvr as well. I don't mind that as much since I usually watch the recordings anyway and not to much of the live tv.

 

[Tegeril]

You can definitely get all the channels with the HDHomeRun or the Ceton, you may need a SDV adapter, but otherwise you should be able to find everything.

After a negative customer support experience with Ceton, I've ditched their now abandoned USB 2 tuner which had a firmware corruption issue and gone for the HDHomeRun. The Tivo wont do it any better, it's just another tuner with another CableCard.

 

[bearxor]

I'd stick with the Ceton tuner. The HDHR prime is only a three tuner box.

Your main issue, I think is the limit Microsoft put on tuners. You can only have 4 of one type. There's a hack for it.
http://www.mychannellogos.com/tunersalad

The tuning time is just a fact of life with Cable Card. Much the same with satellite.

If you know you won't want to watch more than two channels that require a cable card, you could go to a two tuner CC system and get a couple HDHomeRun's. That would get you six total tuners and you can set the premium channels to the CC tuner and everything else to the clear QAM tuners. This is a lot of manual work but it worked great for me. I only had a single ATI CC tuner at the time. It also depends on your cable company to deliver everything but the premiums in the clear so it might not be an option either.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

There's no need for the hack with the Ceton tuner. Their software/drivers disable the 4 tuner limit so make sure you have all the software installed. According to AVS the InfiniTV6 ETH is very sensitive to signal strength and it has an effect on channel change speeds. The signal strength needs to be as close to 0 as possible and many at AVS are using signal amps/boosters to tweak the signal strength to that 0 goal. Reportedly, once properly tweaked, channel change speeds are just a couple of seconds.

 

[Scheeringa]

I have the PCI version of the Ceton and it's fantastic. Plus their customer service is top notch.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

I just recently got my Ceton infiniTV4 working on my Xen environment and its fantastic. Coming from a single tuner, non recording HD box, having 4 tuners at my fingertips is fantatic. And I can change channels very quickly on this card. It only takes a couple seconds (though I don't often change channels).

 

[evident]

I've been using the ininitv 4 for the last year, all of a sudden it stopped tuning. I thought it was a problem with Fos but after pulling my hair out and sending diagnostics to ceton they are rmaing my card. I got a hdhomerun prime in the time being and the setup was very simple