Ceton infiniTV4: Opinions?

[gsaldivar]

I'm looking to put together a HTPC box soon, and I'd like to see if there are any infiniTV4 owners out there that can share their opinions (pros, cons, etc) about this product.

Thanks.

 

[el-Capitan]

No opinion just yet. Installing it on my WHS as we speak. Getting my CableCard on Sunday. Intend to give three tuners to the HTPC and one to my desktop. Will feedback.

 

[flocko]

I'm looking to put together a HTPC box soon, and I'd like to see if there are any infiniTV4 owners out there that can share their opinions (pros, cons, etc) about this product.

Thanks.

I've had mine about six months now .

It really is a fine piece of tech and for the most part works very well . It can be a bit touchy to set up especially the part where you have to get involved with your cable provider . I got lucky and did a LOT of reading and got a 1) English speaking phone tech who , 2) knew exactly what I needed from them to complete the "pairing" process . A COMPLETE RARITY , I ASSURE YOU !

Be prepared , depending on your cable provider you may need a tuning adapter ( TA). I use Time Warner and a TA is required . Not a big deal but just letting you know you may want to investigate this before you get all "happy" and find out the hard way you need something you don't have.

During the initial install it is imperative that you follow the instructions exactly or you will be removing clumps of hair from your head. The menu structure is very well laid out and plays nicely with windows media center

One other point of info is that you need a very "hot" cable signal coming into the ceton . The higher the cable signal the better ( up to a point of course). -12db to -0db signal is about the sweet spot . I had to have a tech out several day's after the Ceton was installed to bump my signal up a bit and all was well .

I highly recommend the product over all .

The Green Button has a dedicated forum for the Ceton products and they have an excellent tech rep that helps answer questions quite frequently . AVS also has a very dedicated Ceton forum section and is also frequented by the same Ceton rep as the green button.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

I've been using one for about a year and a half and I love it. It's a great product and Ceton's support is second to none.

The pros:

• 4 tuners
• Network capable
• You aren't tied to the cableco's DVR box and rental fees

The Cons:

• As already mentioned, it's signal sensitive
• The internal card runs hot
• Network tuners aren't dynamically assigned
• Network tuner assignments can be finicky

Getting WMC set up properly with the InfiniTV4 can be exasperating at times. That's not the fault of the Ceton though, it's just WMC. Once you finally learn how to deal with the obstacles and issues though it is a pleasure.

btw, if you want a CC tuner that works well with network assignments you may want to get an HD Homerun Prime instead. While it only has three tuners those tuners are dynamically allocated when needed and released back to the tuner pool when no longer required.

 

[ussfletcher]

Works great.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I was on the 10 month waiting list, paid $430 for it with overnight shipping and still feel it was worth it.

I love MC, works GREAT. Now that they're sub $200 I have thought about getting a second.

I just pre ordered a ceton echo as well!

What questions do you have?

 

[nextJin]

It is an awesome card tbh. Set it up yourself and do not let the tech touch anything. Just go through the motions after the card is installed and going through WMC there will be a screen with all the info needed.

Prior to running WMC just make sure you are green in the Ceton diag program.

After you get it up and running and it has pulled the listing down, be sure to configure WMC to remove the channels not subscribed to (and in my case all SD channels). That way the only listed channels are ones you can watch and they are HD.

Also look up MyChannelLogos2, pay 2 bucks or w/e it is and experience what normal cable subscibers could only dream of which is;

A fast UI
4 Tuners
Brilliant interface
Easily identifiable channel logos

I would also look into the XMBC addon for WMC if you want to seemlessly switch back and forth between them.

 

[ViviTheMage]

It is an awesome card tbh. Set it up yourself and do not let the tech touch anything. Just go through the motions after the card is installed and going through WMC there will be a screen with all the info needed.

Prior to running WMC just make sure you are green in the Ceton diag program.

After you get it up and running and it has pulled the listing down, be sure to configure WMC to remove the channels not subscribed to (and in my case all SD channels). That way the only listed channels are ones you can watch and they are HD.

Also look up MyChannelLogos2, pay 2 bucks or w/e it is and experience what normal cable subscibers could only dream of which is;

A fast UI
4 Tuners
Brilliant interface
Easily identifiable channel logos

I would also look into the XMBC addon for WMC if you want to seemlessly switch back and forth between them.

I also did this, very worth it.

 

[ussfletcher]

I also did this, very worth it.

This.

 

[guachi]

What nextJin said but I didn't do the XBMC thing.

The card is awesome. Was worth it at $400. Even more worth it at $200. My local FiOS has no copy protection. Over 8,000 shows recorded, stripped of commercials, compressed, and saved for posterity.

The MyChannelLogos thing is awesome. And it's worth the $3 I donated. I can't stand a normal DVR and its interface now.

My wife is not overly technologically inclined and she loves using WMC (although her HTPC has a Hauppage card with only QAM channels, but it's basically the same).

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Another vote for MyChannelLogos2. Great little app. I would also recommend MCE Standby Tool. It's free and resolves some issues inherent in MCE like its penchant to startup occassionally in an odd resolution.

 

[hennessy1]

I recently setup a pc with 2 of the pcie cards for a total of 8 tuners. I also had 2x3TB drives in RAID 0 for the storage of the shows. I currently have 4 xbox 360 extenders connected to the MC pc.

No real big issues so far. During setup for some reason though it wouldn't see the extra tuner card but once I did a repair install of the drivers everything is fine. I think it had something to do with the play-ready and/or digital cable adviser they tell you to run.

Last week there was an issue where the second card was unavailable again. On the pc I just ran the update play ready and the tuners were available.

Other then that this is so much better then the comcast dvr boxes I had before.

Biggest PITA was comcast with switching over our boxes to 2 cable cards one person tells you one story another tells you their wrong. Once that was sorted out though everything was fine.
I did end up using the mychannelLogos2 as well and that works great too.

 

[el-Capitan]

I have recently set up a WHS to stream FiOS to two W7 clients. I must say that the setup is not the easiest.

Notable :
- Your cable provider needs to be on top of his game, the guys who installed it for me had zero experience with Ceton tuners and made things worse by running some 'VRZ Network setup wizard'. It took me two cable cards and four calls to finally get everything fully activated.
- the firmware and hardware updates for the Ceton may screw your network settings and tuner assignments. Be prepared to go back and check all the network settings and to re-run the TV setups on the clients.
- on one client I had blocking, flickering and tearing on many channels. Took me a lot of tinkering with the properties of display driver to finally eliminate all (Intel HD 3000).
- support is helpful and will respond within 24hrs.
- i cannot record on the server, client only.
- MyChannelLogos2 is definitely worth the five bucks.

Spent many hours on it, but all seems to working well.

From what I take from support forums that the HD Homerun Prime is the easier and more reliable install.

 

[kn51]

Sorry, I'm a couple days late responding.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1336614/latest-ceton-infinitv-4-info-thread/3870

is a good thread to keep up on things.

My basic setup is I have a server that has two Ceton cards (for 8 tuners total) and I use my 360's as extenders.

I have Comcast...

So the following caveats apply:

Prepare for cable card hell. Once solved, you usually don't have to screw with it. Not a fault of Ceton, it will be your cable company. Once paired that is the least of your worries. In fact if you have problems with cable cards Ceton will help.

There is an issue with macroblocking on protected content. Premium channels that are marked as "copy once" will exhibit single line pixelization issues. This is a known issue. Hard to explain, but a quick google will show you what I mean.

With Windows 8, network bridging of tuners, or more esoteric things gets a little dicey. I don't share tuners, or have to worry about SDV. My setup is fairly simple and works quite well.

And for the most part, Ceton support is top notch.

FWIW.

 

[deathbyburrito2]

It is a great card. I have had mine for about a year. I did have one major problem with it. Comcast upgraded some things on their side and the card was no longer able to receive the channel list. Ceton support was top notch. They worked directly with Comcast to resolve the issue and provided me with a beta firmware to use while Comcast worked through things on their side.

 

[tw1164]

I bought one over the holiday, and verizon is coming out tomorrow to install the cablecard. I remember when FIOS first came to the area and I had Tivos that needed cablecards. They had no idea how to do cablecards. I hope it's better this time around.

 

[coolkish]

The Ceton PCI tuner card worked fine in my HTPC BUT I prefer an external box and leave heat outside my PC.

I am leaning towards HD HOmerun Prime since they are discounted well unlike Ceton.

YMMV

 

[LSDavinci]

Cooling, Cooling, Cooling! Otherwise, it's been pretty good!