Ceton InfiniTV Tuner, two thumbs up.

Just wanted to give a little short review of this little gem. I finally got tired of Time Warners absolute junk DVR's with buggy and slow GUI's that constantly freeze and take forever in a day to start up. $40+ a month for four tuners also grew tiresome.

So I started looking into replacement options. I had remembered the Ceton when it came out but the price was high. While browsing newegg I saw it dropped to $230, I could resist.

I got a system put together and got a cable card ordered from Time Warner($2.50 a month, yeah a big difference) The installation wasn't bad, it took a couple phone calls and about an hour to get it working. It's been gravy since. It just plain works. Four HD channels record perfectly with a G530 and a WD green HD. The Ceton software is absolutely wonderful with very very nice diagnostic software. I really couldn't be any more happy with it. I do get an error every now and again but much less so than with the DVR's. The WMC GUI is also very niced, I am quite impressed with Redmonds effort here. I've got ~$700 in the whole set-up and that's with a nice home theater style case and a high dollar motherboard(comparatively speaking) I already had an Xbox 360 for remote viewing in place of the second DVR.

The only real complaint I have it the adapter for the coax cable, it's prone to breakage. It has a little adapter that goes into the card instead of the coax going in directly. But Ceton has been very good and every instance I have seen they have either repaired or replaced the cards for those that broke them.

This is for the PCIe version, don't get the USB version. It's absolute junk that locks up and disconnects constantly.

The build:
Silverstone ML03 Case
ASRock H67M-GE/HT (B3)
Intel G530
Windows 7 Home Premium
SeaSonic SS-350ET
Scythe SCSK-1100
Ceton InfiniTV 4 Quad-tuner Card
Mushkin 4GB 1333
Azend Mediagate Remote
Lenovo Multimedia Remote(backordered, still waiting)
Used a 2TB WD Green I had laying around from a dead WHS.

DUDE!!!
I bought that card too back in November. I haven't had a chance to set it up, but plan on doing the same thing. My HTPC already has a 2TB raid-1 configuration, and an additional single 1TB drive for non-essentials, and a SSD for OS/applications... Phenom II quad-core and 8gigs of RAM, Win 7 x64.

I'm so glad you started this thread... just reminding me to stop delaying and get away from Verizon's $26+/month charge for their multi-room DVR and additional box. I've got xboxes and will just use that as my satellite setups.

Get that thing installed. I don't know how good/bad Verizon's boxes are but the difference is speed and GUI improvements alone are worth the price of entry. Once I move I'll also be using a 360 fur access in the bedroom.

I also use an SSD for the OS, forgot about that.

ou_phidelt said:

Get that thing installed. I don't know how good/bad Verizon's boxes are but the difference is speed and GUI improvements alone are worth the price of entry. Once I move I'll also be using a 360 fur access in the bedroom.

I also use an SSD for the OS, forgot about that.

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I too will be using GREENs for the DVR-ed stuff.
Are you able to convert any of the recorded stuff to MKV and whatnot?

g0dM@n said:

I too will be using GREENs for the DVR-ed stuff.
Are you able to convert any of the recorded stuff to MKV and whatnot?

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No I haven't. Another of the reasons I did this was I was tired of converting and encoding, I just wanted something that works. From what I have read the non-DRM stuff is fairly easy to do and the DRM'd stuff not so much. Since you have Verizon your life will be much easier. They don't DRM very much at all, pretty much just premium channels like HBO. I have Time Warner and DRM just about everything.

i have the Ceton (had it since release). great little card, just make sure you keep the signal strength levels in check, you will start to get a lot of pixelation and macroblocking if they get too low. this card seems to be pretty sensitive to it.

i too use an SSD for OS
2TB WD green for recordings
2TB WD green for DVD rips (330+ lol)

n00b HTPC Ceton 4 questions

How is the Celeron G530 when it comes to handling Media Extender(s)? I believe the rule of thumb is that you should have 1 CPU core for every Media Extender. It should be fine but I wanted to make sure...

gsrcrxsi said:

i have the Ceton (had it since release). great little card, just make sure you keep the signal strength levels in check, you will start to get a lot of pixelation and macroblocking if they get too low. this card seems to be pretty sensitive to it.

i too use an SSD for OS
2TB WD green for recordings
2TB WD green for DVD rips (330+ lol)

Click to expand...

Is there a good rule of thumb for managing Signal Levels when it comes to the Ceton card? If my signals are low, is there a way to "boost" the signal or am I forced to call the cable co.? (I had an incident where the cable guy stole some stuff but I had no way of proving it...so I'm leary of inviting these men in.)

Lastly, I have a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD STB right now that struggles with recording 2 shows at once. For example, each "simultaneous" recording has skipping/pixelation issues. Will a Green HDD have these same issues?

Hi there, Comp625. I just installed the Ceton tuner myself this past weekend. I've yet to extend the service to other computers/xboxes as I'm still moving into my new house. First time trying it out (and I've had the darn card since Nov of last year!)...

The green drives should be able to handle it. If your STB had issues, I'd say it was more hardware (not related to the hard drive). Most hard drives can handle a slight bit of a beating if you ask me... unless their hard drive was just on its way out.

I tested recording 4 shows at once on my card, onto a 2x 2TB WD Green Raid-1 setup. I did not sit close and REALLY check for pixelation, but it seemed fine for a preliminary test.

Does anyone know if streaming to the Xbox can be done with liveTV? I don't want to WASTE the 4 tuners (going to do 3 on one TV/PC setup and 1 on another TV/nettop setup). I want to them stream to an xbox, but I'm guessing I could only get somewhat live TV if I record it on the main machine and then stream it right after...

Any tricks?

Comp625 said:

How is the Celeron G530 when it comes to handling Media Extender(s)? I believe the rule of thumb is that you should have 1 CPU core for every Media Extender. It should be fine but I wanted to make sure...

It works fine for one. I only have one extender but it works great with it.

Is there a good rule of thumb for managing Signal Levels when it comes to the Ceton card? If my signals are low, is there a way to "boost" the signal or am I forced to call the cable co.? (I had an incident where the cable guy stole some stuff but I had no way of proving it...so I'm leary of inviting these men in.)
You can buy a booster but you can boost the levels to high as well. I never leave any worker alone in my home. If they are their my eyes are on them, end of story.

Lastly, I have a Scientific Atlanta 8300HD STB right now that struggles with recording 2 shows at once. For example, each "simultaneous" recording has skipping/pixelation issues. Will a Green HDD have these same issues?
I use a green drive and have yet to have an issue with pixelation other than what is caused by the cable signal itself.

Click to expand...

g0dM@n said:

Hi there, Comp625. I just installed the Ceton tuner myself this past weekend. I've yet to extend the service to other computers/xboxes as I'm still moving into my new house. First time trying it out (and I've had the darn card since Nov of last year!)...

The green drives should be able to handle it. If your STB had issues, I'd say it was more hardware (not related to the hard drive). Most hard drives can handle a slight bit of a beating if you ask me... unless their hard drive was just on its way out.

I tested recording 4 shows at once on my card, onto a 2x 2TB WD Green Raid-1 setup. I did not sit close and REALLY check for pixelation, but it seemed fine for a preliminary test.

Does anyone know if streaming to the Xbox can be done with liveTV? I don't want to WASTE the 4 tuners (going to do 3 on one TV/PC setup and 1 on another TV/nettop setup). I want to them stream to an xbox, but I'm guessing I could only get somewhat live TV if I record it on the main machine and then stream it right after...

Any tricks?
Live TV works on the extenders. It just uses one of the tuners. Anything that is in WMC will play on the xbox. Whether it's recordings, movies, or live TV. Only slight negative is channel changes are a bit slower. It's not horrible but definitely noticeable compared to the main system. If your a constant channel flipper on the TV with the xbox it could get a bit irritating. It's not enough to get me to pay for the set-top box and deal with the crappy and slow interface. Set-up is a breaze. Plug in your xbox to the network that the HTPC is on, hit the media center on the xbox. It will give you a code to type into the HTPC, enter it, and they are connected. Then everything shows up on the xbox with the exact same interface that is on the HTPC. It's a really slick set-up. MS doesn't get enough credit for it.

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That's awesome about the Xbox... didn't know it was that awesome!! Thanks for the info, man.

g0dM@n said:

That's awesome about the Xbox... didn't know it was that awesome!! Thanks for the info, man.

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No problem. If you have any other questions, fire away. I've been using the set-up full time for about three months now so I've pretty much gotten all the bugs worked out.

If I theorectically had 2 or more extenders, is the Celeron G530 not able to handle the extenders when they're in use simultaneously? Sorry for the dumb question, lol.

Also, I've been reading about the deinterlacing differences amongst integrated GPU's and discrete GPU's, and how they vastly differ with visible differences that even a lay person can pickup on. With the Ceton 4, is there a recommended GPU? Or can I get away with the HD2000 or Radeon 6410D?

Mind you, I'm a photographer, so I am more prone to noticing visual artifacts but am not a videophile. OTOH, my cable provider compresses images greatly so maybe this is all a moot point?

This deinterlacing/HQV stuff doesn't matter if you watch Blu-rays straight from the disc, right?

Comp625 said:

If I theorectically had 2 or more extenders, is the Celeron G530 not able to handle the extenders when they're in use simultaneously? Sorry for the dumb question, lol.

Also, I've been reading about the deinterlacing differences amongst integrated GPU's and discrete GPU's, and how they vastly differ with visible differences that even a lay person can pickup on. With the Ceton 4, is there a recommended GPU? Or can I get away with the HD2000 or Radeon 6410D?

Mind you, I'm a photographer, so I am more prone to noticing visual artifacts but am not a videophile. OTOH, my cable provider compresses images greatly so maybe this is all a moot point?

This deinterlacing/HQV stuff doesn't matter if you watch Blu-rays straight from the disc, right?

Click to expand...

You should be fine with a 530, it's just streaming so it doesn't take a lot of horsepower. Can't help with the GPU, I just use the integrated in the 530, good enough for me.

will it work just as easily on a ps3?

Constantinos said:

will it work just as easily on a ps3?

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No. Has to be an Xbox. It's s Microsoft deal. There are some products out there to get s lot of content on a ps3 but nothing thus integrated or easy to set up.

This looks just like the TiVo-replacement I've been looking for. Though, I might just have to wait for the 6-tuner Q.

Thanks for the review!

sHape oF gReY said:

This looks just like the TiVo-replacement I've been looking for. Though, I might just have to wait for the 6-tuner Q.

Thanks for the review!

Click to expand...

If I didn't already have my HTPC built I wouldnt do it. The Q/echo combo looks like its going to be a winner. Id wait until it comes out and see how it performs and pricing before building something.

Okay, so there is one feature the Ceton is missing that FIOS's box had... remote/mobile app to control the DVR. This is actually quite important to me... The Ceton card does rock, but I have no way of remotely recording... I tried RDP and logmein, and it won't let me launch windows media center...

Any tricks/ideas?

g0dM@n said:

Okay, so there is one feature the Ceton is missing that FIOS's box had... remote/mobile app to control the DVR. This is actually quite important to me... The Ceton card does rock, but I have no way of remotely recording... I tried RDP and logmein, and it won't let me launch windows media center...

Any tricks/ideas?

Click to expand...

It seems that it is in the works. Hopefully it isn't just for the q and echo.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/17/ceton-mobile-apps-android-iphone-echo-beta/

PanteraGSTK said:

It seems that it is in the works. Hopefully it isn't just for the q and echo.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/17/ceton-mobile-apps-android-iphone-echo-beta/

Click to expand...

I've VERY afraid it might be. I had googled and came across that... ahh!!