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| 272 of 276 people found the following review helpful  DVR v2.0: Best DVR Option Available Today, By WaveRunnr (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Ceton InfiniTV 4 PCIe - 4-channel Internal Cable TV Tuner Card for CableCARD (Personal Computers) I was an early adopter of HTPC technology. Windows Media Center and I go all the way back to the original version in Windows XP. Since then, Windows Media Center has matured nicely in Windows 7 and is finally ready for Prime Time. Even if you're not a techy, I strongly suggest looking at this technology, especially if you're fed up with the substandard DVRs the CableCo's charge too much buck for too little bang.DVR v1.0 used an ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner. Since there are multiple people in my house, and the ATI tuner can handle only one channel at a time, the Ceton card was a welcome upgrade for DVR v2.0. The installation and configuration is straightforward and will take about 1 hour depending on your level of expertise. Here's a rough outline of the steps you'll need to follow. 1. Pickup a CableCard from your CableCo. (They may tell you a home visit is mandatory, violating an FCC directive. Read on below.) 2. Open up the PC and inse rt the Ceton InfiniTV card in an empty PCIx slot. 3. Insert the CableCard into the Ceton InfiniTV slot. 4. Visit the Ceton website to install the latest drivers and firmware. 5. Connect your coax cable and reboot. 6. Start Windows Media Center and follow the setup wizards. The first wizard certifies your PC as Cable Ready. The second establishes your channel lineup. Typical configuration time is about 30 minutes. During your journey to build the perfect HTPC, there are three possible hurdles you may encounter, which are surmountable given some time, patience, and tenacity. 1. Faulty card 2. Poor signal strength 3. Reluctance from CableCo to support CableCard technology I experienced two of these hurdles, which I'll share with you in the hopes it will bring you to a speedier resolution. The first card I received from Ceton had a faulty OOB (Out of Band) tuner, which has been documented on several web sites devoted to Windows HTPC enthusiasts. To make matters worse, when I initially explained the issue to their tech support department, they ignored my detailed analysis of the issue and sent a canned reply requesting that I jump though a bunch of time-consuming hoops that they would have realized were unnecessary had they actually read my email. After I became more assertive regarding the situation, they apologized, and overnighted a replacement card, which has been running without issue for a month. Since Ceton is a new company, I expect missteps such as these. In the end, they did the right thing and made me a happy customer. I can now record up to 4 programs simultaneously and stream those programs to any XBOX 360 in the house or any Windows 7 PC in the world. (Try doing that with the CableCo DVR!) The recorded programs look and sound great and so does live TV. The diagnostic software is useful and well organized. As people here and elsewhere have pointe d out, the CableCo's are very reluctant to support this technology, even though the FCC has directed them to. Since they will lose substantial income from your DVR rental cancellation, the sales staff will do everything in their power to talk you out of using a CableCard. Then the technician who visits your home will most likely not understand CableCard technology and know even less about Windows Media Center. In other words... they are going to make the whole process as frustrating as humanly possible and you're pretty much on your own. For example, Comcast/xFinity insisted that they had to send out a technician (even though the FCC rules say that they must allow customer self-installs). Once the technician arrived, he had no idea how to set anything up. And to add insult to injury, they wanted to charge me for the visit! Bottom line is: Why am I paying for an untrained technician to make a home visit that according to the FCC shouldn't be necessary in the first place? So if your CableCo tries to bully you into submission, ask to speak with a supervisor and refer the supervisor to the rules listed below: * CableCARD fees have to be the same for everyone, no matter which package you have. * If your cable company allows any self installs, they must allow CableCARD self-installs. * Cable companies must support SDV for CableCARD users -- this was implied before, now it is black and white. * By default, all new deployments must be M-Cards (unless you actually request a S-Card). * Cable companies can include an IP interface in set-top-boxes lieu of a 1394 port. * One way HD boxes without CableCARDs are no longer forbidden and they don't require IP interfaces. The irony of course is that DVRs will be obsolete in 5-10 years thanks to advances in on-demand services (Internet TV in Windows Media Center, Hulu, iTunes, Netflix, etc) combined with faster broadband and cellular data speeds. But for now, despite the hurdles I... Read more 30 of 30 people found the following review helpful  This is the dawn of a new era if you have the infrastructure., Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Ceton InfiniTV 4 PCIe - 4-channel Internal Cable TV Tuner Card for CableCARD (Personal Computers) The Ceton 4 tuner cablecard tuner is a marvelous piece of hardware that can solve a long standing problem of how to have High Defintion Cable TV throughout your home without paying a month for each cable box for each screen in each room.First a warning, your cable provider can really turn an install into a pain if they are imcompetent, not an unusual occurence. I had no problem installing and getting my Ceton up and running within an hour of it being delivered. I had gone to my local Comcast store earlier in the day and picked up a cablecard. My Ceton was delivered around 2 PM. I had the tuner and cablecard paired up and activated by 3 PM, the big 82" in the living room was looking good.. Wasn't long before it was working in the bedroom on the plasma, then in my den on my work PC and finally the Notebook as well. Comcast ufortunately managed to completely farkle my account setup details when I returned the original cablecard I had been using in my Tivo a few days later... The Tivo HD is a great device which the Ceton has sent to the showers by the way. After returning my old cablecard to the Comcast store, the rep there had through total incompetence ended up disabling my cablecard in the Ceton at the house. Drove all the way home only to find that cable TV had stopped working properly. I had to to make another tirp back to the Comcast office again to straighten out the serial number issue. I had no idea what was going on but the phone techs at Comcast support were able to see her mistake but were not allowed/empowered to fix. So back I go to the Comcast store to argue with them for awhile before they would even consider they screwed up. Even after the billing mistake was correctd (wrong cablecard serial number, a typo by the rep supposedly, makes you wonder what is the point of using the bar code scanner to check them in and out). I drove back home thinking she had corrected the information but whe n I got home and reinstalled the cablecard it still would not work correctly. This whole sequence of events was so suprising as everything had been fine just 30 mintues before I left the house yesterday to return the Tivo's old cablecard. Heck the Ceton had been running several days already. The tech I now spoke to assured me getting the serial numbers fixed on the account was all I needed to get my Ceton up and running again. I hate to beat a dead horse but the customer service rep that scanned the cards with a bar code scanner so it still eludes me how she could make a mistake on the serial numbers. The only thing I can figure is that it is Comcast I was dealing with after all. Back home again and back on the phone again, the local Comcast tech support group could not fix the next issue, a duplicate Host ID problem, one that resulted from the mistake made on cablecard serial numbers in the Comcast store, a mistake supposedly fixed. I was about to lose it. My issue had to be escalated, the local office tried but they either did not know what they were doing or lacked the empowerment to make the necessary changes, they tried by gosh, they tried. Thank goodness I have a speakerphone. Another team took over my case and resolved the problem the next day. Pure imcompetence on the part of the employee at the Comcast store led to all that touble, arghh! Anyway, after many phone calls, a lot of driving back and forth and a lot of standing in line at the Comcast Store I was nearly at my wits end. It is probably a good thing I am not writing a review of Comcast Customer Service as it would be scathing. There are two points I am making here, cable companies just don't seem to be able to do things right and when it comes to cablecards they are sort of deer in headlights and what is so simple in theory, can be a nighmare in practice. The Ceton is great! Good luck with that cable company of yours! Anyway, assuming your cable company doesn't make your life completely miserable, the Ceton is a great solution, especially if you have the infrastructure to fully support it. It takes a good bit of equipment besides the PC it will reside in before the Ceton's 4 tuners are going to be taken full advantage of. Whole house video is what the Ceton really offers that is new. First you need a very good cable signal going to the Ceton otherwise the picture is going to pixelate and it will ramdomaly drop channels. Ceton provides tools for you to view your signal strenght and quality. I bought one of the Motorola Broadband Distribution Amps offered here on Amazon to bring my cable signal up to snuff. You can't run splitters willy nilly, and if you are doing it right the Ceton does the job of several boxes and you shouldn't need all those splitters reducing the signal to zero. For reference, the same signal that made my Tivo happy was not sufficient for the Ceton with the latest firmware. Give the Ceton a top flight signal and it will... Read more 40 of 44 people found the following review helpful It just works!! - Finally, This review is from: Ceton InfiniTV 4 PCIe - 4-channel Internal Cable TV Tuner Card for CableCARD (Personal Computers) I've had this tuner about 3 months now (wasn't on Amazon at that time), and I can say, it just works - and it works well - It's really what Cablecards should have done 7 years ago. Had some minor concerns about the Comcast cablecard installer, but the Ceton Diag tools even made the installation fairly painless. Running Win7 on an i3, homebuilt HTPC, and things are FINALLY the way MCE should have been years ago - the card doesn't seem particularly problematic with incoming signals (I have mine sitting on a 7 way splitter but that includes an internal AMP) and my signal and SNR both look good - Card is quick to tuner to other stations, and it even goes to sleep and resumes correctly (YEA!) - There is a slight 30 sec pause on system resume while it seems to "sort of CC encryption stuff", but MCE displays the "spinning wheel" for a few seconds, and then your getting all the HD you want. I have this internal turner next to an analog PCI turner (Hauppage) as well as an HDHomeRun on the network - Everything seems to co-exist nicely (although setting the guide up the 1st time took some effort). Finally, I was also waiting for the SD HDPrime, as I thought 4 tuners was overkill and pricy - but in the end, I'm glad I have the 4th tuner and the extra 0 was worth it - We now watch basically all the TV in the house on extenders, and between recording shows, we've had all 4 tuners busy several times - Support has been good from Ceton (read the GB forums), and all it all, while pricey, this card is WELL WORTH IT, if you want HD in your W7MC box - It's almost enough to make one forget about the pain of the OEM boxes with ATI tuners... Long awaited, and an excellent product!! |
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