Review: Ceton InfiniTV 4 Quad CableCARD Tuner – Part I

[mikinho]

[url=http://www.missingremote.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5075&Itemid=236]Original Article Link[/url]

Please note, I will be uploading a photo gallery with MANY more screenshots and photos.  I apologize for the delay.

[Armyb77]

Great Review! Can’t wait for the other parts i’m hoping i’ll have my card by the time the last one posts…laughs
Thanks for the heat check on the 320!

;D

[Armyb77]

I miss the days on MissingRemote when there were contests and sweepstakes.  Maybe Ceton would be willing to give one of these up for one of those??? 
Of course you could always just sell me yours…lol  Then I would know when i’m getting mine…laughs 😀

[mikinho]

[quote=”Armyb77″]
Great Review! Can’t wait for the other parts i’m hoping i’ll have my card by the time the last one posts…laughs
Thanks for the heat check on the 320!

;D
[/quote]

I’ll have pictures of the 320 soon.  It fits the case perfectly.  I have 3 hard drives in there and was concerned that the InfiniTV4 would be too long to fit, but nope.

[Armyb77]

I’ll be running a OCZ Agility 2 60GB SSD and a Western Digital AV-GP 1TB i’m thinking of putting one on each side, but it will all be about airflow.  The SSD shouldn’t produce to much heat but I don’t want the heat off the 1TB frying the SSD either…lol

[Anonymous]

Thank your wife for me and everyone else who needs to get their SAF up. They can just point to your wife’s writeup!

Great job Mikinho, you’re very thorough. Can’t wait to see the other parts! Now go get some sleep 🙂

Thanks,
-Jeremy

[alton987]

Nice review but noobs need to know that they lose all access to VOD and Pay-per-View. 

[Armyb77]

[quote=”alton987″]
Nice review but noobs need to know that they lose all access to VOD and Pay-per-View. 
[/quote]

Also depending on your cable service provider and area you may require a Tuning Adapter (1 for Motorola version, and 2 if Cisco) to play SDV channels.  I know in my area without the Tuning Adapter we lose about 40 channels.

[mikinho]

Good point, I should have added more basic information for those new to CableCARD tuners.

I was a little rushed.  Part 2 and Part 3 definitely isn’t geared to “noobs” either. 

[mikinho]

I’m very happy Houston decided not to go down the TA route, apparently they were close to adopting it.

For now, I’m happy to uninstall the Ceton Tuning Adapter service.

[Andrew Van Til]

[quote=”alton987″]
Nice review but noobs need to know that they lose all access to VOD and Pay-per-View. 
[/quote]

You don’t lose On-Demand by getting a DCT, only if you give up the STB (the two aren’t dependent conditions).  I’m planning to keep a STB for On-Demand.

[Mike Garcen]

Great points about beginner info, sometimes we take the most obvious for granted. We’ve added some bits about it to the article, thanks everyone! Keep the feedback coming if we omitted other info.

[Mike Garcen]

[quote=”babgvant”]
[quote=”alton987″]
Nice review but noobs need to know that they lose all access to VOD and Pay-per-View. 
[/quote]

You don’t lose On-Demand by getting a DCT, only if you give up the STB (the two aren’t dependent conditions).  I’m planning to keep a STB for On-Demand.
[/quote]

euuuuw!! i can’t ever go back to Comcast’s guide and even their on-demand interface is awful. The whole point of having an MCE is that you are your own on-demand!! Get a big enough hard drive and just record EEEEVVVERYTHING! 🙂

[mikinho]

Who said anything about their guide, that is where HD PVR comes in =)

[mikinho]

I also wanted to address some questions on the lack of ClearQAM support without a CableCARD.

The issue is that the OCUR channel scanning was based largely on ATI DCT OCUR implementation.  Whether intentional or not, it looks like Media Center expects a NTSC tuner and stream available.  I’m just waiting on some perfmons to finish to test a work-around.  I don’t believe it will work to be honest but who knows what the source code is really doing.  Hopefully it is something unintentionally left over that can be patched or worked around.  One thing I can say for certain is that Ceton is working hard to deliver what us end-users want.  Their hands are tied in many cases but we’ve already seen them lobby CableLabs for changes, I can’t imagine they won’t do the same with Microsoft or at the very least a work-around.

[Author]

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