Ceton InfiniTV 4 PCIe for $169 AC + FS @newegg

Quote from rsriram22 : The idea is you get a "m-card" from you provider (not satellite dish providers, but the cable provider, say comcast) and do a self install (to avoid the truck roll 'fee'). during self install, call up comcast and get the card activated and check you get all your SD/HD channels and you should be good to go. the flip side to this is that you cannot get any PPV or On-Demand programming using these cablecard tuners.... oh and by the way, your DVR box fees should go away and you should be charged ~2-3 bucks per month as cablecard 'fee'. hope this helps..

i can get all ppv by calling in to order, then the channel is active...

it takes about 35 seconds

Can this card be used to receive those cable movie channels such as HBO and record the show without encryption?

Quote from trip1eX : Another note is I tried to have my cake and eat it to with this card and my gaming video card. I tried to make my dvr my gaming machine as well. Didn't work. I had it attached to a monitor and a tv. I could theoretically play a game on my monitor and watch a show on the tv, but it isn't really made for that. You get mouse issues where you can off screen and then have to hit CTRL-ESC or something and get it back to the monitor. The sound is an issue too. I needed 2 sound cards and I think I had them working at the same time. some games though didn't allow you to change your sound source so they didn't work. And then I think the whole thing slowed a bit when you were gaming and someone was watching a show on the tv. At the time I didn't want an extender as I thought my htpc was more responsive when directly connected to the tv than an extender. Plus I had a nice little setup with minimal cost with some SoundStick powered speakers plugged directly into my htpc for my tv sound and the Windows remote let me control the volume (important since the Soundsticks don't come with a remote.) Anyway I ended up buying a whole new 2nd pc rig for my dvr. Now I am thinking when I move I will turn that into a 2nd gaming pc and dvr and just get a 360 an extender. On a side tangent, today I was playing Battlefield 3 and I swear I was doing great when no one was home. It seemed very responsive. Then when my wife and kids came home I was started doing worse. And soon enough it dawned on me that maybe I wasn't just tired or a bunch of super players suddenly got on the server, but maybe just maybe it is was because of they were streaming Netflix to the 3ds/Ipad and watching Storage Wars in another room via the 360 connected to the WMC pc. And that all that network action was slowing me down just enough reaction-time wise.

Your experience does not accurately reflect a correct setup with this card, for multiple reasons.

While I appreciate the time it took you to write all of that out, discouraging other users based on things you can fix needs to be addressed.

First of all, you say that this card is not made for gaming and watching tv at the same time; not only do I watch tv/movies on my hdtv, I can play BF3 in Eyefinity across 3 other monitors at the same time.

In terms of your mouse issues, you need to understand better how windows functions, and what mode your applications are running in. If you set your WMC to run in windowed mode, but full screen, as with your games, you will get fairly predictable behavior. There is a great app for this called The Maxifier [com.au]. It is free, and is crucial to a multi-monitor TV tuner setup.

Sound is not an issue for me at all, I use onboard sound with my motherboard, an Asus P8Z68-V and my graphics card (Radeon 7970). If you take the time to configure windows sound, you can set most applications correctly to get the behavior you are expecting. Further, there are other 3rd party applications than can enhance this, without using another physical card. (you can even make virtual cards..)

Now, in terms of the cost of my graphics card..I wanted to be able to run 4 screens at the same time on one card. I did this successfully with just about every 6950 2gb card on the market, but they really couldn't handle Eyefinity + TV very well. (20+ fps doesn't cut it for me).

If you are looking for a simple multimonitor setup, I see no reason a single 6950, let alone 7950 couldn't do the trick. A 7950 which has dropped significantly in price can easily run 4 monitors (as I had one previously).

If anyone is interested, or doubts what I say, I can shoot some video later tonight.

Back to work for me

Edit: If any of you have the card or are getting one and want tips/advice, feel free to PM me, I've spent a LOT of time getting my setup as user friendly as possible, and I love it. The real shame is how little time I have for TV, and how much Cox charges.

Edit2: Forgot to add, I have a Xbox360 in my mother's room for her to stream Media Center. It boots straight into it, she doesn't play games, and it works perfectly.

Excuse the noob question but I don't have time to tea all pages. People say u can use an Xbox as an extender, will a PS3 do that too?

Quote from deuce300 : Can you watch premium channels (HBO, Starz, Cinemax, etc) on the Ceton? I am currently using a HDHomerun Prime on Comcast and come to find out the HDHomerun Prime does not allow viewing or recording of those premium channels. Other than that I am very happy with my purchase but if anyone can confirm the Ceton Infinitv works with premium channels on comcast or other providers I will be giving it a try.

Absolutely! I've had my Ceton for almost 2 years now. Can watch and record everything I subscribe to. I also keep a STB for ONDemand stuff, the kids tend to still use that alot. As far as I know, the HDHomerun Prime should do the same, assuming you subscribe.

Quote from Guyman : Excuse the noob question but I don't have time to tea all pages. People say u can use an Xbox as an extender, will a PS3 do that too?

No. Xbox or the older Linksys extenders are your only options right now....althoughg Cetons new hardware is due out by years end.

Quote from deuce300 : Can you watch premium channels (HBO, Starz, Cinemax, etc) on the Ceton? I am currently using a HDHomerun Prime on Comcast and come to find out the HDHomerun Prime does not allow viewing or recording of those premium channels. Other than that I am very happy with my purchase but if anyone can confirm the Ceton Infinitv works with premium channels on comcast or other providers I will be giving it a try.

I can watch and record premium channels on my HDHomerun Prime including HBO and Starz on Comcast.

Love my Ceton. Had it a year, 4 tuners I can record HD on all 4 while watching on 2 with my Q9400 and 2x1tb seagates and an ssd. So much better than paying Comcast 13/mo for 2 tuners, a terrible interface and 160gb of storage.

I'd be happy with getting one of these, but media extenders aren't cheap and the only xbox 360 I have has the RROD...lol

Quote from ShIzNiTs : Don't want to derail the thread but thought someone here might know: If I get the HD Home Run prime, but choose later to not have cable, can I still use it to take the antenna feed and watch that? In other words does it have a QAM tuner?

QAM is unencrypted cable, if you want to watch over the air TV, you need an ATSC tuner. You can get those (single tuner) from Meritline for under $20.

Quote from javamaan : Can you watch TV on a linux pc without an extender? for that matter can i can watch TV on a linux PC using HD Homerun prime?

These are designed for a CableLabs approved device, as far as I know there is no Linux distro that has been approved by CableLabs.

You should be able to write the drivers for these and use them with Linux, but you won't get encrypted and copyright protected content.

Quote from mash0101 : Do InfiniTV or Homerun have android apps for simple mobile (or shall I say remote) viewing? Answering my own question, I suppose Plex can do the job.

Remote potato, and Ceton has its own companion app, as well.

Quote from Guyman : Excuse the noob question but I don't have time to tea all pages. People say u can use an Xbox as an extender, will a PS3 do that too?

Nope. Microsoft only plays nice with Microsoft in this case.

You might want to ask your cable company if you can have a free digital tuner. I get 2 "free" with comcast.

Yup, building my own set-top-box with one of these cards was great. Like many people, I paid a full $399 and waited months for this card to come out, and it was totally worth it. Can't believe they're less than half the price now. I have a main HTPC running in the living room and XBox 360 extender in the bedroom. Some great things about it:

- Windows Media Center is a gorgeous, fully HD interface that makes Comcast STBs look like crap
- Everything is shared between the main HTPC and the extender, so unlike TiVo or a multi-DVR setup there is just one box (the HTPC) that records all of our shows, and they are streamed live to the extender that uses a shared guide, shared recordings, etc. with the main box
- Experimental commercial-skipping software (works about 75% of the time in my experience) lets you watch your recordings without ever having to skip ahead
- All the space you can afford to cram into the box (1TB in my case). Never again think about whether or not you want to record in HD or SD (it's just HD every time), or if you need to clear space to record your shows, etc.
- 4 tuners means we never run out of streams; I can be watching one thing in the living room, my fiancée in the bedroom, and we can still be recording two things
- Windows Media Center can be extended with things like PlayOn for watching Netflix, Hulu, etc. It's not 100% reliable, but it's pretty good
- No On-Demand, but also no annoying Comcast popups either or lame advertisements taking up space in my guide
- The satisfaction of knowing I'm not giving Comcast an extra XX dollars a month on equipment rental (one CableCARD is included in my Comcast service, so I don't pay for anything but the channels)

Note that you need a decent network to make this work. I have wired ethernet to all my rooms so it's no problem. People do wireless as well but you need a good signal. We're looking at buying a house, and when we do I may run two separate CAT-6 cables to every room so we can have two side-by-side networks: one for computer and Internet traffic and then another just for television.

I built my box for about $1K, but coulda done it cheaper (I wanted a Blu-Ray writer, separate SSD for the operating system, etc.). But when you think about it, if you already spend over $1K a year on cable service and however much you put into your fancy LCD/plasma TV(s), why wouldn't you invest in giving yourself the best user experience possible for when you're actually watching it?

Dan.

Quote from deuce300 : Can you watch premium channels (HBO, Starz, Cinemax, etc) on the Ceton? I am currently using a HDHomerun Prime on Comcast and come to find out the HDHomerun Prime does not allow viewing or recording of those premium channels. Other than that I am very happy with my purchase but if anyone can confirm the Ceton Infinitv works with premium channels on comcast or other providers I will be giving it a try.

Do you actually subscribe to those?

I have no problem watching and recording HBO and Cinemax with Ceton.