Ceton InfinTV 4 cable card TV tuner $264

xcetera

Weaksauce
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More interesting to me is the HDHomeRun Prime which is shipping soon. This is probably the reason for the price drops.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815345006

Standalone and networked so not tied to any one computer, its basically a pool of tuners that any computer on the network with Windows Media Center can use. I think they said it uses something like 5W so much more economical than a dedicated HTPC.

It's also cheaper, although you get one less tuner (3 instead of 4).

There's also a 6-tuner version here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815345009

I'll be replacing my aging and flaky as hell ATI CC tuners (2) with the HDHR3-CC.

Been using the original HDHomeRun for years for my QAM tuners. No problems whatsoever.
 
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nice find ive been waiting for this to go down in price then i did see the silicon dust one and im thinking that would be better for my setup if it does everything it says it can do.
 
This is the 1st real change that card has made in price since release. Its a good sign. That being said I would perfer the silicon dust model just to it being more flexable. Especially since to use either you need to use media center so if you want a HTPC at more then 1 TV (rather then a xbox 360 as a front end) then the prime gives you that flexability where as the ceton does not.
 
That's a hefty price drop, definitely has to do with the hdhomerun prime. I wish there was a 2 tuner version for less than $200 of either brand. I really would like an extra tuner but don't need it and I definitely don't need 3 tuners so I'm not willing to shell out the cash.

Great deal though!
 
I'll wait for the HDhomerun prime to come out. I personally trust SiliconDust more since they have been doing the whole network tuner thing for a very long time. The ceton is finally priced reasonably IMO.
 
Is it true that it can't record to a WHS share or any kind of networked device? If so, what a waste of a product. Nobody who has a serious home theater is going to store their content locally. Too much noise and heat.
 
Is it true that it can't record to a WHS share or any kind of networked device? If so, what a waste of a product. Nobody who has a serious home theater is going to store their content locally. Too much noise and heat.

That is a 7MC issue, not the Ceton. You cant store any other TV recorded using any tuner to a network storage either. There are some workarounds, but I understand they are clunky. There are also solutions that move the recorded content to the shared drive after recording has finished. AVS has some threads on this.
You can, however view the recorded programs on other computers now. One solution would be to have the Ceton in your server. Of course you would then have to manage the recordings on your server, instead of on your HTPC.
 
Interested in this- have anyone tried streaming to a first gen single core revo?

I'm currently using a revo for my htpc needs to stream from a central server, but if I can get rid of my cable boxes and use this to stream to multiple revos, I'll be happy.

Just not sure how much horsepower the client pc will need to take the stream and decode it.
 
Is it true that it can't record to a WHS share or any kind of networked device? If so, what a waste of a product. Nobody who has a serious home theater is going to store their content locally. Too much noise and heat.

That is a 7MC issue, not the Ceton. You cant store any other TV recorded using any tuner to a network storage either. There are some workarounds, but I understand they are clunky. There are also solutions that move the recorded content to the shared drive after recording has finished. AVS has some threads on this.
You can, however view the recorded programs on other computers now. One solution would be to have the Ceton in your server. Of course you would then have to manage the recordings on your server, instead of on your HTPC.

Don't forget about the WHS plugin for 7MC, I have all my recordings stored on my WHS, something like 1000+ HD recordings taking up good chunk of my WHS. The WHS plugin was easy to install and use.
 
this is a very good deal considering what these were just going for ($400). Although I have to concur with what some have already said. The HD Homerun Prime eats it's lunch. It's going to be cheaper, networkable out of the box, and the biggest difference for me, it will be external. If you can wait about another month, they'll be here...

If you need it now this is simply the best digital cable tuner available on the market.
 
Don't forget about the WHS plugin for 7MC, I have all my recordings stored on my WHS, something like 1000+ HD recordings taking up good chunk of my WHS. The WHS plugin was easy to install and use.

So you have the tuner installed on your HTPC, and using the plug-in on your server you can store the recordings on the server? My server is a WHS box.
 
One of the biggest problems with CableCARD recording is that most non-local channels are marked Copy Once which means you can only play it back on the computer that it was recorded on (not necessarily the one where it was stored). And if you change a major component like the motherboard or CPU you will not be able to play any previous Copy Once recordings. It sucks hard, but that's CableLabs for you.
 
One of the biggest problems with CableCARD recording is that most non-local channels are marked Copy Once which means you can only play it back on the computer that it was recorded on (not necessarily the one where it was stored). And if you change a major component like the motherboard or CPU you will not be able to play any previous Copy Once recordings. It sucks hard, but that's CableLabs for you.

This depends on your cableco. For example, for mine most things aren't copy once. Weird random shows here and there will be and all of the premium channels i.e. HBO are, however. I believe most FIOS areas are completely copy freely even the premiums.
 
this is a very good deal considering what these were just going for ($400). Although I have to concur with what some have already said. The HD Homerun Prime eats it's lunch. It's going to be cheaper, networkable out of the box, and the biggest difference for me, it will be external. If you can wait about another month, they'll be here...

If you need it now this is simply the best digital cable tuner available on the market.

It is not really cheaper, the Ceton is available for $299 from Ceton via Amazon, and has 4 tuners. The HD Homerun is $249, and only has 3 tuners. And they say available 7/25, I bet it is September before we see one.
 
It is not really cheaper, the Ceton is available for $299 from Ceton via Amazon, and has 4 tuners. The HD Homerun is $249, and only has 3 tuners. And they say available 7/25, I bet it is September before we see one.

I think it will be available at the stated date since newegg has it for preorder, they usually don't preorder stuff that isn't pretty much ready.
 
It is not really cheaper, the Ceton is available for $299 from Ceton via Amazon, and has 4 tuners. The HD Homerun is $249, and only has 3 tuners. And they say available 7/25, I bet it is September before we see one.

So try explaining how $249 is not less than $300? Only in the uberlord universe?
 
So try explaining how $249 is not less than $300? Only in the uberlord universe?

If you read the post, I stated that the HD Homerun has one less tuner. So yes, that is the uberlord universe. :rolleyes:
 
So you have the tuner installed on your HTPC, and using the plug-in on your server you can store the recordings on the server? My server is a WHS box.

Yep, thats it! 7MC asked me as soon as I installed the WHS connector if I wanted to add the plug-in. The plug-in basically archives all the recordings and the recording when it is done. I haven't had to manage any recordings in over a year.
 
Thanks for clarifying. Welcome back to planet Earth where 250 < 300.

Less of a product, price per tuner is $75 for the Ceton, vs $83 per tuner for the HD Homerun. So the Ceton is cheaper. ;)
 
Less of a product, price per tuner is $75 for the Ceton, vs $83 per tuner for the HD Homerun. So the Ceton is cheaper. ;)

True, but that's really only useful if you could actually choose how many tuners you want. Since you can't, you can only go by total cost. Which means the Homerun is still cheaper.
 
So do these things compress the video heavily or how are they able to stream things over ethernet? It still seems crazy expensive and on top of that you need an M-Card? Doubt my cable company will give that away.
 
So do these things compress the video heavily or how are they able to stream things over ethernet? It still seems crazy expensive and on top of that you need an M-Card? Doubt my cable company will give that away.

I think by law they have to give you a card if you request one. Though they may have a technician put it in for you rather then let you do it yourself.
 
From all the reviews I've read (I ordered this card 2 days ago) the M-card comes from your cable company. I don't know if it's "free" or if they charge you a monthly fee, but it's probably less then what you get charged for the set top box anyway.
 
So do these things compress the video heavily or how are they able to stream things over ethernet? It still seems crazy expensive and on top of that you need an M-Card? Doubt my cable company will give that away.

The video is already compressed from the cable co, this basically just decrypts it and allows WMC to repackage it in .wtv, HD streams are relatively low mbps so even 100mbit lan can support multiple streams. The m-card is provided by the cable co, i've seen anywhere from free to $10 a month for pricing, though they are typically cheaper than a cable box, i believe my cable co charges $2.50 a month for one.

After having WMC7 and a ceton i can't stand cable co. boxes they are just steaming piles of shit.
 
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