Ceton - No Signal on Channel....

[choliscott]

Hi Everyone,

About once or twice a day, I get the message saying that it couldn't detect a signal on a channel that I am attempting to record. However it appears the show did record.

To my understanding, if WMC cannot detect a signal, it tries using another tuner (if available).

My question, is there a way of changing the delay so that it waits a little longer before trying the next tuner?

Thanks

 

[Shark007]

All I can say is,
after the stories I've read in forums recently about ceton failures,
I wouldn't be touching that hardware with a 10 foot pole.

 

[choliscott]

Besides getting the no signal message, I haven't had any other problems with them. It would be nice if the message came up only if it couldn't actually record the show.

All I can say is,
after the stories I've read in forums recently about ceton failures,
I wouldn't be touching that hardware with a 10 foot pole.

 

[dsperber]

Hi Everyone,

About once or twice a day, I get the message saying that it couldn't detect a signal on a channel that I am attempting to record. However it appears the show did record.

To my understanding, if WMC cannot detect a signal, it tries using another tuner (if available).

This happens automatically, as a function of the interaction between the Ceton drivers and WMC. You don't need to worry about which of the four tuners actually got used as the "fail-over" tuner in case for some reason the hardware situation produces an unexpected "tuner not available".

You can see this in the History from WMC (go into the Recorded TV item, and then navigate up to "scheduled recordings" and then down to History). There's no real explanation for the inexplicable "tuner not available", but it does happen occasionally (even to me). WMC automatically tries to find another tuner and unless there is a true cable system outage where there's just no signal coming in on the coax inevitably the next tuner WILL find signal and be used for the recording.

I understand you sometimes get that message box in the lower right-corner of the screen if you're watching something (live or recorded), advising of this problem. But if you look at your Recorded TV list you'll see the WMC didn't depend on your responding in any way to this message box, in order to instantly "fail-over" to try and find an acceptable alternative tuner... which it virtually always does.

So by the time you look in Recorded TV, you'll see that this very program which failed on one tuner is actually already being recorded on some other tuner.

Not to worry.

My question, is there a way of changing the delay so that it waits a little longer before trying the next tuner?

No. And there's no reason for you to be concerned about whether tuner #1, #2, #3 or #4 are used for the recording. This is all automatic, and how it is designed to work.

Assuming your signal strength an SNR values are acceptable, any of the four tuners will produce a proper recording of any program from any tunable channel.

 

[dsperber]

All I can say is,
after the stories I've read in forums recently about ceton failures,
I wouldn't be touching that hardware with a 10 foot pole.

I honestly don't know what stories you've heard, or why you have what I'd have to call a "hostility" to the Ceton product. This is not the first time you've tried to cast a negative impression of a product you apparently have not even tried yourself. "From what I've read" doesn't really qualify as firsthand experience, to throw stones.

There are many many thousands (or maybe even a much larger number) of us totally satisfied Ceton users who will never regret giving up the nonsense of dealing with cost and limitations of cable-provided DVR boxes and the iGuide software. Count me as one of them.

In contrast, the Ceton-provided solution (which, by the way, allows up to three 4-tuner cards, for a total of 12 cable-QAM tuners in your HTPC) based on WMC, along with essentially unlimited "Recorded TV" folder capacity on your hard drives... well these features sell themselves, if you ask me.


And besides... the technical support (for true submitted tickets) provided by Ceton is almost unsurpassed, in my experience.

Between their participation in forums (e.g. The Green Button) answering questions, providing advice, and their actual near-instant response to submitted trouble tickets, it's like having their technical staff available all the time to help you solve your problems.

This is a VERY FINE COMPANY, and a VERY FINE PRODUCT. And Windows Media Center is a VERY FINE PIECE OF DVR SOFTWARE.

All in all, I would recommend it to anyone interested in throwing out their cable company hardware and going WMC/HTPC/Ceton for their own whole-home "record once, watch anywhere" solution.

 

[choliscott]

Thanks for the response. Like you mentioned, I don't care which tuner did the actual recording of the show. While I know the show probably ended up recording, I'm sure there are people that see the message & flip out, thinking their show didn't record.

It would be nice if they added the following options.

1) Supress no tuner message - If there was a problem with the first tuner, but the show still ended up recording, you wouldn't see the message. The message would only come up if the show didn't record whatsoever (sort of like when you get the message saying a show is scheduled & all avail tuners are being used)

2) Addition to #1, another option that if the show didn't record, you could tell it to automatically try to reschedule (if the show was going to be rebroadcast in the next X days, you had channel guide data for)

3) Log no signal issues (This may already be in there) - This would show which particular tuner #, on which TV card (if multiple are used). This would help to determine if in fact there was a signal issue with that channel (at the time) or if the issue was with a particular tuner itself

Hi Everyone,

About once or twice a day, I get the message saying that it couldn't detect a signal on a channel that I am attempting to record. However it appears the show did record.

To my understanding, if WMC cannot detect a signal, it tries using another tuner (if available).

This happens automatically, as a function of the interaction between the Ceton drivers and WMC. You don't need to worry about which of the four tuners actually got used as the "fail-over" tuner in case for some reason the hardware situation produces an unexpected "tuner not available".

You can see this in the History from WMC (go into the Recorded TV item, and then navigate up to "scheduled recordings" and then down to History). There's no real explanation for the inexplicable "tuner not available", but it does happen occasionally (even to me). WMC automatically tries to find another tuner and unless there is a true cable system outage where there's just no signal coming in on the coax inevitably the next tuner WILL find signal and be used for the recording.

I understand you sometimes get that message box in the lower right-corner of the screen if you're watching something (live or recorded), advising of this problem. But if you look at your Recorded TV list you'll see the WMC didn't depend on your responding in any way to this message box, in order to instantly "fail-over" to try and find an acceptable alternative tuner... which it virtually always does.

So by the time you look in Recorded TV, you'll see that this very program which failed on one tuner is actually already being recorded on some other tuner.

Not to worry.

My question, is there a way of changing the delay so that it waits a little longer before trying the next tuner?

No. And there's no reason for you to be concerned about whether tuner #1, #2, #3 or #4 are used for the recording. This is all automatic, and how it is designed to work.

Assuming your signal strength an SNR values are acceptable, any of the four tuners will produce a proper recording of any program from any tunable channel.

 

[dsperber]

1) Supress no tuner message - If there was a problem with the first tuner, but the show still ended up recording, you wouldn't see the message. The message would only come up if the show didn't record whatsoever (sort of like when you get the message saying a show is scheduled & all avail tuners are being used)

I agree. The message is a bit frightening and it's not clear what, if anything, you need to do since the two buttons on the dialog appear to be requiring your action... although it's not really the case. Certainly a bit ambiguous to the user.

But that message appears instantly, as soon as the hardware issue is detected. It's not know yet whether or not another acceptable tuner is available. So the handling of the whole issue is kind of complicated.

2) Addition to #1, another option that if the show didn't record, you could tell it to automatically try to reschedule (if the show was going to be rebroadcast in the next X days, you had channel guide data for)

Well I believe this DOES already happen, as a function of how WMC handles no more available tuners for a scheduled recording.

I don't know if this requires that you specify "Anytime" for your series recording setup (which would clearly allow WMC to search for subsequent airings of the same program so that you don't lose your desired series episode) or whether it will still do this even if you have "around 7PM" or something specified. I've taken to just leaving "anytime" along with "new" in my series recordings setup, since WMC also does NOT duplicate recordings just because there might be multiple airings. The "New" causes it to look at "History" for original air date and description, so as to not produce duplicates. But I believe the "anytime" gives it the freedom to try and pick a later airing in the event of one of these hardware situations where no tuner is available at the original scheduled time.

3) Log no signal issues (This may already be in there) - This would show which particular tuner #, on which TV card (if multiple are used). This would help to determine if in fact there was a signal issue with that channel (at the time) or if the issue was with a particular tuner itself

This already happens... in History (buried in Recorded TV -> Scheduled Recordings -> History).

 

[choliscott]

I will have to look at my history, as I didn't know this.

This already happens... in History (buried in Recorded TV -> Scheduled Recordings -> History).