Tuner card died -- looking for recommendations

[johnsta]

I have a Windows 7 configuration with a 4-tuner Ceton card and a
comcast cablecard. When Windows Media Player stopped working last
year, I switched to NPVR, and it's been working OK, with little
effort.

Until now. It looks like the Ceton card has died.

I've been looking online for alternatives. There's a 6-tuner Ceton
card, but the reviews say it doesn't work. The most obvious is a
Comcast dvr, but that apparently won't let me record files in anything
like the *.TS file format, and apparently doesn't work with NPVR.

So I'm looking for recommendations. Are there any other choices that
work with NPVR and a Comcast cablecard? If not, then what's the next
best way to go?

I appreciate the help. Thanks.

[sub]

With cablecard pretty much your only option is the HDHR Prime. Ceton is pretty much out of business now, so I wouldn't buy any of their gear.

[johnsta]

Thanks. I'll research it.

[jcole998]

I'm having great success using a Hauppauge DCR-3250 Triple Tuner using a cable card.

[DVRMultiStreamer]

Did you end up picking a winner?

I agree with the OP. HD Home Run Prime is the best Comcast CableCard solution at the moment. I heard about the 6 tuner Ceton but many said it freezes up a lot so you'd miss a lot of potential recordings.

I have two HDHR Primes but I haven't tried hooking the 2nd one up yet to get 6 Cable Channels but I believe it should work. You would need an extra ethernet port and Cable Card if you want to try it out 6 Cable TV Tuners. I wish there was a 6 or 8 tuner model to simplify things.

There is one from Hauppauge but when I contacted them they said it was a rebranded HDHR Prime so it is basically the same thing.

[sub]

I heard about the 6 tuner Ceton but many said it freezes up a lot so you'd miss a lot of potential recordings.

Don't buy a ceton device. They're basically out of business and the devices are no longer supported.

[pcostanza]

Don't buy a ceton device. They're basically out of business and the devices are no longer supported.

Totally agree. While I had some success for awhile, they did not support it well. I'm doubtful they're still being sold as new anyway. Run away from it!

[jrockow]

I have two HDHR Primes but I haven't tried hooking the 2nd one up yet to get 6 Cable Channels but I believe it should work. You would need an extra ethernet port and Cable Card if you want to try it out 6 Cable TV Tuners. I wish there was a 6 or 8 tuner model to simplify things.

At one point I was using both of my Primes; recording 6 channels without any problem.
Little by little I've started using Netflix more, and found out there are some pretty good series there; not so much good movies.
Anyhow, since I was recording less and less network stuff, I dropped one of my cablecards; but it does work if that's what you want.

[BrettB]

I have two HDHR Primes but I haven't tried hooking the 2nd one up yet to get 6 Cable Channels but I believe it should work. You would need an extra ethernet port and Cable Card if you want to try it out 6 Cable TV Tuners. I wish there was a 6 or 8 tuner model to simplify things.

FYI I have 2 HDHR Primes with cable cards in use with NextPVR daily.

[johnsta]

Thanks for reviving this thread. I've been planning to document my
own experiences with moving from the Ceton card to the HD HomeRun, and
this has motivated me finally to do it.

When sub recommended the HDHomeRun Prime I went out that
very morning and got one, and spent the rest of the day setting
it up.

I found a page with detailed instructions on how to set it up with
NPVR:

https://my.hdhomerun.com/instructions/nextpvr/

But unfortunately the page is out of date, since the instructions
didn't match either the homerun software or the nextpvr software.

For example, it says, "Click on the QAM/ATSC/DVB-T/DVB-C Silicondust
HDHomeRun Tuner xxxxxxxx-0 entry appropriate for your signal source
and then click Device Setup. Do not use the HDHR entry."

Unfortunately, none of that matched the NPVR screen, so I used the
"HDHR entry" anyway, and that ended up working. I had to screw around
with both of them for a couple of hours, but it finally worked.

After that, the main problem is that all the recurring programs are
set up for the Ceton card, and they're wrong for the HD box, since
they used different tuners and sometimes different channel names.

I ended up writing a script that would generate and execute the
correct sql to make the changes automatically. So for example the
command "fixchannel WCVB5 WCVB" would find all recurring programs
using the old channel name (WCVB5) and change them to point to the new
channel name (WCVB). This worked pretty well, though it still took a
number of hours to get it right. I don't know if there's a way to do
it automatically within the UI, but this worked out ok. The only
other way of doing it, as far as I know, would be to manually cancel
all the old recurring shows and manually reschedule the same shows
again using the new channels. Since I have dozens of recurring shows
scheduled, this would have been extremely tedious, time-consuming and
error-prone. Anyway, all's well that ends well.

So it really sucks that the HD only records 3 shows at a time, while
the Ceton card recorded 4 shows at a time. That means that, like
other people here, I would have to get another HD box, and another
Comcast cablecard. The good news is that this would allow me to
record more shows, since I could now record six at a time. The bad
news is that this would allow me to record more shows, since I could
now record six at a time, and so this would feed into my compulsive
obsession to record shows and watch them later. I'm now over a year
behind in watching prime time shows, so getting a second HD box would
cause me to have to buy more disk space to save a lot more shows that,
with war over North Korea pending, I may never see anyway. So for the
time being I'm making do with one HD box, but I'm dreading February
sweeps that start next week, when there will be a lot more conflicts.

There's one major bug that didn't go away when the HD box as
I had hoped it would.

About 10% of the recorded TS files apparently have some header field
filled in wrong. In Windows explorer, these files with the Ceton card
showed a length of 0, or else a length of something like 22:00:00.
Windows explorer doesn't display the length of any of the TS files
recorded with the HD card, but the basic problem is the same.

These files can't be played in Windows Media Player at all.

They can be played in VLC, but VLC shows a zero file length, and the
hotkeys don't work. However, the progress bar amazingly does work,
and you can click on it to move around the file. So that's a
workaround, but it's difficult and inconvenient to use.

As I said, I had assumed that this was a bug in the Ceton card, but
since it's still happening, I assume it's a bug in the NPVR software,
or at least in some Windows 7 component that Windows Media Center and
NPVR both use.

So I have two questions. First, is there any way to keep this from
happening?

And second, is there some utility program that can repair these TS
files? Since they actually play correctly under VLC, it appears that
the files are OK except for some header field. Alternatively, can I
do a binary edit on the file and make a simple correction in some way?

Any help with this problem would be appreciated.