Ceton InfiniTV 4 for $263.99 at Buy.com

[sunray]

Taken from another site: Buy.com is selling the 4 tuner version of the InifiniTV 4 cable card tuner for $263.99. It usually sells for over $300.

http://www.buy.com/pr/product.aspx?sku=221525094

[EnterNoEscape]

Interesting. If you do a Google Shopping search for that product name you find a bunch of retailers selling it around that price (some even lower). Maybe Ceton is trying to be competitive with the HDHomerun Prime?

[mayamaniac]

Awesome, I think I'm gonna order it.

Definitely competition helps to bring prices down, hopefully this will get Hauppauge to do the same with the HD-PVR and Colossus.

[jptheripper]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Awesome, I think I'm gonna order it.

Definitely competition helps to bring prices down, hopefully this will get Hauppauge to do the same with the HD-PVR and Colossus.

Um, no offense, but who is hauppauge competition with the hd pvr and colossus? is there a single other manufacture that has analog HD capture and DD optical sound?

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

Um, no offense, but who is hauppauge competition with the hd pvr and colossus? is there a single other manufacture that has analog HD capture and DD optical sound?

If you wanna get technical about it, yeah, they are not exactly the same products. But it depends on who is the customer and how he/she uses it. Since I will replace my HD-PVR/STB combo with the Ceton, I would consider them as competing products even if one is analog and the other is digital, or whatever audio options each supports. So an HD-PVR/STB combo will cost roughly $200 to record one show at a time versus a Ceton tuner that cost under $300 to record 4 shows, I say It doesn't make sense to buy the HD-PVR or the Colossus.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Awesome, I think I'm gonna order it.

Definitely competition helps to bring prices down, hopefully this will get Hauppauge to do the same with the HD-PVR and Colossus.

Forget about the pricing, I'd be happy if the competition helped motivate Hauppauge to get the HD-PVR and Colossus working reliably without blue screens, cooling modifications, and nightly restarts.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

Forget about the pricing, I'd be happy if the competition helped motivate Hauppauge to get the HD-PVR and Colossus working reliably without blue screens, cooling modifications, and nightly restarts.

As well known on this forum, your mileage will vary with the HD-PVR. I use analog audio and have almost no issues with it since I bought it years ago, no modifications and I think I power cycled it maybe 5 times.

[KeithAbbott]

I'm glad that the HD-PVR is working out for you, albeit with only analog audio.

That being said, I'm not sure how I should interpret your reply back. Should I not wish that competition will motivate Hauppauge to get their equipment working properly? I would think that would benefit us all. Or maybe I should just settle for inferior quality/reliability, and assume that the way that it currently works is the best it can ever get?

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

That being said, I'm not sure how I should interpret your reply back. Should I not wish that competition will motivate Hauppauge to get their equipment working properly? I would think that would benefit us all. Or maybe I should just settle for inferior quality/reliability, and assume that the way that it currently works is the best it can ever get?

My own personal opinion, but I find on this forum that CableCard people have a different mindset than hd-capture-through-analog people. It's not a knock per se, but it does cause some issues when people are looking for help/advice pertinent to their setup.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

I'm glad that the HD-PVR is working out for you, albeit with only analog audio.

That being said, I'm not sure how I should interpret your reply back. Should I not wish that competition will motivate Hauppauge to get their equipment working properly? I would think that would benefit us all. Or maybe I should just settle for inferior quality/reliability, and assume that the way that it currently works is the best it can ever get?

I'm guessing that they sell enough units to keep on selling without improving the quality or lowering the price over the years. My point was that if they ain't lowering their price to reflect the quality/reliability issues, then I'm hoping competition will force them too. So if you happened to be the unit that isn't functioning reliably, then maybe you feel less gypped if it didn't cost as much.

But anyway, my original comment wasn't to turn this into a HD-PVR bash thread, so lets keep it that way.

[DaiTengu]

It's $265.15 at amazon now too. http://www.amazon.com/Ceton-Infinitv...7338001&sr=8-1

I'm guessing ceton will announce a $300 or $250 price point soon.

Personally, I've been waiting for this for a long time, and am going to snatch it up this week.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

Um, no offense, but who is hauppauge competition with the hd pvr and colossus? is there a single other manufacture that has analog HD capture and DD optical sound?

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

If you wanna get technical about it, yeah, they are not exactly the same products. But it depends on who is the customer and how he/she uses it. Since I will replace my HD-PVR/STB combo with the Ceton, I would consider them as competing products even if one is analog and the other is digital, or whatever audio options each supports. So an HD-PVR/STB combo will cost roughly $200 to record one show at a time versus a Ceton tuner that cost under $300 to record 4 shows, I say It doesn't make sense to buy the HD-PVR or the Colossus.

There's one fundemental difference everyone keeps forgetting about. The Ceton is actually a tuner that uses cablecard to tune the channel. The HD-PVR and the Colussus is NOT a tuner card. Both of them are capture cards. They have no way of tuning to a channel. They have to use a cable or satellite set top box and control that for obtaining any channels and use either the IR that comes with it or a nother device to tune the set top box. This could also be a fundemental flaw as to why the HD-PVR and Colussus is so sensitive to audio or video changes from the source as compared to an actual tuner card. And why it varies so much among people. My HD-PVR performs excellent with barely any issues. Haven't had a real issue in years.

Gerry

[Mitch G]

Does anyone have first-hand knowledge as to if the Ceton card can be used without a cablecard to tune clear-QAM?
In other words, has anyone tried tuning clear-QAM with the card without a cablecard installed?

Thanks,


Mitch

[thomaszoo]

I ordered the Ceton card this yesterday from buy.com. I had preordered the Prime from Newegg, but with the price drop it just didn't make sense to wait another 2 months (at least) and then not even know if or when it would work with Sage. The Ceton is a known device that works with SageDCT. As soon as I get a delivery date I plan to set things up with Comcast.

Wayne

[cncb]

If this ever gets down close to $200 I might consider picking it up just to have 4 OTA tuners in one card. Does anyone know how good the OTA tuners are in it (compared to the original HDHR)?

[Rhinoplasty]

In case you guys have not seen this yet, Ceton is offering a $100 off in celebration of their new distributers.

http://cetoncorp.com/press/?p=520

And I just bought mine two weeks ago. Sigh. I wonder if they will give me some concession for being one of the last to pay full price?

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by cncb

If this ever gets down close to $200 I might consider picking it up just to have 4 OTA tuners in one card. Does anyone know how good the OTA tuners are in it (compared to the original HDHR)?

It doesn't have an ATSC tuner in it, meaning it won't work with OTA TV.

In theory it has the necessary hardware to support Clear QAM tuning, but I don't think the firmware supports it.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by reggie14

It doesn't have an ATSC tuner in it, meaning it won't work with OTA TV.

I know at one point the specs listed ATSC tuners because I remember discussing it before. Oh well...

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by cncb

I know at one point the specs listed ATSC tuners because I remember discussing it before. Oh well...

There must have been some sort of mistake. Ceton's FAQ says pretty clearly there's no ATSC tuner. It wouldn't really make sense to include one. You need a QAM tuner to tune digital cable, in addition to needing a cablecard for decryption, but an ATSC tuner would be a completely separate device.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by reggie14

You need a QAM tuner to tune digital cable, in addition to needing a cablecard for decryption, but an ATSC tuner would be a completely separate device.

Most "tuners" are built to handle both QAM and ATSC, and will switch between the two modes. Its possible that the Ceton card could handle ATSC with the appropriate driver and/or firmware changes, but they don't seem inclined to support that market.

Why would anybody want to use the Ceton for clear-QAM or ATSC anyway? Just the density of having 4 tuners in a single PCIe card? The price of a popular dual-tuner card (2250) makes it cheaper to just get 2 of them...

Drew