[mythtv-users] QAM 256 tuning with Ceton Infinity 4 USB

Greg Tippitt gtippitt at gmail.com
Tue Nov 19 22:04:51 UTC 2013


Raymond,
Thanks for the idea. I tried before I bought the Ceton tuner.  I have
two AverMedia Volar model A868.  Some of the newer Volar  tuners do
support QAM, but not this model.  They are great little USB devices
for OTA that I got on eBay for $10 each, but they don't do QAM.

The little crappy antennas they provide with these USB devices are
worthless, but they work fine if they have a decent antenna.  I used
to be a HAM and played with stealth antennas while living in a condo.
For OTA TV reception, I made me a small Yagi antenna out sections of
white extension cord wire, which I thumb-tacked to the ceiling.  It
matches the ceiling paint and it hardly noticeable.  All  of the local
TV stations are on the same mountain top about 15 miles from my home,
but I'm at the base of a hill that almost blocks their signal, so even
a good rabbit ear wouldn't work.  The Yagi cuts out interference off
its back and sides, so the digital broadcast signal gets through well
enough.  I would probably stick with it, but my wife wanted CNN and
BBC America.

Greg


On 11/19/13, Raymond Wagner <raymond at wagnerrp.com> wrote:
> On Nov 19, 2013, at 9:21, Greg Tippitt <gtippitt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I have a Ceton Infinity 4 USB tuner that I'm trying to get working
>> with my Digital Cable service from WOW.  I gave up on getting the
>> CableCard to work after 6 weeks with techs from WOW coming by every
>> few days to spend an hour swapping CableCards that were all
>> mis-configured the same as the prior ones.  Since I don't get any
>> premium channels, I decided to simply use the card in QAM mode.
>>
>> Between their tests of new CableCards, I found that I could remove the
>> card and tune my QAM channels, included HD, using the Ceton's web
>> interface and watch the RTP stream using VLC.  The  only thing I
>> couldn't get working were the Basic Cable channels in SD that it says
>> are NTSC modulation rather than QAM.   All of these that I wanted were
>> also available in the 900 channel range in HD.  The only things I
>> seemed to miss were some shopping and religion channels.
>>
>> I used MythTV for a year with an OTA antenna and understand it fairly
>> well, but I can't get it to work with the Ceton tuner.  The Ceton
>> doesn't have an option to scan for channel or to import a
>> “channel.conf” file.  It simply says there was an error opening the
>> card.  I can fetch the channel list from SchedulesDirect, but that
>> doesn't fill out the transports.  Without the scan for channels or
>> import of the conf file, the table “dtv_multiplex” doesn't seem to get
>> completed.  I've tried filling out the table in SQL, but it still
>> still isn't tuning correctly.
>>
>> Diagnostic log on the Ceton shows that MythTV is failing to get the
>> proper Program ID for the multiplex and is always trying to tune
>> Program number 65535 for the frequency.  I've tried all the normal
>> fixes of deleting the capture cards and stuff.  The system was running
>> Ubuntu 12.04, with Mythbuntu 27 repository.  I did a fresh install of
>> Ubuntu 13.10, with Mythbuntu 27 repository, and a fresh MythTV
>> database.  It still does the same thing.
>>
>> Does anyone have the Ceton tuners working with QAM?  I've tried
>> following some of the HomeRun discussions, but I didn't find anything
>> that helped me much.  I found some discussions about how QAM is
>> worthless, which is true with most cable providers other than WOW, who
>> still transmits non-encrypted content.  Was the QAM support for Ceton
>> tuners removed at some point in development?
>>
>> Thanks for any help,
>> Greg
>>
>
> If you still have the OTA tuner, most of them support QAM256.  You should be
> able to scan using it, and share the same video source with the four on the
> Ceton.
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