With a Tivo, I can rent and download HD movies with 5.1 sound from Amazon. Unfortunately, I found that the PC was actually more limited that the Tivo in important aspects. I initially favored a PC over a Tivo because I expected greater functionality from the PC. Issues with using a Windows Media Center PC as a settop box Thankfully, I was still within Amazon's return window and was able to return the defective device. No timeframe has been provided and online reviews suggest that the problem affects a significant number of users.Īs my wife said, the device has a single job and it fails to perform that job. Ceton eventually identified the issue as one affecting 'a small number of users' and stated that a fix would be released. Ceton support was initially responsive and requested detailed diagnostic data, which I provided. Sometimes, it even required a manual power cycle (unplug, wait, plug in) to fix. This caused any shows being recorded to fail. It frequently, and apparently randomly, rebooted. My Ceton infiniTV4 USB tuner had much more serious issues that the PCI-E version.

Instead, I returned the PCI-E tuner and bought the USB version. The Ceton website recommended unspecified 3rd party cooling solutions to address the issue.

Although it worked correctly for the short time I kept it, it ran several degrees hotter than spec in my tower PC. I first bought a Ceton infiniTV4 PCI-E tuner. This description of the issues I experienced is intended to benefit anyone considering a similar setup. My experiment using a Windows Media Center PC with a Ceton CableCard tuner as my settop boxed failed.

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