InfiniTV 6 ETH - 6-channel Cable TV Ethernet Tuner for CableCARD PC, Personal Computer

When the Ceton arrived, I connected it to my network without a cablecard and used the Ceton Diagnostic software (available on their site) to download and install the latest BETA firmware and drivers.Why the beta firmware and drivers? Because the beta firmware and drivers are required for the tuner pooling feature. Tuner pooling allows other computers on the network running Media Center to auto-select and use any available tuner among the six tuners the Ceton InfiniTV 6 provides. Without tuner pooling, tuners need to be specifically assigned to various computers; an inflexible and less than ideal setup.The instructions said to install and activate the cablecard before connecting the tuning adapter, but in my case, the cablecard would not activate without first connecting the tuning adapter with the supplied usb cable. Once Oceanic Time Warner Cable successfully activated the cablecard, the Ceton Diagnostic software verified the activation and its ability to lock in channels. Despite all the green check marks, Media Center kept displaying a message indicating the selected channel was unavailable for every channel I switched to. I had to reboot the Ceton device and reconfigure Media Center before we were watching tv. The entire process took about an hour, partly because after first inserting the cablecard, it began downloading firmware and that took about 15 minutes.Probably the most frustrating thing was the tech's lack of experience with cablecard and tuning adapter installations. At first, she kept saying "So you don't need a tuning adapter!" She also kept saying "I think the usb cable is supposed to connect to your computer." I think she thought the Ceton device was a tuning adapter. I had to repeatedly tell her that I did, in fact, need it and what its purpose is. She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language when I explained about Switched Digital Video. And she basically ignored my suggestions as she spoke to other techs on her cell phone asking them for help. In the end, I sent her on her way even before I got Media Center to display tv channels. Once I knew the Diagnostic software saw the cablecard and verified it had been activated and that it was finding channels, I knew I'd be able to get the rest to work and that there really wasn't anything for her to do at that point. Ten minutes after she left, we were up and running.The Ceton device works great. I have Media Center running on our HTPC as well as on my work computer in an adjacent room WIRELESSLY. The recording feature works flawlessly and I can watch recordings made by the HTPC on my work computer and vice versa. Also, I'm running Windows 8 Professional on both, not Windows 7, so Windows 8 users need not worry the Ceton won't have tuner pooling--it does!I was also concerned about picture quality with this networked device but the quality is superb with no pixelation, even over the Wireless-N network. Highly recommend the Ceton InfiniTV 6 ETH for anyone with some tech savvy and the patience to deal with your local cable company.

This is the CableCard tuner the Windows Media Center enthusiast like myself have been waiting for. Especially those of us whose cable companies went to switched Digital that require the bulky tuning adaptors. Finally it's possible to ditch the cable companies crappy DVRs (and the monthly fees that come with it).The beauty of the InfityTV6 is that this device is entirely self-contained and gigabit Ethernet based and supports dynamic tuner pooling. This eliminated the requirement to have a host PC which the tuner and Coax would be tethered to. Now households that only have Windows laptops or tablets like the Surface Pro can use those devices to watch and or record their digital cable channels and roam freely without being tethered to the Coax. You could also use virtualization and consolidate hardware by installing Windows 7 or 8 Media Center in a VM and run it on the same box as you Windows Home server, or Windows 2008R2/2012 using HyperV, or of course Virtual Box or VMware.The previous Ceton USB and PCIe tuners, did support network sharing of the tuners... But it required an always on Windows 7, Windows 2008 R2, or Home Server 2011 server and the tuners would have to be permanently assigned to any portable device wanting access to the tuners. This static tuner assignment is no longer required with this model.My prior setup consisted of dual quad InfinitiTV tuners that required a cable splitter, 2 cable cards, and 2 tuning adaptors all tethered off the main recording PC. With the InfinitiTV6 I was able to return one cable card and tuning adaptor back to the cable company and hide the new device (and the remaining tuning adapter) behind my living room couch where I have an unused coax outlet and access to our lan removing the clutter from around our computer desk. Since I no longer have to statically assign tuners dropping from 8 to 6 tuners was not a problem as we never really required more than 6 simultaneous tuners anyways.There is one major con that I encountered. Ceton's drivers do not support Windows 8 32 bit... So a Windows 7 32 bit computer that is upgraded to Windows 8 (or does a clean 32 bit install) will lose the ability to use their Ceton tuners on that machine unless it's rebuilt as a 64 bit machine.Other Pros:The Ceton drivers increase the 4 Tuner limit for both Windows 7 and Windows 8 so you can fully use all 6 tuners (or up to 12 if you have multiple InfinitiTVs).The InfinitiTV6 comes with a mini USB port for use with a tuning adaptor where required... Ceton includes the special cable for this purpose in the box.Note for best results... You should make sure you have a gigabit wired networking in your home in order to support the bandwidth required for 6 simultaneous HD streams. This means having good gigabit switches and CAT 5e/6 cables on the lan segments between the InfinitiTV6 and any media center PC acting as a DVR. For wireless devices it is strongly recommended they utilize Wireless A, or at a minimum be in the 5GHz band for Wireless N.