Getting Xfinity - Want to use M-Card - Which hardware works best?

[Eckwell]

Getting Comcast installed again (have been away for 12 years) and want to upgrade my Sage System from the current two tuner DirecTV solution to use a cable care tuner.

Which is the best? Ceton? HDHomeRun Prime? Others?

Which is easiest to install and support?

Thanks for your opinions!

Fun getting back into the dirt with Sage again!

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by Eckwell

Getting Comcast installed again (have been away for 12 years) and want to upgrade my Sage System from the current two tuner DirecTV solution to use a cable care tuner.

Which is the best? Ceton? HDHomeRun Prime? Others?

Which is easiest to install and support?

Thanks for your opinions!

Fun getting back into the dirt with Sage again!

HD Homerun Prime .... because Silicondust is developing a DVR that will do DRM in case in the future your channels are DRM'd. Also there is no need to open up a PC to put in the MCard. You also can Install SageTV on a mini PC using the Prime tuner ... hard to do with a PCI Internal Card... You also can currently watch protected content on Android Devices. (Nexus Player ... Android Tablets)

[Fuzzy]

I'd also recommend the HDHRPrime. Support just seems better than the Ceton devices.

[ThePaladinTech]

Third vote for SD Prime - Personally my first was the ceton infinitv, Everything since has been the SD Prime. Between family and friends we are using 7 Primes, my ceton is in a machine, but not currently being used. another negative for the ceton is you can't use it with a hyper-v VM.

[MattHelm]

The only advantage for the Ceton, is 6 channels per M-card. But as others have said, SD has better support. So unless you have a power user like my dad (1 user, 10 tuners, and still has conflicts!), get the HDHomeRun Prime.

[Telecore]

I use a Ceton PCIe 6 tuner with two HD-PVRs+STBs for copy-once channels. Previously, I had two HDHomerun Primes, but sold them on ebay. My experience is that the internal card tuner (+ SageDCT) works better than a network tuner (always had some brief recording glitches).

[weeber]

I started using an M-card from Comcast just a couple a months ago (using firewire before that). I put it in an SD Prime and initially used SageDCT, but moved to PrimeNet Encoder.

After hearing some horror stories, I was pleasantly surprised with how well Comcast handled the install. It took a couple of transfers to get it right, but it was pretty painless. Follow the quick start guide that comes with the Prime, call the phone number Comcast gives you and you should be off and running pretty quick.

I will say getting SageTV connected to everything with the Prime was a little tricky (at least for me), but I was able to get it working with SageDCT. Eventually I was able to get PrimeNet Encoder worker and it seems to work a little better for me (fewer recording errors).

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by weeber

Follow the quick start guide that comes with the Prime, call the phone number Comcast gives you and you should be off and running pretty quick.

My experience with Comcast was that when I picked up the cable card at the local Comcast office they gave me a general activation phone number (Same number they give for cable boxes and modems) - if you call this number they will never be able to figure out how to activate your card (the automated process will fail and if you try to reach a live person they probably won't know a cable card from a greeting card.

Comcast actually has a special phone number just for cable card activation (I found it on one of the Comcast forums): 877-405-2298.

Calling that number gets you to a person who actually knows what cable cards are (and at when I called, the difference between Ceton, Silicon Dust, and TiVo).

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

The only advantage for the Ceton, is 6 channels per M-card. But as others have said, SD has better support. So unless you have a power user like my dad (1 user, 10 tuners, and still has conflicts!), get the HDHomeRun Prime.

I agree with the above, I'm dealing in the power user category, a Prime was set aside to bring in a Ceton(and gain three tuners in the process). My experience with the Prime was before the current effort specific to it began, but found the Ceton to be more stable between the two under SageDCT. However, that situation would probably be different now.

[Deacon Crusher]

Just finished uninstalling my ceton and have 2 primes.

Comcast in some areas is not ceton plus sagedtc friendly whereas the ongoing dev with primes has made it a very reliable/solid solution.

[gplasky]

2 HomeRun Primes on Comcast XFinity for as long as the Prime existed.

Gerry

[videolog]

Running Ceton pci4 and pci6 with two cable cards for a total of 10 tuners. Have the tuners split between Sage and WMC with multiple clients of Sage and Ceton Echos. No problems.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

Just finished uninstalling my ceton and have 2 primes.

Comcast in some areas is not ceton plus sagedtc friendly whereas the ongoing dev with primes has made it a very reliable/solid solution.

What are your plans for your old Ceton device?

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

What are your plans for your old Ceton device?

I know this wasn't directed at me, but you can actually use it as a ClearQAM tuner. Which is what I'm going to be using my extra InfiniTV 4 to do. Instead of just by channel which only works when a CableCard is inserted, I figured out how to get it to tune by frequency and program reliably. I have been working very hard on a Java based network encoder that uses UPnP just like SageDCT, but this one will work on Windows and Linux. Unfortunately I cannot say when it will be made public, but I am hopeful it will be this year.

I run two InfiniTV 6 cards and 1 InfiniTV 4 card bridged from CentOS 7 recording via SageDCT and split between multiple SageTV VMs. The experience has been solid. I chose InfiniTV because cable cards are not all free, so this gives me the best bang for my dollar. I don't have a lot of interest in the extra features you get from the Prime, but I would probably use them if I had one.

[Eckwell]

Thanks for all the great information! I like the idea of the HDHR Prime as an external device... and i don't think i need more tuners.

now to figure out how to get the M-card hassle free!

[Deacon Crusher]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

What are your plans for your old Ceton device?

I've got a 4 tuner and a 6 tuner. PCI cards each. Considering getting rid of either or both.

Thanks

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

I've got a 4 tuner and a 6 tuner. PCI cards each. Considering getting rid of either or both.

Thanks

Hmmm. Interesting.

VERY interesting.

[jjstok]

Did you ever get a card working with Xfinity? I just got cable again after over 10+ years.

[mgpaulus]

Originally Posted by jjstok

Did you ever get a card working with Xfinity? I just got cable again after over 10+ years.

I have had as many as 4 cards working at the same time from XFinity, during the Olympics (2 HDHR Primes and 2 dcr-2650). I use OpenDCT and have had about zero problems with them (back down to the 2 HDHR primes now).

The only caveat with the HDHR prime route is that you won't get any protected channels (HBO/Max/Lifetime). For some reason Lifetime is protected, and Showtime is not. So, I have 1 Hauppauge HD-PVR for those few channels, and I'm awaiting a BM-3000HDMI to see if I want to use those to replace my finicky HD-PVRs.