[mythtv-users] Considering HDHomeRun, is this a bad time to buy an HD-5500?

[Henry A Harper III]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven Adeff [mailto:adeffs.mythtv at gmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 5:55 PM
> To: hah at alumni.rice.edu; Discussion about mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Considering HDHomeRun, is this a bad time to
> buy an HD-5500?
>
>
> On 10/20/06, Henry A Harper III <hah at alumni.rice.edu> wrote:
> > > On Oct 20, 2006, at 12:39 PM, Richard Bronosky wrote:
> > > > I've finally gotten up the nerve to go HD, but am wondering if the
> > > > HD-5500 is still the best way to go.  (in the US)
> > >
> > > I had issues getting the dvb stuff to work with my HD-5500, but once
> > > those issues were resolved (had to completely remove any mention of
> > > dvb from the kernel and reinstall using the drivers from pchdtv.com)
> > > I've not had a single problem.
> >
> > I also had some setup issues just because I have three HD5500s in one
> > FE/BE - I needed to pass a kernel parameter to reserve enough memory for
> > three copies of the dvb drivers - but since then the tuners have been
> > completely transparent and lovely in ATSC operation. I have no
> other ATSC
> > card experience, just an HTL-HD and HR10-250.
>
> out of curiosity, what was the dvb driver memory problem?
>
> I've got two A180's and an HD3000. I like the idea of the linux only
> aspect of the pcHDTV people, but for basically 1/2 the price the
> A180's work as well as the HD card.

It was just that by the time all the other kernel modules loaded (nvidia X
driver, JFS, LVM, MD, alsa, etc. etc.) into the default 128M kernel vmalloc
space, I could only get two copies of the DVB drivers to load and make
recordings - trying a third simultaneous recording threw a
not-enough-vmalloc space error and resulted in zero-byte recordings for that
tuner. Putting in a vmalloc=148m boot parameter along with the grub
"uppermem" workaround to avoid boot-time kernel panic allows three
simultaneous HD recordings.

Henry