Take control of your recordings with Beyond TV
The bad news came when we ordered a new computer to serve as our home-brew digital video recorder (DVR). We had happily used an old Windows XP machine to do the job, but I wanted a faster machine, better capable of handling the demands of up to four shows recording at once, better capable of compressing GBs of video. I bought an Acer Q6600 and loaded it with 4 GB RAM since, as we all know, more RAM matters more than more CPU speed for most home computer users. Sadly, our TV tuners had a different idea.
After several hours of trial and error and a bit of reading, I discovered that the Hauppauge PVR-150 TV tuners we had used for years wouldn’t work on a 64-bit system with 4 GB RAM installed. Worse, rather than simply refuse to work, the tuners would randomly drop frames and freeze at random instants, making it difficult for me to isolate the problem. It took over six hours.
At that time, I worked around the problem by removing 2 GB RAM from the computer. Bear in mind that I had specifically asked for the RAM upgrade for this computer, and so I had essentially sunk some multiple of $100 into useless RAM and the wasted day getting things to work.
That was over a year ago. My, how times have changed.
Not long ago, I came across a short article that described a potential remedy for the problem. It suggested I configure Windows Vista to voluntarily boot with less RAM. It would never in a million years have occurred to me that Windows would do such a thing. I’d never used an operating system capable of voluntarily using less RAM than available. Before encountering the confluence of 64 bits, Vista and the PVR-150 tuner, it never occurred to me to want or need such a thing. With trepidation and excitement, I tried it.
1. Install the RAM and make sure Windows Vista booted fine. Don’t expect the TV tuners to work.
2. Configure Windows Vista to voluntarily boot to 3712 MB (3-5/8 GB) RAM. Run ‘msconfig’ from the Command Prompt, then choose the Boot tab, then choose Advanced Options…. You’ll find a “Maximum Memory” option you can enable and set the RAM Windows will boot with.
3. Reboot. Even though System Properties reported 4.00 GB RAM, I ran Beyond TV and it worked.
I include this, hoping that it will help you out there. I can’t believe I had to give up 384 MB RAM to make this work. My first five computers could run on 384 MB combined.