TiVo : TiVo Picture Quality

[ozsat]

Originally Posted by spiderplant

Have you tried 576i+1080i or 576p+1080i?

I have found that sometimes 576i+1080i works fine - then at other times it will just not go out of 1080i mode.

[scgf]

Originally Posted by John_taxi

I had Virgin TiVo installed yesterday, we moved the v+ box to another room.
If you watched an american tv programme, e.g friends, a couple of years ago the picture was very soft and almost blurred looking........Well this is TiVo......I have an lg 42" and have compared the v+ and TiVo pictures..... No comparison v+ 10/10, TiVo 6/10.... Very disappointed however if you are used to watching tv on your pc then TiVo is for you.....I will be returning it today!!!!! Great product, poor picture......I reckon Sky will be breathing a sigh of releif, as for Richard Branson?

Exactly my experience. I breathed a sigh of relief when VM agreed to take my TiVo back. After 10 years or so TiVo should have been a lot better!

It is all very well others saying they had to tweak their TV settings - I have four main sources, all of them HD, and all go through a high quality Octavo hdmi switchbox into the single hdmi input on my plasma panel. I tweaked the picture using the Video Essentials and it looks great on Blu Ray, Apple TV and the French satellite HD service TNTSat. Looks great with VM V+ too and with Freeview HD and SD from a 3View box.

Along comes TiVo and I get a very soft SD picture and HD that looks like one of the better V+ SD channels and the advice I am given is to tweak the TV settings. How is that going to help? In the course of initially setting up the panel I had turned off practically all the digital processing and made sure the picture has a sensible contrast level, minimum sharpening etc. etc.. All I could do to tweak further is to switch on various digital processing options - which I don't want to do. Why is it that only TiVo out of 6 sources would need this extra tweaking?

[Perfect Choice]

Originally Posted by scgf

Exactly my experience. I breathed a sigh of relief when VM agreed to take my TiVo back. After 10 years or so TiVo should have been a lot better!

It is all very well others saying they had to tweak their TV settings - I have four main sources, all of them HD, and all go through a high quality Octavo hdmi switchbox into the single hdmi input on my plasma panel. I tweaked the picture using the Video Essentials and it looks great on Blu Ray, Apple TV and the French satellite HD service TNTSat. Looks great with VM V+ too and with Freeview HD and SD from a 3View box.

Along comes TiVo and I get a very soft SD picture and HD that looks like one of the better V+ SD channels and the advice I am given is to tweak the TV settings. How is that going to help? In the course of initially setting up the panel I had turned off practically all the digital processing and made sure the picture has a sensible contrast level, minimum sharpening etc. etc.. All I could do to tweak further is to switch on various digital processing options - which I don't want to do. Why is it that only TiVo out of 6 sources would need this extra tweaking?

Yours is a prime example as to why VM really need to investigate this. I have done all the tweaking possible and the bottom line the video output from Tivo is just not as good. This is a real gap for VM, yet some seem to have a perfectly good picture and others are returning their boxes, cannot be good.

[arcimedes]

TiVo installed yesterday. First impressions of picture quality are that there the picture is softer than the V+ (37in Panasonic and output from V+ and TiVo set to 1080i) on SD but no different or better on HD. But I am talking about very small differences well below the variation you get between programmes.

Eurosport SD looks as bad on both, no suprise there.

I will play with the settings on the TV. I should point out that by softer I dont mean that its a worse picture just different.

---------- Post added at 11:21 ---------- Previous post was at 11:18 ----------

Also the Panny is set to adjust the picture brightness depending on the illumination of the room. I dont know if it really does so or what the effect on the picture would be.

Originally Posted by scgf

Exactly my experience. I breathed a sigh of relief when VM agreed to take my TiVo back. After 10 years or so TiVo should have been a lot better!

It is all very well others saying they had to tweak their TV settings - I have four main sources, all of them HD, and all go through a high quality Octavo hdmi switchbox into the single hdmi input on my plasma panel. I tweaked the picture using the Video Essentials and it looks great on Blu Ray, Apple TV and the French satellite HD service TNTSat. Looks great with VM V+ too and with Freeview HD and SD from a 3View box.

Along comes TiVo and I get a very soft SD picture and HD that looks like one of the better V+ SD channels and the advice I am given is to tweak the TV settings. How is that going to help? In the course of initially setting up the panel I had turned off practically all the digital processing and made sure the picture has a sensible contrast level, minimum sharpening etc. etc.. All I could do to tweak further is to switch on various digital processing options - which I don't want to do. Why is it that only TiVo out of 6 sources would need this extra tweaking?

What is more relevant for me personally is why everybody is not seeing this. I am not doubting what you saw scgf, the pq was obviously worse for you. On the thread you started about this in the tivo forums though only one person reported worse pq. Many said it was the same as the V+ and some even better. One poster who had swapped from a Sky HDbox said the tivo had better pq.
This issue is of particular concern to me as I am fussy about pq and I am getting my box fitted next week. Enough people are saying it is not an issue ( on their setup) though for me to be not too worried.

[jb66]

The TiVo has a noticeable picture quality issue on sd. Hd is perfect. If your paying £149 for renting this box you need to be sure you want to keep it as if you decide to go back to v+ a few months down the line you have wasted £149 and you may have to pay for v+ {again}

I totally understand why folk are playing it safe and returning the tivo

[Stephen]

I dont think TiVo has a noticeable issue at all. Some people are claiming it's not as good as the V+ however I think it could be the way their TVs are set up. I've turn off all the tv processing effects and the SD quality looks brilliant. It obviously looks poor on channels like eurosport but that has always looked rubbish also on really old tv programmes but on most channels and more recent programmes the pq looks great. HD looks particularly fantastic too.

The only pq issue I have is that the TiVo menus don't work properly at all when watching 3D VOD stuff.

[Perfect Choice]

Originally Posted by Stephen

I dont think TiVo has a noticeable issue at all. Some people are claiming it's not as good as the V+ however I think it could be the way their TVs are set up. I've turn off all the tv processing effects and the SD quality looks brilliant. It obviously looks poor on channels like eurosport but that has always looked rubbish also on really old tv programmes but on most channels and more recent programmes the pq looks great. HD looks particularly fantastic too.

The only pq issue I have is that the TiVo menus don't work properly at all when watching 3D VOD stuff.

It is certainly NOT a case of just how TVs are set up when compared to the V+. Several people (including myself) with a poorer PQ have adjusted settings, turned off processing effects, etc and fundamentally the video feed shown on the TV is not as good particularly for SD.

The reason why this is a mystery as to why some TVs seem to handle the Tivo feed better than others.

This is a long way from V+ which seemed to produce an excellent picture for everyone. I've never seen anybody posting about poor V+ PQ and returning boxes, but that has changed with Tivo.

I wish there was an easy answer as I actually do like the Tivo box, it is just a shame there seems to be no way I can improve the PQ and I have certainly tried with TV picture options.

The only specific issue with my original set up was the need to install an equaliser as my power levels into Tivo were too high, but don't see how that could have an impact on Tivo video output to my TV.

[whoareyou]

Iv tried changing around my tv settings, but still, very dissapointed with the SD quality. As i mentioned in another thread, the Soccer Scores on SS1 on sat was unwatchable. I never had that on the V+

[TMLeafs]

Originally Posted by whoareyou

Iv tried changing around my tv settings, but still, very dissapointed with the SD quality. As i mentioned in another thread, the Soccer Scores on SS1 on sat was unwatchable. I never had that on the V+

Sky Sports News is the channel I really notice it on. V+ it looked HD just the text was fuzzy but now its shocking.

[OLDGOLD]

Originally Posted by TMLeafs

Sky Sports News is the channel I really notice it on. V+ it looked HD just the text was fuzzy but now its shocking.

You must have had a really really good V+ box or a low HD expectation level if you thought Sky Sport News on V+ looked HD!

[whoareyou]

Originally Posted by TMLeafs

Sky Sports News is the channel I really notice it on. V+ it looked HD just the text was fuzzy but now its shocking.

Originally Posted by OLDGOLD

You must have had a really really good V+ box or a low HD expectation level if you thought Sky Sport News on V+ looked HD!

I wouldnt say hd! But it looked superb, now..... Unreadable. Nothing else to point my angry finger at apart from the Tivo!

[OLDGOLD]

Originally Posted by whoareyou

I wouldnt say hd! But it looked superb, now..... Unreadable. Nothing else to point my angry finger at apart from the Tivo!

This is a genuine question, I'm not being argumentative or anything...

Is it that bad that it is really unreadable? Or is that just a little exaggeration to emphasise your point?

[whoareyou]

No, i generally found some of the scores and league positions on the right to be unreadable. Ok, if i squinted and moved forward i could make them out. But i find that unreadable. And yes, i do have perfect vision!

[spiderplant]

If it really is unreadable, you've got a faulty box, cable or TV.

I've captured the attached image from the SD composite video in the SCART socket (the worst possible image quality), and it's still readable.