# Getting the best Tivo picture on an HDTV



## NicB (Nov 25, 2003)

Hi, 

I've recently invested in a new 40" HD LCD. Which is nice. When connected to my Mac Mini which can drive it at its native resolution the picture is amazing. 

However when driven by my Tivo the 'upscaled' picture is OK from a distance, but at closer viewing distances the picture is disappointing. 

Now I realize the TV is trying to create picture information where there isn't any, but is there anything I can do to improve the signal that the TV has to work with? Is 'mode 0' the answer? Or is there a reasonably priced piece of hardware that work with the signal? 

Thanks in advance, 

Nic


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## 6022tivo (Oct 29, 2002)

Some people mention Scalers???. Sounds expensive to me...

I have the 50" Pioneer 505XDE, with mode zero and the iicset hack I do not notice a difference between the digibox and the tivo.. (I.e. Pressing aux to bypass the tivo now makes no difference).


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## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

What you want is one of these:-

http://www.lumagen.com/

Available here http://www.convergent-av.co.uk/.

Now if you wonder why in a lot of shops the "normal" res DVD's look so brilliant, but when you get home with your nice HD panel your DVD's look naff. Well its often because the have stuck a "proper" scaler in between. I have seen this quite a lot in HiFi shops in London, even caught John Lewis doing it in their demo rooms. The difference is quite stunning.


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

Start with Mode 0 - in my experience it will make a substantial difference. A scaler will improve the output of Tivo even more.
Mode 0 improves the quality of the recording Tivo makes from the source and it's a lot cheaper to add a network card and enable Mode 0 to begin with.


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

Sadly, not all TiVos can do mode 0 correctly. Mine suffers occasionaly from gray flashes at the bottom of the screen when using mode 0, so I've stopped.


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## TiVo_Lad (Oct 25, 2002)

aerialplug said:


> Sadly, not all TiVos can do mode 0 correctly.


 Is there anything obvious that determines whether a TiVo will do Mode 0 or not? I'm thinking of getting the Pioneer 50" and don't want to spend £3K and find the output from TiVo is poor.


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## sanderton (Jan 4, 2002)

No, luck of the draw it seems.

If you're going to run it into a 50-inch screen, I'd say Mode 0 was essential, even if you get some flashes.


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## B33K34 (Feb 9, 2003)

Is a Lumagen scaler at £800 really a good investment for most people? It's likely to add 50% to what most people are going to be paying for a 40" screen?

I saw mention somewhere of an LG scaler costing £90 and somewhere else a surround amp with HDMI switching and a scaler built in. The last of those looks like a real proposition as i'm sure it was under 1k.

Within a few years the scaler will hopefully become redundant anyway - hd dvds should be widespread and peaktime TV should be HD by around 2010.


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

FWIW I use Mode 0 and get some flashing - mostly on BBC for some reason?
Prior to Mode 0 I used to get a similar kind of flash. On black credit screens with white text you would see a repeat of some of the titles at the bottom of the screen. That may be an indicator?

It's slightly irriating to have the flashes, but the improved video quality most of the time is worth it IMHO.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

TiVo_Lad said:


> Is there anything obvious that determines whether a TiVo will do Mode 0 or not? I'm thinking of getting the Pioneer 50" and don't want to spend £3K and find the output from TiVo is poor.


All Series 1 TiVos will "do" Mode 0 - whether you find the frequency of flashes acceptable or not depends on your video source (Sky or Freeview is much better than aerial), to some extent your inidividual TiVo, and your willingness to accept a few flashes as a trade-off for significantly improved picture quality.

Why not try enabling Mode 0 with your current TV first?


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## aerialplug (Oct 20, 2000)

AMc said:


> FWIW I use Mode 0 and get some flashing - mostly on BBC for some reason?
> Prior to Mode 0 I used to get a similar kind of flash. On black credit screens with white text you would see a repeat of some of the titles at the bottom of the screen. That may be an indicator?
> 
> It's slightly irriating to have the flashes, but the improved video quality most of the time is worth it IMHO.


Yes, if there screen is mostly uniform and dark but has something bright on it (like credits) I often get bits of the credits flash at the bottom of the screen.

I don't know what causes it to happen - but it's happened on all the TiVos I've used.


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## B33K34 (Feb 9, 2003)

i've always had the same with credits but Mode 0 flashes are few enough not to bother me.

One thing I've done that might have helped is to drop the picture slightly from the TV's engineering menu (Tivo lifts it). This means that on screen graphics look better and i think it puts the flashing almost offscreen. My only other source is DVD and it's not created a problem there (many are letterboxed anyway).

Not sure if this would be possible with a plasma or lcd panel.


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## NicB (Nov 25, 2003)

Guys,

Thanks, a scaler seems a bit excessive. So it seems mode 0 is the way to go. I'll do it over the weekend so I've got maximum time to roll-back if things don't go as planned.

Is beastman's mode 0 tutorial at this thread the best place to start? It looks comprehensive...

Any pitfalls to watch out for?

Thanks,

Nic


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## 6022tivo (Oct 29, 2002)

I can not remember now it was a while back...

But I am sure I ran a automatic script that Gary either created or linked to???

I hope he will pop along and confirm this for you.

FTP'ed it over, telneted in and ran the script, then it was all done and you could change some of the bit rate constants in tivoweb if you wanted, I remember something to do with BoBBones settings?


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## AMc (Mar 22, 2002)

I used a script from Blindlemon - there is an easy tutorial thread around here somewhere that give you step by step instructions.


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## 6022tivo (Oct 29, 2002)

So what do you think????

I am happy on my TV, I do not notice a difference from the NTL feed to the tivo feed( Pressing AUX to bypass the tivo).


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