# Series 3 [HD] Suggestion: Giving Priority to SD-Upconvert/SD-Analog for Recording



## Rosenkavalier (Nov 9, 2001)

This is a suggestion for a device that isn't available yet, so it's possible that this may not make any sense. Also, since I'm not a HDTiVo user, this might be something that was handled on that unit. But I didn't see anything in a cursory glance through several threads on the subject.

With the announced specs for the Series 3, there will most likely be many occasions where a given standard-def program is airing simultaneously on a local affiliate's DTV feed (upconverted) and on their standard SD-analog feed. Most cable companies will continue to carry both feeds, probably until the broadcasters turn off their analog signals.

As has been discussed, the trade off for recording the native MPEG2 stream sent out by the DTV station is dramatically increased storage requirements. However, just because the signal is only upconverted standard-def, it does not significantly reduce the final size of the recorded program on the TiVo's hard drive. (It is slightly smaller than a full-bore HD signal, but not by enough to make much of a difference.)

So it would seem that we would always choose to record the analog signal, and let the TiVo's internal MPEG2 encoder handle the grunt work, producing much smaller files and saving space for more recordings. The problem is that, if you compared the visual quality of the upconverted signal from the broadcaster to what the TiVo can do to the analog signal off the cable feed, there's usually no comparison -- the upconvert will win most of the time, hands down.

Therefore, some users may wish to sacrifice the significantly reduced recording time for the somewhat improved visual quality that they would receive from the original, upconverted signal. This leads to the (possible) suggestion:

-- Add a Recording Quality option that sets a global priority for non-High-Definition shows (as defined in the program guide). The setting would attempt to either record all non-HD shows from HD sources whenever possible (getting upconverted signals, preserving better quality video, and eating up more hard drive space), or would avoid recording non-HD shows from HD sources whenever possible (avoiding upconverted signals, accepting somewhat lower quality video, while saving sizeable amounts of disk space).

As with all global settings, this could be overwritten on an individual program basis, a Wishlist basis, a Season Pass basis, etc. But it would allow users to give their TiVo a general directive for how to deal with upconverted shows in relation to hard drive space, as well as their perspective on recording quality.


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## jautor (Jul 1, 2001)

Most of this is actually covered in the current HR10-250 (HD DirecTiVo)...

Since Season Passes are channel specific, if you want to record the channel in HD, you set the season pass for the DTV channel, and if not, set it to the SD channel (which would be the analog channel on the Series 3, but on D* is the LiL SD version).

For Wishlists, TiVo will record matching shows from the lowest number in the guide first. So if the same show is showing on 2 channels, the lowest numbered one wins. On D*, this always happens to be the SD version of the OTA networks. But I've always had my D* SD locals turned off (removed from Channels I receive) to avoid recording them... And at least by convention, in DTV channels, the "-1" is the HD channel, and "-2" or above are the SD multicasts. I sometimes record PBS shows on "8-2" instead of "8-1" if I don't care about picture quality for a particular show (Frontline, for example, some of the time). 

As for the global setting for quality, IIRC, that setting already exists in the standalones. But TiVo doesn't know what the original resolution of a DTV broadcast was. If the station is upconverting a reality show to 1080i, TiVo can't tell that it wasn't truly shot in 1080i. Unless you want to rely on the "HDTV" tag in the guide data... And I'll tell you now, you don't want to rely on that!!!  OTA DTV stations don't seem to change their broadcast resolution - they upconvert to 720p/1080i to keep a constant format.

Jeff


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