# Mode 0 - setup problems



## devo1977 (Mar 19, 2007)

Help...please...I'm trying to setup Mode 0 recording after buying a 32" LCD TV. I've read through the zillion billion threads and I'm doing very well but I'm stuck at one point. The instructions (any of them) say...

ftp the setupMode0.tcl to the /var/hack directory
from the bash prompt type this:
cd /var/hack
then type this to make it executable:
chmod 755 setupMode0.tcl
then this to run the script:
./setupMode0.tcl
hopefully if all goes well a message will pop up saying it has worked!

I get to the point where I enter ./setupMode0.tcl and instead of a postive I get 'bash-2.02# ./setupMode0.tcl: No such file or directory'. I've tried various strings but no luck. I tried downloading three different versions of the file from a thread but none worked. I've also tried FTPing in Binary and ASCII.

Also, problem two, one thread and Zip file refers to a 'iisetw' file, but despite downloading the Zip file and searching the web I can't find a copy of this file anywhere. Is it no longer required?

Any help would be fantastic! Thanks.


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## Cainam (May 25, 2004)

The 2 points here are not really related, although they seem to get mentioned so often together it is easy to confuse them!

Mode 0 is for setting the resolution on Tivo, which is useful if you have a larger TV, (or you wish to "do the unmentionable" and somehow get the recorded program onto DVD  )

Regardless if you have Mode 0 or not, if you choose to send an RGB picture to your TV it can appear extremely bright and look awful. The fix to this is to run iicsetw with certain parameters to reduce the brightness.

So iicsetw is still required if you are sending an RGB picture, although it is not essential for Mode 0 viewing.

As far your setupMode0.tcl problem....the message 
'bash-2.02# ./setupMode0.tcl: No such file or directory'

is exactly what you would expect to see if the file had been mangled by Windows. This can be done by transferring in ASCII mode, but you say you have already tried sending it in BIN mode. You didn't open the .tcl file in Windows first did you (e.g. in notepad) and then save it again? I think that would add the same line endings and so give the same problems.

If so, download the setupMode0.tcl file again, and FTP it again in BIN mode, without looking at the file first!


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## smokie (Dec 27, 2002)

I set up Mode 0 recently and had few problems. Not being that technical, I can't really offer much help, but I do have a zipfile of iisetw - PM me your email address and I will email it.

(Are you in the same directory when running ./setuppMode0.tcl? And did you CHMOD it? I can also send you the version I used if you want))


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## devo1977 (Mar 19, 2007)

Hi. I downloaded the Zip file, extracted and then FTPd the .tcl file across without viewing it first. I tried three different versions I found in one thread (each a further update of the one before). I did CHMOD first as per the various instructions I found. One Zip version stated that it contained iisetw too, but it didn't for some reason. I tried again this morning but no luck.


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## johala_reewi (Oct 30, 2002)

Have you worked through the Mode0 tutorial?
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=286938

Everything you need is there in one place.


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## devo1977 (Mar 19, 2007)

Hi. Thanks for the thread but that's what I was struggling to follow. A link within directed me to another LONG thread where I found no less than three different .tcl files, none of which worked (see my orginal posting). 

User Smokie e-mailed me his version of the .tcl file (probably version 1.0 as it's the smallest version I've seen so far) and it worked a treat. THANKS SMOKIE. I've since tried the others again but still no luck, I guess there's something wrong with them as opposed to me! I have to uninstall Winzip to make any tar.gz file work and I'm used to that. 

The other problem I had with the tutorial is that the author, Beastie, presumes that a TiVo user (even one like me who knows what they're doing) has a Scoobie what 'Joe' is. I thought it was his name! Honestly. I read through a zillion more threads and found out that Joe is an editor. Bingo. I installed this and the rest of Beastie's tutorial worked a treat. Maybe Beastie need to put a line in with a link to a 'Joe' thread etc.

One more question to all you Mode 0 users, how do you know if the settings given by Beastie are the best for your LCD TV set? Or is it a case that they are the BEST of the BEST? I have a 32" LCD.

Thanks for your help everyone out there.


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## mikerr (Jun 2, 2005)

devo1977 said:


> One more question to all you Mode 0 users, how do you know if the settings given by Beastie are the best for your LCD TV set? Or is it a case that they are the BEST of the BEST? I have a 32" LCD..


The many different mode0 settings are to do with different bitrates
with the aim of reducing or eliminating the white flashes that sometimes occur with mode0.

The actual picture quality is the same on all mode0 configs.

So you don't need to fiddle if you aren't getting many white flashes, or they don't annoy you (more often on BBC channels).


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## ...coolstream (Dec 10, 2005)

The flashing is indeed a strange beast which annoys some people more than others, or at least so I thought...

Over the years, I have had several W/S TVs working in conjunction with tivo running in mode 0, and as previously stated, the flashing occurs only occasionally and more often on higher bitrate broadcasts (BBC especially).

My latest TV and upscaler combo gives me much more control over the picture display than I've ever had before and I'm beginning to notice more about the flashing problem.

I would imagine that for most people, their TV will have a degree of upscaling (maybe named as 'overscan' in their TV menu). In overscan mode, the output from your tivo is slightly cropped at top and bottom to force the output into giving a full 16:0 experience. This doesn't detract from the picture because the cropping is minimal (approx a line or two from top and bottom to allow the left and right to be fully 'stretched' to a full widescreen picture).

If you have overscan on, chances are you'll not really see the flashing as a big problem because it only seems to occur at the end of the picture signal (i.e. bottom right of picture). The flash is only a few lines high, so by cropping the picture slightly, the flash occurs off screen.

With overscan off, the flash can be observed in all its glory, but still only occurs a few times and only if the particular picture frame is high in data changes.

From this observation, it can be safely advised that if the flash annoys you, it would be best to switch overscan on on your TV.

The second thing to note is that the problem only occurs when sending the picture to your TV from the tivo. I mention this because you will observe if 'doing the unmentionable' - extracting the data from tivo or even streaming the data from tivo to PC, the flashing is not really there.

It therefore has to be that the flashing occurs only when a high rate data frame is pushed to the TV. The TV cannot cope with all the data and terminates the picture signal with a 'blip'.

I think it's safe to say that the benefits of a better picture quality overall outweigh the occasional broken frame which most wouldn't notice especially with overscanning switched on. To those that disagree, I would say that if they were to extract the data from tivo and either play it or convert it to DVD, they would find that there is no no data corruption in the recording itself.

I agree that mode0 pushes the recording limit to the max and is best appreciated when using the extracted data for what this forum's rules consider to be nefarious practices, but after having initially used tivo in standard recording mode, I would personally say that I would never consider going back and would heartily recommend anyone to give serious consideration to adopting mode0 recording.


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

...coolstream said:


> It therefore has to be that the flashing occurs only when a high rate data frame is pushed to the TV. The TV cannot cope with all the data and terminates the picture signal with a 'blip'.


That is not the case. The 'flashing' is a function of the TiVo's MPEG decoder and is nothing to do with the TV.

If I output the same Mode 0 recording from the same TiVo to two completely different TVs (14" Orion portable vs. 42" Panasonic plasma) the white flashes appear identically in both TVs. If it was the TV then the white flashes would be different on different TVs.

BTW, there is no such thing as a 'high rate data frame' in an analogue RGB signal (which is what the TiVo's TV SCART output is).


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## ...coolstream (Dec 10, 2005)

OK blindlemon, I bow to your greater knowledge on the subject.

However my aim was not to confuse the issue. Perhaps clumsily I have stated the problem to be 'what a TV can cope with' and was not implying that one TV is better than another in dealing with this.

OK, the tivo output decoder has the problem with outputting so much data to the TV, that clarifies my conclusions even better. The recordings aren't corrupted by mode0 recording, it's just that tivo doesn't always cope 100% with outputting the data to the TV.

Does that sound better?


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## ksheena (Dec 7, 2006)

I just setup mode0 using the mode0 tutorial, but I get ghosting type problem.
I presume it's down to the RGB settings.

My next plan is to tweak the RGB settings but I cannot find the iisetw script anywhere.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


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## Richard Loxley (Jun 4, 2002)

ksheena said:


> My next plan is to tweak the RGB settings but I cannot find the iisetw script anywhere.


There's a copy of iisetw in the zip file I attached to the first post in this thread: http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=376446

You can ignore the other files in the zip file - they're for installing mode 0 without a network card.


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