# Help - TiVO always records at "best" :-(



## mark.wheadon (Nov 30, 2007)

Hi - please help as this is driving me spare :-(

I have a UK TiVO which is now fitted with a cachecard and has TiVOWeb installed, etc.

I'm running in mode 0 and that's fine - but there's a problem:

It always records at "best". If I record a program at another quality level, then it actually records at "best" (so, for example, if I press record when a programme is already on, and select, say, "high" as the recording qualiy, it still stashes the rest start of the program from the live buffer, and it's listed as being recorded at "best").

If I go to settings to change the default recording quality, all four qualities have the same running time - which matches that for "best", and if I select something else (say "basic" for example") then when I go back into that menu, the default quality is once more listed as "best". Argh!

It's not that I have set the quality numbers wrong in TiVOWeb's resource editor - as they are set up to be 100, 75, 40, 0 as normal. I _did_ have all the qualities set to 100 when I didn't understand what they were about, and that did cause problems (it was applying a high-frequency filter to the image before encoding making it soft - apparently the TiVO does that to the two lowest qualities, and as I had all the quality numbers the same, it picked the wrong ones).

As I wrote above, I _did_ have the quality for best, high, etc. all set to 100 and that caused image softness problems - when I figured out that I set the quality no's back to 100, 75, 40, 0 and the problem went away.

But I still have a box that will only record at "best".

Does anyone have any idea why this may be? The only thing I can think of is that it's being thrown by the fact that I still have some early recordings stored from when the quality numbers were all set to 100 - but surely that wouldn't make a difference? (I don't want to delete them just to find out, if it'll actually make no difference.)

Many thanks,

Mark


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## johala_reewi (Oct 30, 2002)

With mode0 you should really leave the quality numbers alone. After you changed the quality settings back to 100,75,40,0 did you do 'update settings' on the tivoweb page, then reboot Tivo? It does sound like all your recordings are still getting quality 100.


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## mark.wheadon (Nov 30, 2007)

johala_reewi said:


> With mode0 you should really leave the quality numbers alone. After you changed the quality settings back to 100,75,40,0 did you do 'update settings' on the tivoweb page, then reboot Tivo? It does sound like all your recordings are still getting quality 100.


Sir - you're a star 

Because you have to press return on the resources page for each value, and because there's no "update settings" on that page (only on the page above), and because the values persist across web sessions (so must be stored by TiVOWeb I guess) and therefore give the appearance of having been changed, and because I'm a numpty  I hadn't been revisiting the top-level resources page and clicking "update settings".

So all those small tweaks I've been doing to the bitrate to try and get rid of the vision and (more important to me) sound glitches haven't been doing a thing. I _was_ beginning to be puzzled at how low I could pull the bitrate without it having any visible effect 

Thank you:up:

Mark


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Its fair to say that the Resources Editor in Tivoweb is badly in need of a full reworking as it is not at all user friendly or logical and many people make precisely the kind of errors you have made when using it to a greater or lesser extent.

Even though Tivoweb itself is no longer officially being developed given that it actually still seems to work better with our UK Series 1 Tivos (with apologies in advance to TivoWebPlus2 head developer BTuX9 who will violenty disagree on this point) I'm surprised no one like Ljay or mikerr has yet decided to hack this part of the Tivoweb interface to make it both more user friendly and more foolproof.

I would try to do this myself if I had the necessary skills but I'm the first to be prepared concede that sadly I don't.


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

Pete77 said:


> I would try to do this myself if I had the necessary skills but I'm the first to be prepared concede that sadly I don't.


That's very defeatist, why not make it a learning excercise?


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Indeed, go on Pete, show us what you're made of!


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

TCM2007 said:


> Indeed, go on Pete, show us what you're made of!


I think I'll leave that to Raisltin who has frequently implied that he is much keener on hearing from those who deliver positive improvements for Tivo rather than those who simply enjoy entering in to debate.

I very much look forward to seeing our first Majere hack for the Tivo S1.


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

Pete77 said:


> I think I'll leave that to Raisltin who has frequently implied that he is much keener on hearing from those who deliver positive improvements for Tivo rather than those who simply enjoy entering in to debate.


Have I 



Pete77 said:


> I very much look forward to seeing our first Majere hack for the Tivo S1.


Pete, I also do not possess the required knowledge to do this. Although, If I did possess such knowledge, I would do my utmost to write it in such a way that it could not be used by yourself.

You see the difference is, when somebody creates a hack and posts it for public use, I am grateful. I appreciate what they have done. You, however, tend to complain that the hack does not work in the specific way in which *you* want it to and make demands of these people who have so selflessly provided the hack.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Raisltin Majere said:


> Pete, I also do not possess the required knowledge to do this. Although, If I did possess such knowledge, I would do my utmost to write it in such a way that it could not be used by yourself.


Isn't that a touch defeatist though.


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

No, because it's not a feature I have stated I want.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Raisltin Majere said:


> No, because it's not a feature I have stated I want.


Sounds like the easy way out to me.


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

Hmmm,

Well, I click the buttons and it does something.

Whats the best way to tell if it works? Change one I don't use (rooftop) and reboot, then see what it says?

And how do I get rid of that extra '>'?


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

You've probably made a typo in the code leaving a > from one of the HTML tags.


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Raisltin Majere said:


> Hmmm,
> 
> Well, I click the buttons and it does something.
> 
> Whats the best way to tell if it works? Change one I don't use (rooftop) and reboot, then see what it says?[/IMG]


See I knew my faith in you was not misplaced as you already wrote a small hack you published on here a while ago.

However I think it would work better if rather than having to press an "Update Resources" button on the same page the resources were updated every time the user pressed enter in the individual number entry boxes. However I expect that amending the code to do that is significantly more complex.


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## mark.wheadon (Nov 30, 2007)

Raisltin Majere said:


> Hmmm,
> 
> Well, I click the buttons and it does something.
> 
> Whats the best way to tell if it works? Change one I don't use (rooftop) and reboot, then see what it says?


FWIW, a reboot followed by seeing what it says doesn't tell you it's changed. That's exactly what I was doing - something (TiVoWeb?) is caching the change without actually applying it to the active values used by the TiVo - so although the numbers were changing and sticking after a reboot, they hadn't actually had any effect on the TiVo.

As a posting following yours says, I would think the fix is to move the "update resources" link onto the actual page that holds the resources. (And at the same time, make the "update resources" link apply all the changes from the form, so you don't have to press return on each value you change followed by the browser back button.)

BTW, I was sloppy with my language - I'm actually using TiVoWebPlus 2.0.0 on my UK TiVo and it seems to work fine - what is it about TiVoWebPlus that means you guys are using the old TiVoWeb instead?

Mark


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

TCM2007 said:


> You've probably made a typo in the code leaving a > from one of the HTML tags.


Yeah, but where do they come from? There are no actual html tags in the code.

I'm guessing where we have [html_form_start...] [html_form_end] it turns the ']' into '>' and I have an extra one, can't see it though.


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## johala_reewi (Oct 30, 2002)

mark.wheadon said:


> I'm actually using TiVoWebPlus 2.0.0 on my UK TiVo and it seems to work fine - what is it about TiVoWebPlus that means you guys are using the old TiVoWeb instead?
> 
> Mark


I am still using Tivoweb because it works 
I tried TWP 1.3 and that didn't work very well on my tivo so went back to TW.
Haven't tried TWP 2 mainly because I haven't ported the xtivoweb module to TWP2.
And while TW still works, I don't really need to (unless Pete wants to have a try )


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## johala_reewi (Oct 30, 2002)

Raisltin Majere said:


> Yeah, but where do they come from? There are no actual html tags in the code.
> 
> I'm guessing where we have [html_form_start...] [html_form_end] it turns the ']' into '>' and I have an extra one, can't see it though.


The [html_form_start...] and [html_form_end] call up TCL routines (somewhere in tivoweb) which generate the HTML for a form (and end of form). On the plus side, it means you can write tivoweb modules (in TCL) without knowing very much about HTML. On the minus side, you have no control over the HTML that gets generated.


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

So they're not tcl commands, then? But something lightn did to facilitate html forms?

Can I do it like in php and just write html to the browser with puts?


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## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

They are functions, written in TCL, which you'll find tucked away in one of the other modules (html.tcl if memory serves). That's one of the nice things about TCL - wite a routine anywhere in the code and you can call it from anywhere. You can also "patch" code really easily by just defining a function with the same name as an existing one - it will then take over wherever that code is called.


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

Oooh, never looked in there before.

Interesting, thanks


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## Pete77 (Aug 1, 2006)

Raisltin Majere said:


> Oooh, never looked in there before.
> 
> Interesting, thanks


Whereas I would look at the contents of the said module only in a state of fascinated horror.


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## Raisltin Majere (Mar 13, 2004)

I doubt it. I don't know tcl, but it's pretty straightforward to follow what those functions are doing.


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## johala_reewi (Oct 30, 2002)

Raisltin Majere said:


> So they're not tcl commands, then? But something lightn did to facilitate html forms?
> 
> Can I do it like in php and just write html to the browser with puts?


Yes.


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