# Tivo Input RGB settings



## tivo525235 (Aug 21, 2004)

The black & white crushing on my tivo when in RGB has been annoying me for some time, and after much searching I came across LJ's page which mentions 0x42 on the i2c bus.

Having read the manual for the chip thats at this address, it seems to me that the correct values for the input side of the Tivo should be as follows (the ITU settings in the docs): 

0x2a = 128
0x2b = 64 (or 68 possibly)
0x2c = 64

So setting them as ./iicsetw 0x42 0x2a 128 etc

I rebooted to wipe out my existing iicsetw settings for the output side and tried this from a telnet prompt and it looks to me as if the blacks are being preserved correctly. I personally found 0x2a to be nicer with 136 as its value, but that might depend on the levels being output by the device attached. In this case a Samsung STB.

Reading around the forum, it looks like the common feeling is that the settings in LJ's patch are ignored and so the only way to apply these is with iicsetw from a telnet prompt. Of course this gets wiped out on every channel change which makes it useless.

Has anyone found a way to set these settings correctly without manually resetting them every single time you change channel? I saw mention of a modified palmod which might do that, but I was unable to find this. 

Now we have an iicsetw which doesn't lock the Tivo up, is there another way we could do this?


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## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

Talking of I2C Could somebody remind me of what chip is at 0x8C and functions of registers 0x38 and 0x39 ?


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## blindlemon (May 12, 2002)

tivo525235 said:


> the only way to apply these is with iicsetw from a telnet prompt. Of course this gets wiped out on every channel change which makes it useless


Why do you want to change the input side?

Changes made to the output side at startup with iicsetw persist until a reboot and seem to satisfy most people.

See here for the full story


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## tivo525235 (Aug 21, 2004)

blindlemon said:


> Why do you want to change the input side?
> 
> Changes made to the output side at startup with iicsetw persist until a reboot and seem to satisfy most people.
> 
> See here for the full story


For a long time I was under the impression that changing the output was the right way to do it simply because the UI and in particular the SKY One logo in the UI was so bright.

I have since decided that the UI is bright simply because Tivo chose colours which looked good on the composite output. When in RGB mode the colours appear brighter. I suspect they also changed the input settings to try and compensate for losses caused by composite input into the tivo.

A file from my Tivo found its way onto my PC and the black & white crushing is still present, so to me that suggests the input side is where we need to correct it. My manual changes produce results which look vastly better on my TV.

It makes sense to me that we should set the input & output chips to the default ITU setttings.


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## Ian_m (Jan 9, 2001)

One of the issues I have found in fiddling is getting a suitable test image, try to use a "live TV" is hard due to fact that you have no control over the input (in my case DTT box).

Anyway what I needed was test patterns, preferably shades of grey ie like one of those test DVD's.

So what I have done (only briefly) is downloaded suitable patterns from http://www.vesa.org/public/Fpdm2/Test Patterns/ and connected the TV out on my portable to the AUX in on TiVo (composite only at present....). Then used XP's preview to cycle/select a suitable image. There are many resolutions (and patterns) and I used 1280x720 which gives a correct aspect ratio on a widescreen TV, though line/pixels are lost in TV out conversion the gray-scales and blocks etc are all usable.

Tried to put on a DVD as a picture show but my DVD writer software (ULead Moviefactory 2) just placed the 16:9 pictures in a 4:3 frame and not full screen so not much use.


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## sanderton (Jan 4, 2002)

tivo525235 said:


> Reading around the forum, it looks like the common feeling is that the settings in LJ's patch are ignored and so the only way to apply these is with iicsetw from a telnet prompt. Of course this gets wiped out on every channel change which makes it useless.
> 
> Has anyone found a way to set these settings correctly without manually resetting them every single time you change channel? I saw mention of a modified palmod which might do that, but I was unable to find this.
> 
> Now we have an iicsetw which doesn't lock the Tivo up, is there another way we could do this?


You could modify Endpad easily enough to do a special wake up just after a recording starts and issue the icsetw command - I presume it can take effect mid recording?


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