# HD Photo Viewer not true HD



## martymart (Oct 21, 2007)

Even with the latest version of TivoDesktop, photos displayed on my Tivo S3 are not even close to the quality they should be looking at true HD (heavy artifacting). Also, the photos do not quite fill the full screen with a margin of a few pixels on each side.

Does anyone know why this is? And is there a way to remedy this? Is Tivo expected to release a 'better' photo viewer?


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## Joybob (Oct 2, 2007)

martymart said:


> Even with the latest version of TivoDesktop, photos displayed on my Tivo S3 are not even close to the quality they should be looking at true HD (heavy artifacting). Also, the photos do not quite fill the full screen with a margin of a few pixels on each side.
> 
> Does anyone know why this is? And is there a way to remedy this? Is Tivo expected to release a 'better' photo viewer?


Are you using the regular photo viewer or the 2.0 photo viewer?


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## Testpattern (Dec 5, 2006)

Joybob said:


> Are you using the regular photo viewer or the 2.0 photo viewer?


Not trying to speak for Martymart, but I have the same concerns... and I'm using 2.0.

Is there a thread or information somewhere which would guide someone to optimizing their picture quality in HD when viewing via Desktop?

Viewing pictures in HD is not very impressive from what I've seen so far. Admittedly, I may be the problem.


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## Joybob (Oct 2, 2007)

Testpattern said:


> Not trying to speak for Martymart, but I have the same concerns... and I'm using 2.0.
> 
> Is there a thread or information somewhere which would guide someone to optimizing their picture quality in HD when viewing via Desktop?
> 
> Viewing pictures in HD is not very impressive from what I've seen so far. Admittedly, I may be the problem.


Ok. My theory is the following. 1080i works out to 1920×1080, or 2,073,600 pixels in total. So no matter what the Tivo does your picture will only show up as a 2 megapixel image.


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## tootal2 (Oct 14, 2005)

martymart said:


> Even with the latest version of TivoDesktop, photos displayed on my Tivo S3 are not even close to the quality they should be looking at true HD (heavy artifacting). Also, the photos do not quite fill the full screen with a margin of a few pixels on each side.
> 
> Does anyone know why this is? And is there a way to remedy this? Is Tivo expected to release a 'better' photo viewer?


Tivo is compressing your photos. thats why they look like that.


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## Chimpware (Jan 30, 2002)

Well I have a very good comparison in my setup. I have a Mac Mini connected by DVI/HDMI and my Tivo HD connected by HDMI to a Sony 1080p LCD. The pictures from the Tivo are OK, but do not seem to be HD using 2.0 , while the pictures from the Mac screen saver look unbelievable and I am using the same exact source files for both.


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## Saxion (Sep 18, 2006)

Sounds to me like you are still running the old SD viewer, not the new HD viewer.

To run the HD app, you have to install TiVo Desktop 2.5, then go to Tivo Server Properties and select "Preview Photos 2.0 (With HD Support) for Series 3".

You also have to have the latest Java runtime installed (from Sun) on your PC.

A confirmation window might pop up asking permission to run the HD photo app.

You'll know everything is working when you go to your TiVo and see 2 different photo applications listed under "Music, Photos, Products and More". The HD app runs a little differently too (the look & feel is different, and it fades between each photo in slideshow mode).

The HD photo app unfortunately still has gaps around all the edges of the photos (i.e. it doesn't use up the entire screen to display the photos). But the quality of the photos themselves is much improved from the old SD Photo app.


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## Joybob (Oct 2, 2007)

Chimpware said:


> Well I have a very good comparison in my setup. I have a Mac Mini connected by DVI/HDMI and my Tivo HD connected by HDMI to a Sony 1080p LCD. The pictures from the Tivo are OK, but do not seem to be HD using 2.0 , while the pictures from the Mac screen saver look unbelievable and I am using the same exact source files for both.


I think it might be due to the Tivo working in 720p while the Mac works at 1080p?

Confirm?


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## Saxion (Sep 18, 2006)

Joybob said:


> I think it might be due to the Tivo working in 720p


That's a good point, but doesn't explain things like the "compression artifacts" martymart reported. I only see compression artifacts in the old SD viewer; never in the HD viewer.


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## Joybob (Oct 2, 2007)

Saxion said:


> That's a good point, but doesn't explain things like the "compression artifacts" martymart reported. I only see compression artifacts in the old SD viewer; never in the HD viewer.


Well martymart hasn't said what he's comparing his picture quality to.


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## Chimpware (Jan 30, 2002)

Joybob said:


> I think it might be due to the Tivo working in 720p while the Mac works at 1080p?
> 
> Confirm?


Possibly, although Mac output is 1080i (upscaled by TV to 1080p).


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## George Cifranci (Jan 30, 2003)

We actually discussed this on the forum back when Tivo Desktop 2.4 Preview came out which I believe first introduced HD photos.

I have a Sony KDS-R60XBR1 that runs native in 1080p (although it only accepts up to a 1080i input it upconverts everything to 1080P).

When I set my TiVo S3 to "Native" video mode and look at the HD pictures the TV is saying the display is only 720P which is 1280x720. I think that is why they don't look so great. (Although 720P technically is "true HD") Certainly they don't look nearly as good as the photo viewer in my XBOX 360 or my Playstation 3 which might be showing photos in 1920x1080 (and hi-res digital photos look amazing on both of those consoles). Granted the XBOX 360 and PS3 has loads more horsepower and memory.

When you look at the photos the viewer looks like this right?

http://www.cifrancis.com/tivo/photos_hd.jpg

http://www.cifrancis.com/tivo/photos_hd2.jpg

http://www.cifrancis.com/tivo/photos_hd3.jpg

I just wanted to be sure you are selecting the new HD photo interface from the "Music, Photos and More menu" and not the old one.


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## martymart (Oct 21, 2007)

Yep - running the latest version of Tivo desktop.

A 2 megapixel image will not look great if you print it on paper to be the size of your tv on a regular ink jet - partly because printed items need to be around 300 dpi to look decent - while a screen image needs much much less (in part becuase it is backlit i think and is producing its own colors vs relying on refelcted light) so yes the 2 megapixel image will great on screen becuase that truly is hd.

for the hardware that truly outputs a 1080p signal like a mac laptop, or a playstation, xbox - these pictures look great. Tivo for what ever reason is scaling the image or not outputing quite 1080p.

So.........surely they know this and will address it with an update to Tivo Desktop - otherwise I think I will need to purchase some other piece of hardware to view my images.


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## greg_burns (May 22, 2004)

My TV does 1080i. I can not tell the difference between 1920x1080 pictures taken with my Sony DSC-T10 using my Xbox360, the TV's built-in Sony picture viewer from a memory stick, or my S3.

Granted my TV is only 30" widescreen HD CRT.


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## Saxion (Sep 18, 2006)

George Cifranci said:


> When you look at the photos the viewer looks like this right?


That's a great test...the presence of the "Flickr Interesting" folder is a dead giveaway, since only the HD viewer shows this. *If you don't see "Flickr Interesting", you aren't running the HD viewer.*

If the 720p that results from "native mode" video output is a concern, try setting your video output to 1080i Fixed instead. Personally, I can see no difference between 720p and 1080i on my 50" plasma, but YMMV.

martymart: I'm curious how you found "heavy artifacting" using the HD viewer. I don't see any artifacting at all (but definitely "heavy artifacting" in the old SD viewer).


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

The new photo viewer runs at 720p (which is a HD format). If your TV is a 1080i/1080p TV, then the TV will upscale the image to 1080 (i or p is irrelevant since it's a static image).

This means that if the image you are viewing has a resolution higher than 1280x720 than the image will be shrunk by the TiVo (or TiVo Desktop) to fit on the screen. If it's less than 1280x720, then it is displayed actual size.

FWIW, I have a 1080p TV and there is a noticeable increase in quality between the old image viewer and the new HME based image viewer.


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## Saxion (Sep 18, 2006)

morac said:


> The new photo viewer runs at 720p (which is a HD format).


Actually, the HD photo viewer will run at whatever resolution the TiVo user interface is set for (720p or 1080i). If you set your Video Output Format to 1080i Fixed, the HD viewer will run at that resolution. Again, I see no appreciable difference with the HD photo viewer running at 720p vs 1080i on my display (even when displaying 8MP photos), but YMMV.


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## Joybob (Oct 2, 2007)

Saxion said:


> Actually, the HD photo viewer will run at whatever resolution the TiVo user interface is set for (720p or 1080i). If you set your Video Output Format to 1080i Fixed, the HD viewer will run at that resolution. Again, I see no appreciable difference with the HD photo viewer running at 720p vs 1080i on my display (even when displaying 8MP photos), but YMMV.


I'm pretty sure it's only upscaling to 1080i; it's not 1080i native.


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## control-z (Mar 4, 2004)

It looked pretty good to me when I tried it last night, EXCEPT for the 10-20 pixel grey border around the outside of the screen...


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Joybob said:


> I'm pretty sure it's only upscaling to 1080i; it's not 1080i native.


That is correct. 
It will upscale from the 720p image to 1080i if you set the TiVo to 1080i fixed, the same way it will upscale SD channels to 1080i.


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## Saxion (Sep 18, 2006)

morac said:


> That is correct.
> It will upscale from the 720p image to 1080i if you set the TiVo to 1080i fixed, the same way it will upscale SD channels to 1080i.


Ahh, so it's rendered by the photo app at 720p regardless. Thanks, I didn't know that! Probably explains why I don't see any difference between 720p and 1080i.


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## DiGNAN17 (Jan 17, 2002)

I'm sorry, but to me, both photo viewers look the same: total crap. Photos look _horrible_ on my Tivo, and this is simply unacceptable. I set my folks up with an AppleTV, and photos on their 720p television look _gorgeous!_ Then I look at the hideous quality of the photos on my Series 3/1080p TV, and it's just not acceptable. This is poor work on Tivo's part.


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## Dennis Wilkinson (Sep 24, 2001)

The main difference between the AppleTV and an HD TiVo is that in the case of the AppleTV, the pictures are being decompressed and scaled, where with a TiVo, the photos are being decompressed, scaled, recompressed (on your PC), then decompressed and possibly scaled (from 720p to your selected output format) on the TiVo. It's that recompression that likely introduces new artifacts; I don't know how much quantization is happening at that stage.

The AppleTV _might_ be scaling twice; my recollection is that internally it's rendering a 1280x720 raster and then using a hardware scaler to convert that to 1080i if needed.

I haven't done a comparison, but it's possible (likely, really) that the Mac and Windows desktops output different quality photos when used with Photos 2.0. I've mostly used Photos 2.0 with my Mac TiVo Desktop, and the photos usually look pretty good. Admittedly, I don't have an Apple TV for comparison.


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## DiGNAN17 (Jan 17, 2002)

> The main difference between the AppleTV and an HD TiVo is that in the case of the AppleTV, the pictures are being decompressed and scaled, where with a TiVo, the photos are being decompressed, scaled, recompressed (on your PC), then decompressed and possibly scaled (from 720p to your selected output format) on the TiVo.


Yeah, and it's doing a poor job of it. I'm a bit insulted that Tivo is calling it HD when it looks so very bad. Did they even try it themselves?

All I know is that there's no way I could invite people over for a slideshow and show them photos that look like this. It's simply unacceptable.


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## Saxion (Sep 18, 2006)

The TiVo HD viewer looks great on my set (my XBox 360 is a hair better, but that's mainly because it uses the full screen real estate with no grey border around the edges). In particular, I don't see any color banding, compression artifacts, etc. I don't know why you are having such problems with the HD viewer.


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## George Cifranci (Jan 30, 2003)

Saxion said:


> The TiVo HD viewer looks great on my set (my XBox 360 is a hair better, but that's mainly because it uses the full screen real estate with no grey border around the edges). In particular, I don't see any color banding, compression artifacts, etc. I don't know why you are having such problems with the HD viewer.


What kind of HDTV do you have? Make/model? What is the max resolution? 720P? 1080P?

On my 1920x1080 60" Sony SXRD (R60XBR1) my XBOX 360 connected at 1080i looks way more than a hair better than the Tivo Series 3, it blows it away. I suspect that is because the Tivo is just outputing at 1280x720 and the XBOX 360 (and my PS3) are outputting 1920x1600.


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## DiGNAN17 (Jan 17, 2002)

> What kind of HDTV do you have? Make/model? What is the max resolution? 720P? 1080P?
> 
> On my 1920x1080 60" Sony SXRD (R60XBR1) my XBOX 360 connected at 1080i looks way more than a hair better than the Tivo Series 3, it blows it away.


I have almost the exact same TV as you (XBR2), and I guess I'm getting the same results! What gives? Is it something we're doing?


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## George Cifranci (Jan 30, 2003)

DiGNAN17 said:


> I have almost the exact same TV as you (XBR2), and I guess I'm getting the same results! What gives? Is it something we're doing?


Your XBR2 differs from from XBR1 in that yours can accept a 1080P input whereas mine can only accept up to a 1080i input (they both run natively in 1080P however).

I think the problem with the Tivo's digital photo output quality is that it only outputs in 1280x720. If you have your Tivo's video output set to "Native" display a picture and then press Display on your Sony XBR2 remote and it should say 720P.

My XBOX 360 and Playstation 3 are connected to my HDTV at 1080i so I would assume that is 1920x1080 (my digital photos are way higher resolution than that even) which I think is why their photo display output quality is so much better (that and Microsoft and Sony have more resources to throw at a extra feature like this).


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## s2kdave (Jan 28, 2005)

when using HME (which the HD photos app certainly is), then the tivo only reports that it supports 720p resolution max even if it is set at 1080. So the photos app changes the resolution to 720 regardless of what your video output is set to. Even so, I have noticed a slight bit of artifacting when drawing the image. What I think is happening is it is converting the image to another format so that it can be drawn by the graphics device which may very well be an mpeg2 stream the same way it draws tv content. And converting to that format is known to be lossy and introduces artifacts.


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## DiGNAN17 (Jan 17, 2002)

s2kdave said:


> when using HME (which the HD photos app certainly is), then the tivo only reports that it supports 720p resolution max even if it is set at 1080. So the photos app changes the resolution to 720 regardless of what your video output is set to. Even so, I have noticed a slight bit of artifacting when drawing the image. What I think is happening is it is converting the image to another format so that it can be drawn by the graphics device which may very well be an mpeg2 stream the same way it draws tv content. And converting to that format is known to be lossy and introduces artifacts.


I think that is a definite possibility. That certainly rings true for me from the "look" of the images on the screen.


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## Saxion (Sep 18, 2006)

George Cifranci said:


> What kind of HDTV do you have? Make/model? What is the max resolution? 720P? 1080P?


It's a 768p 50" plasma. So yes, that could explain why you see more of a difference between a 1920x1080 photo app (XBox) and a 1280x720 photo app (TiVo) than I do. But when DiGNAN17 says the TiVo photo app is "total crap" and "horrible", I just don't get that. It looks like a fine 720p image to me (and _vastly _ improved from the old SD photo app). Are all 720p signals (ABC, Fox) "total crap" on your SXRD, or is it just the TiVo photo viewer?


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## DiGNAN17 (Jan 17, 2002)

It is just the photo viewer.

A question for those of you who think the viewer looks fine: how does the menu for Photos 2.0 look to you? To me they look bad. Very pixelated and much worse than the S3 menus.

I just checked the photo viewer again, and it still looks bad to my eyes. I see a lot of artifacting, like when you shrink an image down, then blow it back up again. Also, all my photos are stretched too much. The Tivo is trying to make them full screen (well, with those annoying black borders).


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## George Cifranci (Jan 30, 2003)

Actually the Photos 2.0 menus look to be more HD than the Tivo menus look (which are not made for HD). I took some pics of what they look like on my Sony R60XBR1 HDTV.

http://www.cifrancis.com/tivo/photos_hd.jpg

http://www.cifrancis.com/tivo/photos_hd2.jpg

http://www.cifrancis.com/tivo/photos_hd3.jpg

http://www.cifrancis.com/tivo/photos_hd4.jpg

http://www.cifrancis.com/tivo/photos_hd5.jpg

http://www.cifrancis.com/tivo/photos_hd_flickr.jpg

http://www.cifrancis.com/tivo/photos_hd_flickr2.jpg

http://www.cifrancis.com/tivo/photos_hd_flickr3.jpg


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## Optics (Nov 13, 2001)

control-z said:


> It looked pretty good to me when I tried it last night, EXCEPT for the 10-20 pixel grey border around the outside of the screen...


Is there any way to get rid of the border? There was some discussion about it in this thread, but no solution.


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## njdtivo (Nov 11, 2002)

I started the referenced thread. To my knowledge there is still no resolution to this.


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## minckster (Aug 31, 2006)

Dennis Wilkinson said:


> I've mostly used Photos 2.0 with my Mac TiVo Desktop, and the photos usually look pretty good.


 Dennis is being modest. He provided instructions for using Photos 2.0 on Macs in the "Anyone get HD-Photos to work as standalone HME?" thread. Thanks Dennis!


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## shady (May 31, 2002)

martymart said:


> Yep - running the latest version of Tivo desktop.


Yes but are you sure you are running the HD photo app and not the SD app


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## taxelrod (Dec 27, 2007)

I've also been unhappy with the poor image quality of my photos when displayed by the HD photo app. As an experiment, I tried viewing the same photos after uploading them to Picasa and then using the Photos and Slideshows/My Photos page on the TiVo. They look very much better than when displayed by the TiVo from the TiVo desktop server on my PC. The size is unchanged (still have significant unused screen space), but they are crisply focused rather than blurry. So, at least for the resolution issue, it looks like the culprit is the TiVo desktop server on the PC (I'm using 2.5.1)


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

taxelrod said:


> So, at least for the resolution issue, it looks like the culprit is the TiVo desktop server on the PC (I'm using 2.5.1)


Interesting.

Have you tried it with pyTivo and my photo module? (Instructions for using it with the HD Photos HME app are in the thread.) To me, on my set, it looks sharp (sometimes too sharp, with jaggies).


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## AZ_Tivo (Jan 17, 2005)

wmcbrine said:


> Interesting.
> 
> Have you tried it with pyTivo and my photo module? (Instructions for using it with the HD Photos HME app are in the thread.) To me, on my set, it looks sharp (sometimes too sharp, with jaggies).


I just added the photo module. It shows the photos option and all the folders, sub folders but at the end shows a broken frame instead of picture. What am I missing?


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## George Cifranci (Jan 30, 2003)

taxelrod said:


> I've also been unhappy with the poor image quality of my photos when displayed by the HD photo app. As an experiment, I tried viewing the same photos after uploading them to Picasa and then using the Photos and Slideshows/My Photos page on the TiVo. They look very much better than when displayed by the TiVo from the TiVo desktop server on my PC. The size is unchanged (still have significant unused screen space), but they are crisply focused rather than blurry. So, at least for the resolution issue, it looks like the culprit is the TiVo desktop server on the PC (I'm using 2.5.1)


I too was disappointed with the image quality, but I recently upgraded to the latest version of Tivo Desktop (2.6) and I might be imagining things, but I think they actually improved the quality of images displayed. Not quite as good as my Playstation 3 or XBOX 360, but they look better than they did originally.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

AZ_Tivo said:


> I just added the photo module. It shows the photos option and all the folders, sub folders but at the end shows a broken frame instead of picture. What am I missing?


That's not enough information to go on. You should have some error messages in the pyTivo window or log file.

Did you remember to install the Python Imaging Library?

Note that all the versions of the plugin in that thread are deprecated. You should be using a recent version of pyTivo that already comes with the plugin, not adding it in. (But you'll still need to install the Python Imaging Library separately.)


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## AZ_Tivo (Jan 17, 2005)

wmcbrine said:


> That's not enough information to go on. You should have some error messages in the pyTivo window or log file.
> 
> Did you remember to install the Python Imaging Library?
> 
> Note that all the versions of the plugin in that thread are deprecated. You should be using a recent version of pyTivo that already comes with the plugin, not adding it in. (But you'll still need to install the Python Imaging Library separately.)


Where do I find the error log file?

I was missing the Python Imaging library which I installd. But it gaves me a few errors while installing. There was a problem with some files and setting keys etc.

Errors
1. Could not create ................... PIL-py2.5
2. Could not set a key va............ Python 2.5 PIL-1.1.6 
3. Could not set a key value ....... "C:\Python25\RemovePIL.exe" -u "C:\Python25\PIL -wininst.log"

I did get the latest version from website and not from the links mentioned here.

I am on Windows Vista Ultimate and logged in as an admin.

Thanks.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

AZ_Tivo said:


> I was missing the Python Imaging library which I installd. But it gaves me a few errors while installing.


Better try it again, then. I can't really help you with that... it was very straightforward for me. (I didn't try it on Vista, though.) I can only tell you that the photo module won't work if PIL isn't installed properly, and it sounds like it isn't.


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## AZ_Tivo (Jan 17, 2005)

wmcbrine said:


> Better try it again, then. I can't really help you with that... it was very straightforward for me. (I didn't try it on Vista, though.) I can only tell you that the photo module won't work if PIL isn't installed properly, and it sounds like it isn't.


I tried installing different versions of PIL and I get the same error. I will try it on my other PC (WinXP) on same network.


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