# Download from Roamio v. Tivo Desktop Plus



## booboy97 (Sep 20, 2000)

Have an S3 and TivoHD and was thinking of upgrading to Roamio Pro in part because of traveling and wanting to take my shows with me on the plane.

How is the direct to iPad quality of the transfers from the Roamio compared to downloading and converting via Tivo Desktop Plus? I just don't like the two step process for Tivo Desktop.

Thanks!


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## markp99 (Mar 21, 2002)

There are 3 options for downloading. It's a tradeoff of quality, space and DL time - all much easier than TiVo Desktop to iOS devices.

For a 60 Minute program, I see the following:

Best: 2GB, 33 min
Medium: 1GB, 19 min
Basic: 687MB, 10 min


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Your sizes are off. Mine says...

Best 1GB
Medium 600MB
Basic 413MB

To me Best looks great. Medium is acceptable, but shows some blocking during fast motion. I have not tried Basic yet, but if it's worse then Medium I'd say it's probably only acceptable for talking head type shows.


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

Dan203 said:


> Your sizes are off...


 Is the encoding a fixed rate? Depending on the input source you may end up with different size outputs.


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## Devx (Jun 1, 2006)

moyekj said:


> Is the encoding a fixed rate? Depending on the input source you may end up with different size outputs.


It must be variable, different shows, all of the same length, have varying sizes after conversion. It would also help explain OOH downloading updating its calculated size as it converts the file.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

moyekj said:


> Is the encoding a fixed rate? Depending on the input source you may end up with different size outputs.


Maybe. However I tried both an HD and a SD file and both showed 1GB for best.


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## markp99 (Mar 21, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> Your sizes are off. Mine says...
> 
> Best 1GB
> Medium 600MB
> ...


Sorry, Bad example, the program I looked at had a recording time of 1:22. Oddly enough the program name was "60 Minutes".  

An actual 60 minute recording:

Best: 1GB, 16 min
Medium: 600 MB, 9 min
Basic: 338MB, 5 min


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

So that translates to these download bit rates which I believe matches the bit range rate Margret posted elsewhere:
1000 MBytes * 8 bits/Byte / 3600 secs = 2.22 Mbps
600 MBytes * 8 bits/Byte / 3600 secs = 1.33 Mbps
413 MBytes * 8 bits/Byte / 3600 secs = 0.92 Mbps

Is there any indication anywhere of the resolutions of each?

As a comparison point of reference my Slingbox 350 can give me 1920x1080 H.264 captures up to 7 Mbps and of course via TTG you can generate encoding rates higher than that (or preserve the original source recording).


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

markp99 said:


> Sorry, Bad example, the program I looked at had a recording time of 1:22. Oddly enough the program name was "60 Minutes".
> 
> An actual 60 minute recording:
> 
> ...


Those are the values I see on my iPhone. On my iPad Basic is the higher value I mentioned.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

moyekj said:


> So that translates to these download bit rates which I believe matches the bit range rate Margret posted elsewhere:
> 1000 MBytes * 8 bits/Byte / 3600 secs = 2.22 Mbps
> 600 MBytes * 8 bits/Byte / 3600 secs = 1.33 Mbps
> 413 MBytes * 8 bits/Byte / 3600 secs = 0.92 Mbps
> ...


The full system information screen shows resolution and bitrate on the clients tab when downloading. I just ran tests on my iPhone and iPad and here are the results...

iPhone
Basic 544x400 600kbps
Medium 960x540 1.24mbps
Best 960x540 2.24mbps

iPad
Basic 544x400 800kbps
Medium 960x540 1.24mbps
Best 1280x720 2.24mbps

The most curious one is the iPhone Best. It's the same bitrate as the iPad but lower resolution. They should be able to lower the bitrate and get the same visual quality. In fact we have a calculation for this in VideoReDo i should look it up and run the numbers and see what it should be.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Dan203 said:


> The full system information screen shows resolution and bitrate on the clients tab when downloading. I just ran tests on my iPhone and iPad and here are the results...
> 
> iPhone
> Basic 544x400 600kbps
> ...


So 720P streaming is the max? Have they said anything about higher resolution streaming? I think the Slingbox does up to 1080P streaming. Or maybe that's only to a PC?


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

aaronwt said:


> So 720P streaming is the max? Have they said anything about higher resolution streaming? I think the Slingbox does up to 1080P streaming. Or maybe that's only to a PC?


 As I posted above Slingbox 350/500 can do 1920x1080 H.264 at least up to 7 Mbps. I haven't tried capturing streams with rate higher than 7 Mbps but it may be possible. The older Slingbox Pro HD is limited to up to 720p resolution.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

TiVo has said they are working on a better adaptive streaming system which will include a broader range of resolutions and bitrates. Maybe when that's done they'll get it up to 1080p?

P.S. I ran the quality factor calculation on the numbers and something strange came up. The resolution differences make up for all of the bitrate differences. So, as far as compression goes, all 3 streams on the iPad are equivalent. You should not see any more macroblocking on Basic then you do on Best. The only difference should be that the Basic stream will look softer and maybe a bit more jagged because it's being upsampled from a lower resolution. That also means that the highest quality encode in the whole mix is actually the iPhone Best mode. It is dedicating more bits per pixel then all the other modes on both devices.


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