TiVo Youtube on TiVo

philwhite100 · 24-11-2011, 00:46

As i do not have TiVo yet i was wondering what the quality of Youtube is like?

Is it like what is displayed on the PC, small window and alike or does it play fullscreen.

Thanks.

djfunkdup · 24-11-2011, 05:00

Since the 15:2 update i would say the picture quality is much better...

I have not yet had a go at watching HD stuff from youtube on my Tivo yet..i just got the update about an hr ago....

hope this helps..

edit: sorry i never answered your question about full screen..yes it plays on full screen,before the update a lot of stuff from youtube looked pixellated but as i said before the quality is much better now

zantarous · 24-11-2011, 09:04

15.2 now allows you to play videos in HD movie trails now look crisp.

fixerman · 25-11-2011, 07:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by zantarous

15.2 now allows you to play videos in HD movie trails now look crisp.

.....yeah but, the interface is pants. It is a huge step backwards with no ability to log in to your You Tube account to see any videos of your own or access your favourites or your subscriptions. Searching is very difficult with a basic on screen interface. The old app is still available thankfully. I cannot understand how anybody would think the new app was an improvement.

denphone · 25-11-2011, 07:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by fixerman

.....yeah but, the interface is pants. It is a huge step backwards with no ability to log in to your You Tube account to see any videos of your own or access your favourites or your subscriptions. Searching is very difficult with a basic on screen interface. The old app is still available thankfully. I cannot understand how anybody would think the new app was an improvement.

l seem to be able to log in but when it says save a song to your playlists l do that but when l go to the playlists there is nothing there at all and l personally blame it on Google who do not seem to put enough work into their apps sometimes.

fixerman · 25-11-2011, 07:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by denphone

l seem to be able to log in but when it says save a song to your playlists l do that but when l go to the playlists there is nothing there at all and l personally blame it on Google who do not seem to put enough work into their apps sometimes.

Where on the new app does it allow you to log in to You Tube?

denphone · 25-11-2011, 07:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by fixerman

Where on the new app does it allow you to log in to You Tube?

l log in down the left hand side of the Youtube app and its the 7th one down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqBUhaoht_Y

anap · 25-11-2011, 08:05

denphone, that's the old version (Although it's still available in 'Apps & Games' -> 'All Apps & Games').

denphone · 25-11-2011, 08:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by anap

denphone, that's the old version (Although it's still available in 'Apps & Games' -> 'All Apps & Games').

Oh dear.

zantarous · 25-11-2011, 10:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by fixerman

.....yeah but, the interface is pants. It is a huge step backwards with no ability to log in to your You Tube account to see any videos of your own or access your favourites or your subscriptions. Searching is very difficult with a basic on screen interface. The old app is still available thankfully. I cannot understand how anybody would think the new app was an improvement.

Oh yeah I concur with all of that. Also I don't like the fact that it auto plays the next video in your search, it doesn't let you see the full title of a video. Navigation is slow and cumbersome, it's buggy, nor similar video suggestions or more from this user option.

Quite frankly it is a very poor improvement but I guess they are trying to standardise it across platforms which means that a lot of stuff is going to be sacraficed to make it simple to use.

No favourites or subscriptions is just madness though surely that is how most people use YouTube? Hopefully there will be a update to address these issues.

Oh and most annoying of all go to explore this show and select YouTube watch the video then you are stuck in the app I could not find a way back to the screen I had just come from. I had to press exit which dumps you back in live TV.

But at least we can watch HD video which looks a thousand times better and search using a keyboard or smartphone/tablet/PC.

zekeisaszekedoes · 25-11-2011, 12:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by fixerman

.....yeah but, the interface is pants. It is a huge step backwards with no ability to log in to your You Tube account to see any videos of your own or access your favourites or your subscriptions. Searching is very difficult with a basic on screen interface. The old app is still available thankfully. I cannot understand how anybody would think the new app was an improvement.

The new app allows searching by USB keyboard, which is much faster than using navigation buttons on the remote to enter letters one by one. That's why I like it. Though it definitely requires more options if it is to replace the old one completely at some point.

REM · 25-11-2011, 13:49

I tried it last night and the picture quality was stunning. This is obviously dependant on the source, but it certainly works.

Searching is a pain. I didn't know about the USB keyboard so will give that a go.

zekeisaszekedoes · 25-11-2011, 14:43

True, despite a slow startup and simplistic interface what swings it for me is the searching by USB keyboard (sadly not SMS style by remote) and the right sources defaulting to higher quality 720p and 1080p streams where available. Much faster and easier to use, especially when you're gathered round the TV with a few friends, drinking. The older one was a lot more clunky.

This raises an interesting question about the power of the VM TiVo... AFAIK high def streams on YouTube tend to be AVC-1/H.264 whereas everything broadcast and recorded on the box itself is MPEG-2 (DVD standard). If it isn't been transcoded before it reaches the box, which could explain the slowdown on some HD streams, then does this mean the SoC in there can decode H.264 natively?

I'm sure no-one can answer that question but it is a good one!

zantarous · 25-11-2011, 14:49

There is a bit on the Tivo site that says Tivo can only play H.264 encoded videos from Youtube which means none of the Flash ones like 4OD or C5 catch up work, so yes it can and always has.

The box can also do MPEG4 which also uses H.264 so if VM ever get HD broadcasting in MPEG4 then watch the amount of HD content you can record double. They will need to get rid of all the SA V+ boxes first as that is the only HD box that can't do MPEG4.

zekeisaszekedoes · 25-11-2011, 14:55

I didn't know the first part of that, but the second part I figured that all the old SD only boxes would need to disappear, not just the HD-capable ones, before VM moved their entire network to MPEG-4. Which would mean more channels, and hopefully better quality. After all, I can't see ITV streams of the same bitrate being any more awful looking than they already are!