TiVo : My experience with Tivo

"You haven't posted in the wrong forum. We're looking at the issues reported. (I work in TV Development at VM )"



Thanks for that encouraging reply,

I suppose we are all on a learning curb, installers, support staff, and users,

Using advice from this forum and from DM's, I have got my HD picture looking ok, I tend to watch only HD in the main so hopefully, I can stick with it

Once again I appreciate all the replies I have received

[gordyb]

Originally Posted by pythagoras

Actually Ken I dont think thats correct. It does seem like there are two camps of people one camp tries to say TiVo is the holy grail and the other side try to make it out to be the Devil. However the vast majority are magnanimous.

Clearly some people have problems with TiVo and some do not. You have and that should be investigated by VM. I dont think its a generic problem with TiVo though and probably a bad batch as there seems to be, although I havnt carried out a poll, more people happy with the sd pq than unhappy.

That dosnt mean that there isnt a problem with some installations.

Regards

John.

---------- Post added at 23:48 ---------- Previous post was at 23:47 ----------



I was quoting you, who does not own a TiVo, not Ken. Ken has a valid opinion on TiVo, you do not as you have no experience with one.

Regards

John.

To say that a vast majority say there is nothing wrong with the SD on Tivo and a very small amount of people have problems with the SD on Tivo is ridiculous,there is a far bigger round of people who are not happy with the SD quality than you are saying,if you want the evidence look around its not difficult to find.

[carlwaring]

Care to post some stats to back that up?

Perhaps those who are happy are simply not posting to say so becasue, well, that's what people do. ie only post/complain when something is not right, rather than when everything's fine.

PQ is a personal and subjective issue anyway so who's to say who's right and who's wrong?

Originally Posted by gordyb

To say that a vast majority say there is nothing wrong with the SD on Tivo and a very small amount of people have problems with the SD on Tivo is ridiculous,there is a far bigger round of people who are not happy with the SD quality than you are saying,if you want the evidence look around its not difficult to find.

Hi
Just as a follow up to my original post and after much help and advice by the forum and by DM's , through many tweaks I seem to have got my HD picture right, I think as good as my old V+ box, although its difficult to remember it now, well at least I have stopped complaining so it looks as if it is ok now

As for SD well that is still very poor, still like looking at the picture through a lens smeared with Vaseline

I try to keep on HD only, but when I can't, I grin and bear it as you do

I will be sticking with my TiVo box as the more I use it the more I "get it" just hope that in the future VM fix the SD PQ quality, I have confidence they will,

Thanks all, Im off to watch my TiVo box now

[pythagoras]

Originally Posted by gordyb

To say that a vast majority say there is nothing wrong with the SD on Tivo and a very small amount of people have problems with the SD on Tivo is ridiculous,there is a far bigger round of people who are not happy with the SD quality than you are saying,if you want the evidence look around its not difficult to find.

I didnt say the vast majority where happy and I didnt say a very small amount of people where unhappy. If you check the Tivo support forum its split 50 50 between people who are happy with the pq and people who arent. Sort out the signal levels seems to improve the pq.

Heres two qoutes from one person over there: Maybe of some help to you Ken

This is his initial thoughts

"I just switched from Sky, and the picture quality on most SD channels is really terrible. I'm pretty technical and have some experience in the DVR building area, so I don't know if maybe these observations tie in with anyone elses experience or understanding...

1. There is an element of this that is down to the TiVo upscaling badly. This is confirmed by the fact that if I set the video output of the TiVo to 576p only (so all the upscaling is being done by the TV), the quality of SD channels increases noticably (to the point where they are at least comparable to Sky). Unfortunately this is not a "solution", because then the whole interface and all the HD content is output at only standard def.

2. It is not *all* down to the scaling, because one of the main problems that I see (especially noticable on scrolling text on the BBC News channel for example) is a lot of compression artefacts around the edges of the text (i.e. "macroblocks"). Now my first assumption was that the stream coming in from Virgin was very compressed, but based on the fact that people here are saying that reverting to a V+ box gets better quality, the only remaining explanation that makes sense is that on TiVo you are not seeing the live stream even when you watch live - it is compressing/storing the stream and then you are watching the output of that process.

On the upscaling front, I guess it comes down to whether they scaler is hardware or software. If it is software, and if there is enough CPU headroom on the box, then it is conceivable that they could push an update that would improve the quality, but if it's a hardware scaler then we're permanently screwed. The only light at the end of the tunnel here is that i think it must be a software scaler, just on the basis that I can't imagine a hardware scaler ever being that bad

For the compression - that's just irritating. They've given me a box with a *terabyte* of storage, there's absolutely no need to be heavy handed with the compression. You'd seriously hope that they could either flick a switch to turn down the compression (at the expense of the amount of TV recordable of course), or at least give the option to change the quality settings.

Out of interest, for anyone who switched from Sky - the reason Sky doesn't have these problems is that the Sky box just records the exact incoming bit stream, and then plays recordings back in exactly the same way they were coming in live - TiVo on the other hand has to reconstruct the incoming stream into a displayable format, then recompresses itself, so it is inherently going to be a little lower quality than Sky.

And to the people on these forums who are blaming the old codecs used for the problems - that's not really a fair argument. Newer/better codecs allow for better picture quality at any given level of compression, but there's nothing about the old ones that is inherently going to give you a worse result, it just means that you are going to have a larger file size to get the same level of quality.

Now I have the extremely difficult choice of having to decide which is more important to me - TiVo features, or Sky quality (in which case i've only got a few more days in the cooling off period to get Virgin to get rid of the TV service).

I suppose I could stick with Virgin TV now and get them to take the TiVo and give me a V+ box, but i've heard fairly bad things about the usability of the V+ box, and I wasn't actually unhappy with Sky - I only moved because of TiVo. Anyone in the same position?"


And after an engineers visit:

Ok, interesting development/s. The Virgin engineer found that the (signal strength?) was way out of acceptable tolerance (whatever he was measuring, he said that it should be between -2 and -15, and that he found mine to be +5). So he fixed that. I also did a "connect to the virgin network" thing in the settings/network menu, which i'm guessing maybe among other things checks for firmware updates? (just a guess, but whatever it did it took frickin' ages to download something). I also rebooted the box for good measure.

The result of these three things (the engineer's change, the update and the reboot) is a really significant improvement in SD quality, definitely in general clarity of the picture, but I swear there are also fewer compression artefacts. I'm not saying that the level of compression changed somehow, but anyone would notice the difference. I have photos of some of the artefacts on BBC News from before, and they are barely visible now.

I don't know which or how many of these actions contributed to the difference (and i'm kicking myself for not having noted the software version beforehand). I'd love to think that a firmware update happened / made a difference, because that means that Virgin are actively improving things all the time, and makes me optimistic that some of the other minor niggles (some menus not in HD, the ~3sec delay to get the Home screen up, the occasional missed keypresses where the interface doesn't keep up with you, the stuuupid PIN situation and the long hangs when editing some series links for example) might well get addressed too.

Anyway, i'm definitely much happier, and definitely going to stick with Virgin/TiVo.

NickO - Good to see you guys read your forums and take notice. What's the proper/preferred mechanism for reporting non critical bugs and feature requests? If I keep calling customer service about them they're just going to think i'm a crazy person. "

So some hope there for you MrOliver

Regards

John

Originally Posted by pythagoras

So some hope there for you MrOliver

Regards

John

Thanks John,

Although I am getting used to the soft misty look, (not)

Bit like the old black and white movies, Casablanca and all that, " of all the bars in all the world" etc.....

[Perfect Choice]

Originally Posted by carlwaring

PQ is a personal and subjective issue anyway so who's to say who's right and who's wrong?

Have to say what is wrong for some people with Tivo is definitely not subjective. The reduction in clarity of the picture is obvious for those affected, the mystery is why it affects some which I estimate is a good 10% of installs.

You see posts from new Tivo installs every day on here and VM support forum with comments about the negative picture as well as those who say it is fine. If it was based on posts it would be more like 50/50 but those with installs where they are happy are unlikely to post as those who see a problem so more like 10% I would say.

Only VM would know for sure but by viewing both the threads on cable forum and also the 2 on the VM support forum on this subject, there is an issue here which just cannot be ignored.

VM are looking into this though, NickO from VM on the Tivo support forum has said they are investigating and comparing Tivo with V+. He will report when they have completed their investigations.

I read a post elsewhere by somebody who had an early Pace (I think, would have to hunt to confirm) box install and that had a poor PQ at first until they did a software update, so there is light at the end of the tunnel and I still wonder if accurate signal frequency/strength is a factor.

Personally, I find the SD PQ now as something I can live with, not as clear as the V+ and there is definitely a mist like or softening affect even on HD on my Tivo, rather than the crystal clear excellent picture on V+. But the gap is not that great now with TV adjustments to say the TIvo has to go like others have done and overall I would say the benefits outweigh the PQ issue I see, plus feature issues/usability (as I see it) improvements required.

[carlwaring]

Originally Posted by Perfect Choice

Have to say what is wrong for some people with Tivo is definitely not subjective. The reduction in clarity of the picture is obvious for those affected..

I am going to get a HDTV by the end of this year; hopefully. Given that it's my first one, how will I be able to tell if it's a good or bad picture? Also, how can I tell it's the TV and not my bad eyesight?

Therefore it's all subjective.

... the mystery is why it affects some which I estimate is a good 10% of installs.

Based on anecdotal evidence at best. Hardly a reliable figure

You see posts from new Tivo installs every day on here and VM support forum with comments about the negative picture as well as those who say it is fine. If it was based on posts it would be more like 50/50 but those with installs where they are happy are unlikely to post as those who see a problem so more like 10% I would say.

More made-up stats.

Only VM would know for sure but by viewing both the threads on cable forum and also the 2 on the VM support forum on this subject, there is an issue here which just cannot be ignored.

Have never said any different.

VM are looking into this though, NickO from VM on the Tivo support forum has said they are investigating and comparing Tivo with V+. He will report when they have completed their investigations.

Fair enough.

[Perfect Choice]

Originally Posted by carlwaring

I am going to get a HDTV by the end of this year; hopefully. Given that it's my first one, how will I be able to tell if it's a good or bad picture? Also, how can I tell it's the TV and not my bad eyesight?

Therefore it's all subjective.

It is not subjective when you have had a V+ before on the same TV and then have it replaced by a Tivo and no matter what you try the PQ is worse. I think you will find that those posters with poorer PQ are those replacing boxes so can directly compare against what they previously had from VM. The difference is clear in terms of the softening effect.
Based on anecdotal evidence at best. Hardly a reliable figure

My view yes but that comment applies to any figure including those who think this is not a problem or only affects a tiny proportion of users, just watch the daily posts of people complaining or commenting about the poorer PQ.
More made-up stats.

Yes like anybody else with a different view point

Fair enough.
And means VM do see enough cases of poorer PQ to be worthy of investigation, this issue just cannot be ignored and could actually be used by competitors against Tivo, how about Believe in Better "picture quality" - come and join Sky!

I actually like Tivo and with issues like these resolved it will be a great box, but lets not hide issues under the carpet; there is certainly a PQ issue for some as is seen with the daily posts on this issue.

Any finally, how do you reply only to parts of a post as I cannot work that out!!!

[devilincarnate]

Originally Posted by Perfect Choice

Any finally, how do you reply only to parts of a post as I cannot work that out!!!

Make sure you put this at the front of the text that you want :

[QUOTE=Perfect Choice;35232572 ]

Then add this at the end of the text that you have selected? [/QUOTE ]

Hope this helps?

Do not leave a space before the ] at the end of each?

[Perfect Choice]

Thanks, will try that next time.

[devilincarnate]

Originally Posted by Perfect Choice

Thanks, will try that next time.

Make sure it is the person that you are quoting and not yours

[Perfect Choice]

Originally Posted by devilincarnate

Make sure it is the person that you are quoting and not yours

Understood, thanks.

[ntl.wotcha]

Pretty much everything I want to watch these days is in HD anyway !

[devilincarnate]

Originally Posted by ntl.wotcha

Pretty much everything I want to watch these days is in HD anyway !

So you are happy then