New channel logos

[TimmyB]

Hi there,

I'm not really sure if anyone is after this type of thing, but I was following the instructions on this page (http://tivo.kitschcamppalace.org.uk/logo.php) for how to add extra channel logos, I have created a few myself and they look great IMO.

I thought I would attach two of them here as they may be useful for anyone wanting to add ITV and Channel 5 logos to their tivo. One thing to note however, on TivoWEB they just appear a black boxes, however they do work fine through the tivo.

Just thought I would post them here as it might save someone a bit of time...

[bradleyem]

except both five and itv are about the change their logos....

good job though. All I now need is to pluck up the courage to do it!!!

[BobBlueUK]

Just tried to view the logos using Internet Explorer 6.0 and was only able to view c5-s2-p2.png - the other 3 came out as black boxes.

Switched to Mozilla 1.0 and was able to view all 4 without problem - might this suggest that the problem is with IE rather than TiVoWeb? Best fire up Nestscape and find out... :)

Anyone want to do a logo for F1 Digital+? :D

[TimmyB]

Originally posted by bradleyem
except both five and itv are about the change their logos....

good job though. All I now need is to pluck up the courage to do it!!!

I didn't know about ITV but I did try the new five logo, it looked so bad I just went for the old one.. I'm going to try a few more and maybe put them on my website when done, depends on if anyone is actually doing this apart from me.

[TimmyB]

Originally posted by BobBlueUK
Anyone want to do a logo for F1 Digital+? :D

Yep

[BobBlueUK]

Nice one! :cool:

[GarySargent]

IE6 with SP1 has them all black! Oh well! :)

Anyway - sounds interesting but are there potential issues doing this - ie stuff up your box next time TiVo updates the logos?

[BobBlueUK]

I did wonder if 'official' logos would replace amateur ones if and when they were eventually released?

Since the logos have changed a few times on the Sky channels over the last year there is obviously scope for deleting older logos and replacing them with newer ones... but is this replacement process automatic or are special commands needed when the newer logos are added I wonder?

[TimmyB]

Originally posted by GarySargent
IE6 with SP1 has them all black! Oh well! :)

Anyway - sounds interesting but are there potential issues doing this - ie stuff up your box next time TiVo updates the logos?

I don't think so, if you add them with a high "MFS resource number?" ie 6200000 + which is well above what Tivo are currently using, they would simply replace the channel mapping with their resource number (a much lower number), which means unless you change them back you just have an orphan MFS resource.

Anyway, deleting the images has been done already (saw it in another thread on this forum). So if it all goes pear shaped you could just delete them.

I'll try doing this tomorrow and let you all know how I get on. If it works I might update tivo's script to delete the channel mappings before the daily call, then check to see if the channels have been remapped. If not replace them after the daily call cleanup has occured. If they have, don't do anything so you can go into TivoWeb and manually add them again should you want too.

Tim.

[Paul Stimpson]

Those look nice :)

They all open fine on Linux.

[kitschcamp]

Originally posted by TimmyB

Anyway, deleting the images has been done already (saw it in another thread on this forum). So if it all goes pear shaped you could just delete them.


With the following caveat, *don't* delete the images if they are attached to channels and or the 211 or 222 indices, else you *will* green screen Tivo.

[kitschcamp]

Originally posted by BobBlueUK
I did wonder if 'official' logos would replace amateur ones if and when they were eventually released?


Yup, they should do. The way it works is that the image is given a very high number, over 6200000. This is then linked to the index with a very high channel number (over 4000). Tivo doesn't replace the "names", as such, but rahter a load of index entries.

[kitschcamp]

Originally posted by TimmyB
I'm not really sure if anyone is after this type of thing, but I was following the instructions on this page (http://tivo.kitschcamppalace.org.uk/logo.php) for how to add extra channel logos, I have created a few myself and they look great IMO.


For those lacking a linux machine or perl to do the slice file, it's now available on the same page. I hope you don't mind, Timmy.

I am quite happy to host the channel files on a single page, and keep a common index for the slices to avoid overlapping numbers.

[TimmyB]

Originally posted by kitschcamp


For those lacking a linux machine or perl to do the slice file, it's now available on the same page. I hope you don't mind, Timmy.


Not a problem :)

[jeremy Parsons]

Kirsh

i had a problem with he slice file and had to re-generate it it appeard to load up ok but then would not associate it with addlogo , I regenerated the slice file and that seemed to work.

[kitschcamp]

Strange :-(

Just regenerated it here, as well, just in case. New version uploaded.

They are classed as V4, image numbers 632001 - 632004.

[fister]

Now that Tivoweb 1.9.4 Beta 4 allows for the import of channel logos, are there any resources already available before I start to make my own.
Images must be in PNG format with the same palette and dimensions as other TiVo logos - what is the palette used?
Tried to upload logosat the top of this thread using TivoWeb and got InvalidFileFormat :(

[kitschcamp]

Originally posted by fister
Now that Tivoweb 1.9.4 Beta 4 allows for the import of channel logos, are there any resources already available before I start to make my own.
Images must be in PNG format with the same palette and dimensions as other TiVo logos - what is the palette used?

Start from some of the logos already mentioned above, and take it from there - try here (http://tivo.kitschcamppalace.org.uk/thelogos.php) and download the images linked *not* the one shown.

[jeremy Parsons]

Hey has anyone got a paramout comedy channel logo , thats the main one missing form my system , what with those I got from kitsch and some I gave him I have most of those that i need,

[mrtickle]

I got an "Invalid File Format" error too :(

[Rich2k]

Originally posted by GarySargent
IE6 with SP1 has them all black! Oh well! :)

Anyway - sounds interesting but are there potential issues doing this - ie stuff up your box next time TiVo updates the logos?

I wonder if it's to do with the bizarre graphic bug that IE6 SP1 has where seeming random small size images fail to load.

[maubp]

Why doesn't Tivo supply logos for ITV and Channel 5?

It would be nice if they had logos for all the ITV regions (Meridian, Carlton, etc) but not needed.

Also, does anyone else think the BBC logo be should be two logos "BBC1" and "BBC2"?

[OzSat]

Originally posted by maubp
Why doesn't Tivo supply logos for ITV and Channel 5?

It would be nice if they had logos for all the ITV regions (Meridian, Carlton, etc) but not needed.

Also, does anyone else think the BBC logo be should be two logos "BBC1" and "BBC2"? From next week, all but four regions will use just the 'ITV1' logo.

[mrtickle]

Originally posted by maubp
Why doesn't Tivo supply logos for ITV and Channel 5?

It would be nice if they had logos for all the ITV regions (Meridian, Carlton, etc) but not needed.

Also, does anyone else think the BBC logo be should be two
logos "BBC1" and "BBC2"?

Yes, I think so too! Which is why I've done some myself - One, Two, Choice, Four... and the old Central "cake" logo :D. The new version of TiVoWeb lets you upload logos but there are teething problems at the moment. When the bugs are fixed and the dust has settled I'll be happy to make them available to anyone


Originally posted by ozsat

From next week, all but four regions will use just the 'ITV1' logo


Not on MY TiVo they won't :D :D

[jamieo]

Does anybody else have a really crap sky one logo?

It's on a red background with really dodgy white text. I would like to use TiVoWeb to replace this logo with the one used on Sky News.

Would this cause any problems? Would TiVo just replace it with the crap version?

If I just delete all logos would this mess things up?

Thanks,

Jamie

[kitschcamp]

Originally posted by jamieo
Would this cause any problems? Would TiVo just replace it with the crap version?


You can easily swap it over to the Sky one with Tivoweb. It causes no problems.


If I just delete all logos would this mess things up?

Very much so, oh yes. If you don't know what you're doing you can majorly mess up the database to a Green Screen by deleting logos. Not that I've ever done it, oh no...

[jamieo]

Thanks for the reply kitschcamp, so will TiVo undo my changes when it updates it's guide data?

Jamie

[kitschcamp]

No, it leaves it as you've set it. You won't be forced to have the tasteless SkyOne logo.

[jamieo]

Originally posted by kitschcamp
No, it leaves it as you've set it. You won't be forced to have the tasteless SkyOne logo.
Excellent! Thanks for all your help fella!

And yes, that sky|one png is bad!! :down:

Jamie

[maubp]

Last week Ozsat said:
From next week, all but four regions will use just the 'ITV1' logo.
I have just rebooted my Tivo today (finally moved it off the floor in front of the TV to under my DVD player - but I still need to find a longer scart cable) and still only have logos for BBC and C4.

Any idea when the ITV and C5 logos will appear?
:confused:
(I only get the five "normal" channels at the moment)

Thanks

Peter

[kitschcamp]

When TiVo come to some agreement with ITV and Channel 5 about them. There are issues with copyright/trade marks etc before they can be put on the TiVo, plus any fees due etc.

[jamieo]

Originally posted by kitschcamp
When TiVo come to some agreement with ITV and Channel 5 about them. There are issues with copyright/trade marks etc before they can be put on the TiVo, plus any fees due etc.
Interesting... I would actually prefer to have no logos then just some but I thought maybe TiVo were asked to include them so TiVo owners would be able to associate the brand (such as TV has become) of the source channel with the content.

ie, It is more in the interest of the channel to have thier logo included...

Jamie

[kitschcamp]

Fred mentioned something similar nearly a year ago, that at that time they thought it was better as all or nothing. That's the reason why people are so keen to add their own...

[jamieo]

Ok, so what do I have to look out for if adding logos through TiVoWeb?

Jamie

[kitschcamp]

There are some useful logos on my site linked in the signature. Loading logos with TivoWeb is new to the 1.9.4Beta4 version of TivoWeb. It seems successful, generally, and seems to work quite well. I've not hit any real problems with it so far, other than it being a little bit fussy about the png format.

The best thing to do is download some s1 and s2 type logos, and modify them. s1 are used when changing channels, s2 in the now playing list.

[jamieo]

Great! I'll send you any logos I create myself (if you want them that is!)

Jamie

[kitschcamp]

Yes please - the more logos we have in a central location, the easier it is for everyone to get hold of.

[mrtickle]

I've done some but they need a bit of work yet. But I'm happy to send them in as well if people want.
Beware: there are two pairs of palettes. Looking at kitschcamp's page of logos, there are the palettes used on the two Animal Planet logos (I'll call them the USA palettes) and the palettes used on the Channel 5 logos (I'll call them the UK palettes). I have found that it's very hit-and-miss using the USA palettes (TiVoweb often rejects the images), but the UK palettes have a higher acceptance rate!
Also, transparancy doesn't work, magenta=transparent, black=cut through image (those C5 logos need a bit of touching!), red=green! Basically avoid the first 16 colours in the palettes!
But pushed for time at the mo. Hope that makes sense.

[jeremy Parsons]

Mr Tickle

If you send them to kitschcamp he will put them on his web site and for the lazy members of up generate the slice file to allow us to upload them. I gave him a load that I accquired. PS if you have the time a paramount comedy channel logo is still needed :-)

[mrtickle]

I've done a paramount one.
The new tivoweb doesn't even need slice files - you just upload the png files and it does everything for you! :)

[kitschcamp]

Yes, the not needing slice files in rather fantastic, personally speaking.

[kitschcamp]

There are quite a few new logos, especially now playing ones, now available.

[smiffy]

Sorry if Im being really dense here, but I have just install the TivoWeb 1.9.4.

How do I change/add the logos. Presumably I need to ftp them manually over to the Tivo and the have TivoWeb associate then to each channel.

I found the option to automatically associate logo with channels as there appeared to be two installed with TivoWeb.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. :rolleyes:

[kitschcamp]

With the current beta - beta 4 - go to the logos page, and click on the link to upload logos, and follow the prompts. No need to use ftp or anything - the logos get uploaded and processed via Tivoweb, which is a lot lot nicer and less risky than via the slice file.

If you create your own files, they need to be in the Tivo pallette, and the correct size etc. S2 logos are for the now playing logos, s1 for the channel guide. If you just want some to load in, and have zero artistic ability (such as myself), the website in the sig has the logos to download.

[smiffy]

Thanks for that I'll give that a go this evening.
:cool:

[mrtickle]

The only thing to add is that after uploading them you need to link them to channels - if the filenames are in a certain format (I think it's if they match the callsign?) then "automatically associate logos" will produce a confirmation screen that does it for you. Otherwise you need to go to the logos page and click "change" next each channel and pick logos to assign.

The logos for UK Style and UK Horizons are lurking in all our machines, but they aren't linked. I expect that this is because they look AWFUL! At some point in time, someone must have given up on the logos for UK TiVos, if we have to do them ourselves then so be it.

Finally, when your main logos page matches the logos as you want them, you have to shut down tivoweb and reboot your tivo for it to use them - just as the new logos for 2.5.5 weren't activated until after a reboot.

[Fatbloke]

I've been uploading some logos from the collection here (http://www.tivo.kitschcamppalace.org.uk/thelogos.php). Most are fine, but the S2 of BBC2 comes up with invalid format - can some kind tivoweb user please post a BBC2 that works - thanks :)

ps. BBC4 S2 too please...

[mrtickle]

I did that BBC2 logo. It works for me! :confused:

[kitschcamp]

'Tis strange - it worked for me, too. It does seem to be a bit hit-and-miss as to which logos upload on which tivos. :/

[devoiddroid]

Hi,

I was having the same trouble, try this one though, it seems to work ok,

http://www.rtba11198.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/bbctwo-s2-p2.png

[Fatbloke]

Sweet ! works a treat :)

[dribble]

Thanks - worked for me as well !

Don't suppose anyone was having trouble with ITV1 S1 & S2 logos ? I was having the same problem with both of those as well :(

Both files from the web site come up with the error message 'Invalid format'.

[devoiddroid]

I don't know what was causing the problems, but I found a little program called IrfanView (http://irfanview.tuwien.ac.at/english.htm) and simply by opening the files in it and re-saving them it seems to fix it.

[snapplefan]

Wow! IrfanView has let me import ITV1 logos too! My Tivo looks nice!

:D

[bobbymobile]

does anyone using Tivoweb have any tips on making good logos? When i try and make some they look good on the computer but terrible and blurry when i upload them on Tivo. Any tip would be appreciated.

[NgBng]

I'm trying to upload logos from kitschcamppalace.org.uk with TivoWeb 1.9.4-beta5 and it doesn't seem to be working (UK tivo unit).
I'm using Galeon as my browser (which uses the Mozilla engine), I select the logo to upload, hit the Import button and the browser just returns a "Document contained no data" error.

Any suggestions?

[radish]

try a different browser? maybe konq as I'm assuming you're using linux.

[NgBng]

I tried IE6 and Netscape 4, same in them

[radish]

Then I've no idea - just tried it on mine (upgraded to 1.9.4-b5 tonight) and it works fine.

[Milhouse]

Originally posted by NgBng
I'm trying to upload logos from kitschcamppalace.org.uk with TivoWeb 1.9.4-beta5 and it doesn't seem to be working (UK tivo unit).
I'm using Galeon as my browser (which uses the Mozilla engine), I select the logo to upload, hit the Import button and the browser just returns a "Document contained no data" error.


Any suggestions?

I sucessfully uploaded quite a few logos from Kitschcamps place using TiVoWeb 1.9.4 beta 4 and Mozilla 1.2 (on Win2K) - there were about 4 logos (mainly BBC2 and ITV1) that wouldn't upload (invalid file format) but this problem was solved with TiVoWeb 1.9.4 beta 5.

Are you proxying your connection to the TiVo in any way? Have you tried Mozilla 1.2 (I realise Galeon is based on Moz, but it may be an older branch).

It does sound like more of a browser/connection problem than a TiVoWeb problem.

[mrtickle]

If I have time this week I'll try and do logos for

BBC 2 Wales/Scotland/Northern Ireland
BBC 7
UK Horizons
UK History
Sky One Mix

re: the centring - I initially tried the small ones I did (G+/Four/Central) centred but it looked wrong. Left aligned looked silly and detached from the others. So I compromised and aligned them to the left hand edge of the BBC logos. I believe that tivo's own C4 logo is in a similar place too!

[NgBng]

The tivo isn't proxied at all, it's on the same LAN segment as the machine I'm connecting to it from.

[cwaring]

Originally posted by mrtickle
If I have time this week I'll try and do logos for
Sky One Mix


Out of interest, I was just going to have a go at this myself. One problem. I have no idea what font is used!! Anyway, I grabbed this from DigiGuide instead :)

[ywu]

Time to give something back to the community - so I thought I'd try doing the new BBC Three logo (replaces BBC Choice on Feb 9th). A bit of a newbie, so be gentle with me if I've got it wrong!

[ywu]

This is the BBC Three 65x55 logo. I don't have access to linux to do the perl slicing bit, though, and I'm not sure whether my palette is okay.

[mrtickle]

Ta! You don't actually need to do the perl slices these days though, all of the functions are now built into tivoweb.

The dimensions are ok but I don't think they will work in a tivo because you haven't used the tivo palettes - there is one palette for "now playing" with an extremely restrictive set of colours (no purple so a good BBC Two logo is impossible :( , and a slightly better palette for the channel banner logos. You can grab these palettes from the existing logos on kitshcamp's pages.

The only other thing I can think of is to avoid certain colours completely - pure white (255, 255, 255), pure black, cyan, magenta, red, green, etc. Use slightly off variants that are in the palettes. HTH

[ywu]

Ta - I'll give it a go with picking colours from the existing set of logos. Incidentally, is there such a thing as a palette of all the colours I can use, so I can use Photoshop's picker to use them?

[mrtickle]

Well there is only one palette for each type of image that works. The best thing to do is take an existing now playing logo (one of the tivo originals to be safe), rub out all the pixels but keep its palette and save that image to use as a starting point.

Then do the same with a live TV logo and its palette, after that you'll have two template images to use.

[DJBlack]

Chaps

Is there a quick (and safe) way of importing all these logos one done?

I'm using 1.9.4 and importing them one by one.... but getting a wee but fed up.....


David

[kitschcamp]

Originally posted by DJBlack
Chaps

Is there a quick

If doing a few Tivoweb is quickest. If a lot slice is quicker.

(and safe) way of importing all these logos one done?

But using slices is not especially safe. It's very easy to green screen your Tivo. Not that I've ever done it or anything *cough*

I'm using 1.9.4 and importing them one by one.... but getting a wee but fed up.....

Honestly, stick with it - you don't want to go the slice route unless you are supremely confident of what you are doing, and are incredibly careful at each stage.

[ywu]

Having just set up Tivoweb, I've had a go at uploading the logos. They look fine on my 14" 4:3 telly, but mostly lousy on my 32" widescreen, mainly because, I think, the palette is so limited, or have the logos been scaled so that pixellation is more evident with a stretched and enlarged pciture? The old FilmFour logo seems to be of a higher resolution than the others, but not sure.

I might have a go at white logos when I have time to see whether that improves things visually for me.

[mrtickle]

It is difficult to get them looking good, yes I blame the palette! Doing a BBC2 logo which looks purple on Now Playing is nigh-on impossible :( There shouldn't be any pixellation, but if you are zooming and stretching on your TV that's your problem :)

[Modan]

Given the problems I had in this thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=96666) with transparencies, and what I learnt (with the help of the others), it might be possible to use the purple in the palette as a non-transparent colour, in order to do a BBC2 logo.

If it works (not certain it will), it should just be a case of changing the first entry in the tRNS section of the .png from 00 to FF (and then recalculating the CRC unfortunately).

In that thread MrTickle suggests that there are three types of transparency that are used, but I am not so sure. Personally I haven't seen any evidence that proves that PSP or TiVo do anything other than use tRNS (PSP just happens to trash it very badly when it sets the transparent colour, which is why the semi-transparency is not retained.

I don't know if anyone else has tried loading an image with the first entry in tRNS set to anything other than 00 (apologies MrTickle if you were more than just speculating), but I suspect that it should allow that colour to be used.

Unfortunately, from memory it is a pretty rubish purple, so might look terrible anyway, but making it semi-transparent (using values between 00 and FF) might yield good results. Actually this may be a way of improving the look of other logos that don't quite look right as they currently stand. It's a shame I haven't found a graphics tool that supports saving this section of the file properly yet, let alone one that allows for easy editing of it.

[mrtickle]

Yeah, that other webpage I posted in the png thread was lamenting the lack of good software.

I don't think there *is* a purple in the palette in the first place, though? Do you mean that nasty magenta?

Because the player-generated graphics are in a 256-colour video mode which is overlayed onto the mpeg clouds, perhaps (just speculating here) the tivo ignores whatever palette is in the logos and uses its own single 256-colour palette for the now playing screen. After all, if you gave it a set of channel logos each with an optimsed palette, it would never be able to display them all properly, it still has its 256-colour limit.

Another thought, perhaps the tRNS chunk is a clue to why logos that we create look "wrong" with dodgy colours when uploaded to the tivo. I started work on a BBC 7 logo the other day. On the PC it looks ok (ish - not only is there no purple there is no decent yellow either! :( ), but when uploaded to the tivo the yellow I used for the backwards '7' looks grey, and the red used for the normal '7' looks green.

Perhaps those two palette indexes (in tivo's own copy of the palette which it uses for display) have an amount of transparency set, causing the colour to change (as it is overlayed onto blue sky)? I've had trouble with reds before, with the BBC One logo I did it was about my 5th choice of red that worked - all the others looked wrong. So not only is the palette limited, we can't use some of it?

I'll attach the image to this so that the above makes a bit of sense :)

Finally I've noticed strange things happen to whites and greys. As you move the selection bar on/off a "save until I delete" programme certain greys change to bright white and then back again. This was most noticeable with the ITV Central logo I did (it's on kitshcamp's webpage).

[Modan]

Hmmm, not sure. As with all edited images (except for the ones that have been manually fixed), the one you have there has only one entry in the tRNS section, which is 00 for the first entry (to make the magenta 100% transparent).

For a standard unedited image, colours 200-216 in the palette are set to 80 or 50% transparent.

I know that we have some control over this alpha channel, since we both noticed we managed to break it, and then we figured out how to fix it again. I have also noticed stray pixels of the magenta here and there (particularly the no thumbs TiVo image on the LiveTV guide, athough these may only show up with my mods, I'm not sure), so I think it is possible we have full control. I'm now starting to wonder whether changing the palette might also be possible, but I assume someone has already tried this and failed? My guess is that it has a small number of master palettes stored somewhere (maybe the first image of each type it loads?) that is the master for all the images of that type, so it is possible if we tracked it down we could fix the lack of good colours in the palettes, although we would have to be careful not to break other things of course.

Unfortunately time is against me since I head off to the states for six months next week. I'll expect some good changes to load onto my TiVo when I come back :) (I'm also hoping I can rent a TiVo while I am there, cos otherwise I am going to get serious withdrawal!).

[iankb]

Originally posted by mrtickle
I don't think there *is* a purple in the palette in the first place, though? Do you mean that nasty magenta?

Purple is defined as any of a group of colors with a hue between that of violet and red. Magenta is defined as a purplish-red. To be pedantic, magenta is therefore a shade of purple. :D

Ian.

[mrtickle]

Originally posted by Modan
Hmmm, not sure. As with all edited images (except for the ones that have been manually fixed), the one you have there has only one entry in the tRNS section, which is 00 for the first entry (to make the magenta 100% transparent).

For a standard unedited image, colours 200-216 in the palette are set to 80 or 50% transparent.


Aha! That's it then.

I probably had a working image, but I used PSP to set that magenta to transparent just so that it would look better in tivoweb.

What tool did you use to determine that it was numbers 200-216 that have transparancy set on them?


I know that we have some control over this alpha channel, since we both noticed we managed to break it, and then we figured out how to fix it again. I have also noticed stray pixels of the magenta here and there (particularly the no thumbs TiVo image on the LiveTV guide, athough these may only show up with my mods, I'm not sure), so I think it is possible we have full control. I'm now starting to wonder whether changing the palette might also be possible, but I assume someone has already tried this and failed? My guess is that it has a small number of master palettes stored somewhere (maybe the first image of each type it loads?) that is the master for all the images of that type, so it is possible if we tracked it down we could fix the lack of good colours in the palettes, although we would have to be careful not to break other things of course.


I expect they are loaded from the software. If they relied on a certain image having the correct palette we could probably break it quite spectacularly (make it look terrible!) :)

The live TV version of the palette is much better. The Now Playing palette squanders the vast majority of entries just for the blobs and many (seemingly indentical) shades of grey. They couldn't even manage to find a purple for the "o" in "TiVo" on the "please wait" image (compare with the mpeg tivo in the corner when they appear together). We know that channel logos were added late in the day (in 2.5.x), and the palette wasn't fixed then, so I expect it was too late.

Series 2 tivos have 16-bit colour for the overlay so this isn't a problem for them :rolleyes:


Unfortunately time is against me since I head off to the states for six months next week. I'll expect some good changes to load onto my TiVo when I come back :) (I'm also hoping I can rent a TiVo while I am there, cos otherwise I am going to get serious withdrawal!).

Wow, have a good trip :). If I were you I'd subscribe to the Direct TV satellite system. If you subscribe to the top package you get a free dual-tuner DirectTiVo as your set top box!

[Modan]

Originally posted by mrtickle
What tool did you use to determine that it was numbers 200-216 that have transparancy set on them?


The binary file editor that comes with Visual Studio 6 (Hexedit equivalent)

Originally posted by mrtickle
I expect they are loaded from the software. If they relied on a certain image having the correct palette we could probably break it quite spectacularly (make it look terrible!) :)


I was suggesting that it would probably be in a file rather than compiled in the code (although obviously either way would work), so if we could find what the source was, we could hack it. I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to find more out about this, but compared to what other people have managed to do (TurboNet etc.) this seems relatively trivial.


Originally posted by mrtickle
Wow, have a good trip :). If I were you I'd subscribe to the Direct TV satellite system. If you subscribe to the top package you get a free dual-tuner DirectTiVo as your set top box!

I'm staying in an aparement complex, so I doubt I would be able to get a satelite system installed. It already comes with HBO though, so hopefully I should get some good programming that a TiVo could track down for me. If it is possible to rent them (I have no idea whether you can or not), I'm not sure whether I would want a Series 2 or not as I might find it hard to live without when I get back (given how strange the thought of 6 months without any TiVo is)

[mrtickle]

I have made a discovery tonight! I currently use the images I posted last week to the flickering bar thread (sig). The "full info" bar is solid black - but I accidentally pressed "play" on the remote while it was being displayed. Blam! The green bar appeared and the black windows at the top magically became transparent! This happens every time. So perhaps there isn't a master palette and it really does use whatever palette it sees last...

[Modan]

It is possible I guess? Sorry I don't have any time to experiment so I'm afraid you are on your own.

Couple of other things I have seen though. It is also transparent when returning from the full screen menus although it does blink on and off a few times, so not sure why that would be (I guess it would mean the order it redraws them is inconsistent?). Also when TiVoGutsBlueLeftWeiner (the file I fixed) is causing the lack of transparency on the LiveTV guide, switching the selection to the program box from the channel box (replaces TiVoGutsBlueLeftWeiner with two untampered files)restores the transparency 100% of the time.

I took this to mean that it was the fact they were "on top of" the transparent section that caused them to make it work/break, but maybe as you say it is the fact that TiVoGutsBlueLeftWeiner is the last file to be drawn.

The only argument I can see against this theory is that for the normal operation I would expect the last file to be either the "how many thumbs" icon which I have not modified, or the BannerDesc file, which I have fixed on my TiVo, but the transparency hasn't been restored by doing that.

You could try editing the images displayed when you press "play" (simply opening and doing SaveAs) to see whether changing them alters this anomoly. If it stops this from happening then I would say you are definitely onto something.

[ywu]

I wished I had a colour chart to say that magenta on a PC=transparent on TiVo, black=white and vice-versa (see five s2 logo) etc etc. My Skynews looks rubbish, as the colours a completely different from what's on the PC - is that supposed to happen?

Also, how do people make sure the fuzziness caused by anti-aliasing dosen't take you out of palette? I see from the existing logos that some a/a has been retained.

[mrtickle]

It is very trial and error, yes. I tend to avoid all 'pure' colours, magenta, red, blue, white, black etc from the very start/end of the palette.

The graphics package you use should not use any colours that are not in the image's palette! Check you are working in the correct mode (not 24 bit or RGB), use an existing logo png file as a starting point. If you do that it shouldn't let you use any other colours, nor should it use any itself :confused:

HTH

[DJBlack]

Anyone care to share the package they use to edit these logos?

I can see this hobby eating so much spare time....!

David

[kitschcamp]

The gimp is the "official" editor, according to Fred, but it's not the friendliest package in the world.

I've had very mixed results with Paint Shop Pro, and ended up piping the results into gimp to make a "proper" png file.

[DJBlack]

Anyone seen a FAQ on the subject... seems we each have our "own way" of playing this game.....

[ywu]

I've used Photoshop to read the colour table, though not sure if I've extracted the right thing. Does this look like the palette for S2? I'm working in Indexed rather than RGB now - explains why I might be getting so many problems! Thanks!

[Modan]

You should probably avoid the colours from 200 to 216 in the palette as well. I think it is these that cause the colour change when switching onto "keep until I delete" recordings, due to the breaking / fixing of alpha transparency as described earlier in the thread.

Can anyone confirm this, either by checking an image that suffers from this problem, to see if it uses colours from this range of the palette, or by manually restoring the broken tRNS section on one of these images (should then stay the darker of the two colours, due to the alpha transparency now working consistently).

[ywu]

OK, finally got it going with Photoshop. Here's my working attempt at BBC Three (S2 only).

I'm actually redoing the logos for the channels I use, so that they are more friendly to my TV. I have a Sony 32" widescreen which I set to Smart, meaning a 4:3 image such as Tivo Central stretches to fit the screen. Some logos look lousy as a result.

Also, I'm keeping them all consistent in size so they don't look so mismatched - all will be 100x35 with a background. Where possible I've used native fonts rather than web page grabs (BBC uses Gill Sans, which I have a truetype version of, for example) so that scaling to size looks a bit better. I've also scaled the BBC logo larger at the expense of the "ONE", "TWO", "THREE" etc, so the logo-police may not approve. You know how anal corporate identity people are ! :)

If anyone's interested in them I'll post them to kitsch.

[ywu]

Here's the first sample ...... even if there's no point hosting them, I've had fun doing it! As MrTickle has said before, need to do something with BBC Two - I tried using dithering at various levels to get that purple, which Photoshop allows when converting from RGB to Indexed, but it uses magenta to mimic the purple - damn!

I'm going to do some others later....

[DJBlack]

Chaps

Now that this subject has gained a fair bit of interest/momentum... is it worth sorting out what logos remain to be done and sharing the effort?

After all, its unfair for a few to do all the work!!!

David

[ywu]

Has anyone managed to do a decent BBC Radio 4 S2 logo? Mine's shows up rather messy, as there are gradients in the colouring which differ between PC and TiVo.

[mrtickle]

The one I did was quick and dirty I'm afraid!

Great stuff with the other logos btw! The BBC ones are much better than mine. I think that having a small "BBC" at the expense of One/Two etc is definitely the way to go :). One thing I would say though, there are some stray pixels when you magnify them, eg the backgrounds of "B", "B" and "C" have multicoloured edges. Any chance of the 's1' pairs too? ;)

[JamboRobbo]

Has anyone got any logos for BBC Scotland, ITV Scotland etc? Could do them myself I guess, but hoping that someone might've done them already cause I'm a bit lazy!

Cheers,
Robbo

[mrtickle]

Not me. I did have a look at them but couldn't be bothered, sorry!
Note that the word "scotland" would probably be about 5 pixels high and illegible - look how big the "BBC" turns out to be on a Now Playing logo...

[JamboRobbo]

Note that the word "scotland" would probably be about 5 pixels high and illegible - look how big the "BBC" turns out to be on a Now Playing logo

Exactly the problem I hit in my brief attempt to draw up a logo. To be honest I don't care if they look like the official BBC logos, I just want something to distinguish between BBC One London and BBC One Scotland in my Now Playing list. I might try and knock something up when I get some time - shall post them here if I manage anything that looks half decent.

Robbo

[cwaring]

I have spare time so don't mind having a go if somone wants to give me design specs, file format and maybe an example :)

[JamboRobbo]

Well, if you feel like giving it a go, the existing available Tivo logos can be found at

Existing UK Tivo Logos (http://www.tivo.kitschcamppalace.org.uk/thelogos.php)

Images of the Logos for different UK channels can be found at
Uk Channel Logos (http://www.satlogo.com/tvcountry/uk1.html)

From my understanding, Tivo requires two logos in PNG Format, one sized 100*35 pixels for the Now Playing List, and one size 65*55 for Live TV Info Bar.

The other thing to watch out for is that Tivo has its own pallete for logos. The easiest way to make sure the pallete is correct is to take an existing logo and modify it and only use the colours on the existing pallete (although I think a few of them might not work right too just to complicate things??!!)

So I think the process is to open an existing S1 or S2 (size 1 or size 2) logo in paint shop pro/photoshop etc and modify it using only the existing colours in its pallete.

Alternatively an image of the available pallete was posted above.

Also, Some other (rather good) BBC logos were posted above by ywu.

I've not actually done this myself as yet, so what I've written is just my understanding of it. I'm sure Mr Tickle or others could correct me if I've made any mistakes!

Cheers,
Robbo

[ywu]

That's right. Photoshop is quite good in allowing you to edit to a full palette and then reducing it to a pre-defined one at the final stage, approximating as close as possible when doing so. The problem with it is, what you see on the TV is not what your PC shows in the palette (magenta is a case in point), so the approxiations are often way off. My BBC R4 logo looks hideous as a result, so I haven't bothered posting that yet!

[cwaring]

Originally posted by JamboRobbo
Well, if you feel like giving it a go....

So I did :D

I am fairly confident that these won't work. After all, it can't be as easy as that :)

Anyway, I had a fiddle with an existing BBC Scotland logo. S1 is fine. S2 had to be squashed. Only way to fit all the text on. Pallete should be ok. Looked it when I viewed it, anyway.

As I said. Surely it can't be that simple :)

BTW, s1&s2 I get (s=size) but what's p1&p2?

[JamboRobbo]

Nice one!

Unfortunately either I'm doing something wrong downloading it, or you've attached an empty ZIP file!

Robbo.

[ywu]

I've done one, but I seem to have problems uploading the file. I'll try a bit later.

[cwaring]

Originally posted by JamboRobbo
Nice one!
Unfortunately either I'm doing something wrong downloading it, or you've attached an empty ZIP file!
Robbo.

Well, it's not you. But it's not me either. The zip file is not empty on my system :mad:

EDIT:
Attachment deleted!
No matter. It's here: http://www.cwaring.myby.co.uk/bbc_scotland.zip

[JamboRobbo]

Cheers, got it now. Shall give those a try when I get home tonight and let you know if it works ok...

Thanks,
Robbo.

[cwaring]

Originally posted by JamboRobbo
Cheers, got it now. Shall give those a try when I get home tonight and let you know if it works ok...

I won't be holding my breath :)

[mrtickle]

Originally posted by ywu
That's right. Photoshop is quite good in allowing you to edit to a full palette and then reducing it to a pre-defined one at the final stage, approximating as close as possible when doing so.


Yep. At the final stage[1], load the tivo S2 or S1 palette that you extracted and saved from some of the *original* UK Tivo logos.

Be very careful not to trash the alpha layers (tRNS chunk), to be sure check the file using tweakPNG afterwards. (if you search for tweakPNG you'll find the other thread about transparency).


The problem with it is, what you see on the TV is not what your PC shows in the palette (magenta is a case in point), so the approxiations are often way off. My BBC R4 logo looks hideous as a result, so I haven't bothered posting that yet!

Magenta is a special case - I think all the colours in the top row of the palette are. The thing is, it's easy to say "don't use colours x, y, and z from the palette" - but it's not easy to stop Photoshop picking those "bad" colours at stage [1] above! Also some of them are semi-transparent so look different in Now Playing with blue behind them - same problem! Finally, I think the video hardware in the tivo might do gamma correction, which makes colours look different from a PC as well.

But it's fun experimenting, and with tivoweb's nice interface it's easy too :)

[JamboRobbo]

Ok, didn't get a chance to try these last night due to tube delays getting home from the England game. Will definately give it a go tonight tho.

Mr Tickle, as far as experimenting goes, any idea how I'd go about deleting logos which I decided didn't look right on the Tivo. Is it just a case of making sure the logo isn't associated to a channel, then going into the MFS resource editor to find the resource and remove it?

Thanks,

Robbo

[kitschcamp]

I'd be very careful about trying to remove logos manually from the MFS database, and not using the tools in tivoweb to do it.

If it goes wrong - and it does - then you'll green screen your tivo, and you will have to restore it from an image. Trust me.

[JamboRobbo]

Didn't realise I could remove a logo using the tools in Tivoweb. Shall have a closer look at it tonight.

Cheers,
Robbo

[ywu]

BBC Scotland .....

[cwaring]

Originally posted by ywu
BBC Scotland .....

That's better :) Still wondering if my effort at least worked!

[JamboRobbo]

Originally posted by cwaring
That's better :) Still wondering if my effort at least worked!

Well, the 100*35 one worked okay, whilst the 65*55 one said 'Invalid File Format'. I think this might be because there is a different pallete for each time of image whereas both the images you'd supplied had the same pallete.

Cheers for your help!!

Have got my BBC Scotland Logos working now and even managed to knock up a Scottish TV one (ITV Scotland) which I'll post on here once it's finished - it doesn't look as good on the TIVO as it does on the computer at the moment. I guess I'm using some colours I shouldn't be....Any tips how to avoid this greatly appreciated.

Robbo

[stevedunn]

A tip when editing the logo's in Paintshop Pro

Use an existing logo as a template, for the size & palette

Do a Select All Ctrl-A

Copy the channel image to the clipboard from any source (website etc)

Go back to PSP and Paste the image Into Selection Shift-Ctrl-L

Tidy the image as required

Do a Save As ensuring you select the options button on the Save As dialog and select non-optimized palette (otherwise you might get invalid image format when uploading via tivoweb).

Upload via tivoweb

Steve

[Brucie Burns]

I have downloade some channel logos which I have imported using tivoweb but they don't show up. Is there a guide on how to get them to appear?

[OzSat]

Originally posted by Brucie Burns
I have downloade some channel logos which I have imported using tivoweb but they don't show up. Is there a guide on how to get them to appear? Have you re-booted your TiVo since loading the logos?

I have merged your post into this existing thread which links to a 'how to' guide (see first post)!

[bobbymobile]

Has anyone done any new logos?

[kitschcamp]

There an awful lot of new logos just uploaded here (http://tivo.kitschcamppalace.org.uk/thelogos.php)

[richardp2020]

I was surprised how a lot of the logos looked when imported, most of the best looking ones looked iffy after import and most of the dodgy looking ones looked great

[sanderton]

Here are a few more. A BBC 2 logo that's slightly purple-ish, and ITV1 logo, and a new-style Discovery Home and Leisure. All Now Playing only.

[TiVoRich]

This is some very nice work! Would you like me to add some of these to the TiVo service? I would only be able to update the logos that match TiVo's UK partner specifications.

Just to clear up a previous post, Paint Shop Pro is the "official" TiVo tool. "Fred" is not a graphics guy and is not familiar with Paint Shop Pro and found that using gimp was much easier.

[kitschcamp]

I've no problem with that - it would definitely benefit those who don't have tivoweb.

[scoopuk]

Originally posted by TiVoRich
This is some very nice work! Would you like me to add some of these to the TiVo service? I would only be able to update the logos that match TiVo's UK partner specifications.


Yes that'd be great.

As kitschcamp suggests this would help the many of us who don't have access to tivoweb. As UKTV (UK Gold) is a partner, any chance we could have some logos for their other channels: UK Drama, UK Bright Ideas, UK Food, UK History, UK Style & UK Horizons ?

[sanderton]

Some more Now Playing logos:

CBeebies
UK Bright Ideas
UK History (smaller than the existing one)
BBC 2 - I've had another go and am much happier with this one!

[mrtickle]

Nice. BTW you have a stray pixel in the top lug of the 2nd "B" :)
But I do like that CBeebies one a lot, pity I don't watch the channel!

[sanderton]

You're missing out. I watch little else. :)

The "trick" seesm to be to forget anti-aliasing and do the logos in two or three block colours - the TV will antialias it for you!

Plus colour 16, despite appearing as murky grey on the PC, is actually brightest white on the TiVo. :confused:

[cyril]

Here's a few freeview logos

[cyril]

These have taken me ages.... hope you enjoy!

Any other tricks to get them looking right?

Purple,yellows and reds are problems!

[mrtickle]

Looks good, thanks, I haven't got a radio 3 one currently. There is no tRNS chunk (alpha values for transparency) in your images though, so be careful because this means that if you use certain colours they will look different on the tivo.

Don't get me started about purple! :(

[sanderton]

The nearest to purple and yellow (on the TiVo) I could find are in my BBC 2 and ITV 1 logos above. :(

[GarySargent]

Apparently we might be getting some new ones - you'll need to reboot for them to appear.

[kitschcamp]

Yup, in another thread TivoRich makes a rare appearance to tell us. It's basically just new Sky Movies logos. All existing logos you may have uploaded with Tivoweb have been blown away.

[Fatbloke]

We'll need a fresh post of working icons again then, so we can re-add those blown away :/

[Pugwash]

Would the logo upgrade trigger a reboot? I checked on TivoWeb last night and my box had only been up 17 hours...

[kitschcamp]

No need to re-post them to the thread - they're all there on the website for anyone who wants to grab them.
http://www.tivo.kitschcamppalace.org.uk/thelogos.php

S1 are the guide ones, S2 the Now Playing logos.

[pahunt]

Originally posted by Pugwash
Would the logo upgrade trigger a reboot? I checked on TivoWeb last night and my box had only been up 17 hours...

It won't trigger a reboot but you do need to reboot before you see the new logos

[sanderton]

Buggr; I don't even subscribe to the movie channels!

kitschcamp, does your site have all the logos that have been posted to the thread in it?

[sanderton]

Answer my own question, no it doesn't!

[iankb]

And does anybody know where I get can get a transparent SelectIcon-256.10.png ?

[kitschcamp]

Which are missing? I thought I'd grabbed them all as they appeared.

[sanderton]

I don't think any of the ones I posted are there.

[kitschcamp]

I must have missed a "new posts" mail :/

I'll go through the thread tonight and find them all.

[digital_S]

It's about time there was logo's for every channel!!! :mad:

They're only little icons, and it looks stupid with just BBC and C4 logos. :rolleyes:
I only really need a 'Five' logo, and ITV1 & maybe ITV2.
Why get TiVoweb, just for that :\

[iankb]

The channels have to pay to have their logo displayed. If they don't pay, they don't get. Seems a bit stupid now with the stagnant UK market.

[neuro]

Originally posted by Pugwash
Would the logo upgrade trigger a reboot? I checked on TivoWeb last night and my box had only been up 17 hours...
interesting, my tivo rebooted around 1pm this afternoon ... quite annoying, as it had been happily running for around 280 days without problems ...

[bobnick]

Without wishing to be harsh to any of the people who spent their valuable time working on new logos, a lot of the ones I downloaded from this site look a bit poor on my Tivo - in the end, I deleted most of them.

Can Tivo not get a nice ITV and Five logo for us?

[sanderton]

There are some others in this thread:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=76104

The five one on kitchcamp's page the the ITV1 one in the thread work fine for me.

[bobnick]

Hmm, couldn't find a S1 for Five - I'll give the logos a go next time Mr Tivo is restarted, and hope I'm less fussy by then!

[sanderton]

Possibly not; I never use the live TV EPG so only install the s2 logos.

[kitschcamp]

I think that's why most effort has gone into S2 from everyone - they're the ones you are most likely to see.

[sanderton]

Anyone got the BBC3 logo? The one on kitchcamp's site won't download and its not in his zip file.

[kitschcamp]

Erm... You're right, it's not there. Wait till later tonight, and I'll check where it's got to, but it's definitely not on the server.

[sanderton]

Found it!

[sanderton]

Enc with other files renames to help them auto-associate.

[sanderton]

Pt 2

[sanderton]

Pt 3

[Crispin]

kitschcamp,

Any chance you could change the '\' characters to '/' in the <img src="..."> and <a href="..."> tags in the S2 section, the links as they stand aren't actually valid, and my browser refuses to display the images, and the server returns 404 errors for the links.

Presumably IE is converting them to '/' before requesting the images and links.

[kitschcamp]

Done. Sorry about that, I'm usually careful checking that, but I must have forgotten last time I updated them. Strangely I remembered to do the S1 ones.

[cwaring]

I'm not bothered about these new logos as I don't have TivoWeb (yet!) but amd I right in thinking that I should be seeing some new Sky Movies logos soon? I'm only asking 'cos they haven't appeared yet. Last re-boot was a couple of days ago.

[pahunt]

Originally posted by cwaring
I'm not bothered about these new logos as I don't have TivoWeb (yet!) but amd I right in thinking that I should be seeing some new Sky Movies logos soon?

They should have been installed yesterday or the day before but you won't see them until you reboot. Which given the problems you're having at the moment probably won't be long ;) :(

[cwaring]

Too damned right :( Thanks.

[pahunt]

Kitschcamp,

The BBC3 S2 logo on your site doesn't seem to work. Any chance of it being fixed? :)

[cwaring]

Originally posted by cwaring
Too damned right :( Thanks.

As it happens, it hadn't re-booted in a while so I ended up doing it myself :) I'm now assuming that there is a 'bad patch' on the hard drive and am leaving the affected recordings where they are for now.

[Fatbloke]

Is there any way to 'back up' your TV logos?? I'm currently going through my set, re-adding the transparencies where they've been lost and creating S1 versions where I have the S2.
It'd be a shame to lose the lot if Tivo decide to upload a new one.

A tivoweb module perhaps?? Like the season-pass backup. So you could save them all but - more importantly - reload them all in one go.

[cyril]

I really need this as I've got 11 sets to do!

[sanderton]

You can load them individually through TiVoWeb from a backup on your PC - it only took 5 mins to do.

[threadkiller]

excuse my ignorance, but whats the difference between S1 & S2

[vassilis]

Here is my contribution to the Tivo logos collections

Some I have created myself using the standard Tivo pallette, some I have borrowed. All can be loaded using Tivoweb and look ok on my Tivo.


I have splitted the original file in two due to the uploading limitations

Vassilis

[cwaring]

Originally posted by threadkiller
excuse my ignorance, but whats the difference between S1 & S2

I think (I don't have TivoWeb, yet!) that one set is for the "Now Playing" screen and the other set is for.... erm... somewhere else; the "Live TV" EPG overlay, possibly.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong :)

[vassilis]

...and here is part 2 :)


Vassilis

[sanderton]

Gary/ozsat - maybe merge this with the other Logos thread with attachments in it?

[Fatbloke]

Its not the backing up that's a problem - a quick right mouse/save as will do the trick. I can't be bothered with the re-importing/assigning that needs to be done. :(

Thinking about it... what's the rules about getting a logo to 'auto assign'. I guess it's in the name but can someone spell it out for me pls. :D

[GarySargent]

Threads merged and I added a link to this thread from the FAQ post.

[sanderton]

Originally posted by Fatbloke
Its not the backing up that's a problem - a quick right mouse/save as will do the trick. I can't be bothered with the re-importing/assigning that needs to be done. :(

Thinking about it... what's the rules about getting a logo to 'auto assign'. I guess it's in the name but can someone spell it out for me pls. :D

The s2s I attached in some zips above I renamed to be the TiVo channel Idents. On one TiVo they auto-associated perfectly; on the other they attached themselves to random channels. :confused:

[pahunt]

Originally posted by cwaring
I think (I don't have TivoWeb, yet!) that one set is for the "Now Playing" screen and the other set is for.... erm... somewhere else; the "Live TV" EPG overlay, possibly.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong :)

Spot on Carl :)

The S1 shows on the channel banner and the S2 shows in the Now Playing list.

[Prof. Yaffle]

Has anyone got a Now Playing logo for Radio 2? I thought I used to have one but since the logos got wiped I've not been able to find one so I may well be wrong.

TIA

[MikeC]

Originally posted by Prof. Yaffle
Has anyone got a Now Playing logo for Radio 2? I thought I used to have one but since the logos got wiped I've not been able to find one so I may well be wrong.

TIA

I use this

[MikeC]

Whilst I'm at it, here are the S2 logos I've modified for each of the ITV regions.

[Prof. Yaffle]

Thanks. I'll give those a go.

[anderson]

Anyone got a decent UK Horizons logo?

[vassilis]

And here are the logos for the new FX UK channel.

Vassilis

[mrtickle]

Here are some slightly tweaked versions (untested though!) - hope you don't mind.

[anderson]

Tried both vassilis' FX logo and mrtickle's updated one, both come out a bit odd, is there some kind of palette issue?

[vassilis]

Hmmm... for some reason my original logos appeared with the FX bit semitransparent. SO I changed the colors to match the on screen ones (yellow-green for the light projectors and grey for the FX). These two work ok on my tivo.

Vassilis

[mbriody]

Just tried this (version 3) and I'm getting an 'invalid file format' on fx3-s2-p2.png.

[sanderton]

Me too.

[vassilis]

Ooops!
I think I packed the wrong file. It should be ok now just tried it ( the other one had the wrong pallete).

Vassilis

[aerialplug]

I've spent some time recently trying to design some good looking logos (with some success - the Sky One logo I designed is FAR smoother than the one TiVo gave us!).

However, I've discovered that the main reason some of the logos come out looking a bit scrappy compared to the PC version is because the colours displayed on TiVo from the pallet obtained from the logos on TiVo vary compared to when they're displayed on a PC.

On the whole, they're quite accurate - but notable exceptions I've seen are (on s2 pallet):
0 - appears transparent (expected)
12 - red on PC but comes out beige on TiVo
14 - should be white but appears a darker grey on TiVo
15 - should be black - but comes out transparent on TiVo!

10 and 9 also come out with unexpected colours.

These are the ones I know for definite, but I'm sure others in this range have given me strange colours. It looks to me as if values 0-15 may be a bit suspect and should be avoided...

There are also issues with the s1 pallet, though I haven't investigated this much.

Does anyone know which pallet values I should be avoiding for my colours - and also has anyone a more accurate pallet I could use (even if I have to re-substitute with the standard TiVo one after I've designed the logo)?

[sanderton]

As you've found, the first 16 are nothing like as they come out; it's trial and error with the others!

I found a decent white somwhere - best ting is to look at them on TiVo and then see which colour that is in the file.

[aerialplug]

Thanks, that's what I expected. - I'll apply a filter to mask out these colours - I won't be able to test them until tonight as my TiVo hung on an FTP this morning and is currently doing a mars rover on me - I can see that it's still there by pinging it - but nothing else responds :( (working remotely from the office)

Any ideas if TiVo/TiVoWeb will accept a modified pallet where the first 16 colours are blanked out to a neutral colour? It certainly accepts any value for the transparency (0) and I've also modified iother ndividual pallet values in the 0-15 range and it worked.

[sanderton]

It's not supposed to, but I believe the pallette is reset every time the NP is accessed. There was some stuff on alt.org a while back.

[GarySargent]

If you have icons that are better than the ones TiVo give us then TiVo did say they would consider accepting these for distribution to everyone in an official update.

[aerialplug]

That's fine - as I won't be using any of the values between 1 and 15 resetting the pallette isn't a problem - I was more concerned with the check that TivoNet makes to see if its compatible. If I use a wildly different pallette, then it's rejected. I was wondering if I passed in an image where the first 15 characters aren't part of the "standard" colour set - would this be rejected?

I guess I'll find out when I try it tonight after rebooting TiVo.

[JeFurry]

Originally posted by GarySargent
TiVo did say they would consider accepting these [icons] for distribution to everyone in an official update.

If that's the case, what are the chances of getting an official palette (with information about how it appears onscreen) and specification for the file format (including transparency chunks and so on) from them?

'Twould help a great deal... and the payback to them would be better icons/channel logos for little effort. This information must already be around somewhere, all we'd need is for it to be released.

[aerialplug]

It was my intention to make the entire logo set that I've been creating available here for anyone to use but if TiVo themselves find them useful then more the better. I suspect there may be a copyright issue there though as the logos are technically still the property of the broadcasters and TiVo would have to set up agreements with all the broadcasters.

I've currently got a complete logo set for all BBC TV & national radio (s1 & s2), which was what got me originally interested in drawing the logos. I've also now got s2 logos for all the Channels my TiVo's ever likely to record from, the majority have already got s1 logos, with my intention being to furnish all the logos with s1 drawings eventually.

With the palette problem now pretty much solved, I'll re-render all the logos that have issues with the new palette.

If anyone's interested, I can produce a quick list of all the logos I've done so far. When I'm satisfied, I'll post them here and on my web site.

[sanderton]

TiVo will only officially endorse logos from their partners (Sky, BBC, C4).

Kittschcamp was maintaining a website with rhe available logos on it.

[healeydave]

I'd be interested in a quality set that looks nice on all screens.

I imported some ages ago (can't remember where from) and some of the logos look really poor on certain screens compared to the original untouched ones. Of-course the original set was rather lackiing apart from the major channels but the new style logo that matches the current bbc one is tat on my box compared to the original.

[sanderton]

BBC 1 (and 2) are problematic as there isn't a colour in the palette which is even close to the purple or orange.

[healeydave]

Ah, so we need to get the bbc to change their logo instead then.

I'll get a letter off to them, oh no there's no point is there, they're all walking out arn't they.hehehe.

[aerialplug]

BBC ONE is actually red and you can get relatively close close. Two I agree is problematical and you can't get close to purple in the s2 palette - but my intention is to provide a logo that can make it easy to distinguish where the programme came from and that looks like it wasn't drawn after a bad night at the pub :D

One thing I also want to do is try to ensure they don't have interlace twitter (like the TiVo selection bar!!). This gets quite tricky when you're trying to reduce details that are already fine, but there are techniques to get around this problem.

Yes, there are differences in hues between the icons in the s1 set and the s2 because of the different palettes - but then they're never displayed together anyway. I've no idea why a completely different colour set was used for the two different icons...

[iankb]

Originally posted by aerialplug
... you can't get close to purple in the s2 paletteNot good for small images, but has anyone tried dithering two colours together?

[aerialplug]

Only with limited success - the s2 icon is quite small being only 35 pixels high so dithering only just works in occasions. The official BBC2 purple's (R:112 G:62 B:161) nearest equivalent comes out as a pale cyan, dithered with some darker blueish and pinkish pixels.

There's another snag though - there's nothing approaching a good blue in the s2 palette either...

Why such different palettes (between s1 and s2) I wonder? And also why not a generic jack of all trades which would allow an approximation of any logo to be made?

[dialanothernumb]

I'd be keen on the new rendered logos, Aerial, If you are happy to put them up

[aerialplug]

Second attempt... I typed all this in already by lost it when the forum kindly told me the original attachment I tried sending was too big - and then wouldn't allow me to go back to the original text :mad:

Anyway - a little later than expected but here is a set of re-rendered logos for uploading into a TiVo equipped with TivoWeb. The criteria for design are:

1. They should be well formed and recogniseable. You should have no doubt which channel the programme came from just by looking at the logo.

2. Little or no interlace twitter (flicker). I've had previous experience in designing graphics for display on television screens and on the whole I've managed this. Some may need a little more tweaking (e.g. the BBC logo on some of the radio stations and the ITV type 1 logos).

3. The design and colour should be as close to the original logo as possible. This was tricky in some cases as the palette used by TiVo is a little strange. Some were impossible (e.g. BBC TWO as there's no purple in the S2 pallete) so I've tried to go for near match.

4. There should be at least 2 pixels between each type 2 logo displayed on the Now Showing screen to avoid the logos looking cluttered. 1 pixel would cause twitter and more than 2 would seriously compromise the design of some of the logos!

5. The logos should look good on TivoWeb - transparancy shouldcorrectly set.

This set more than meets my TiVo's recording habbits, but I'm sure some in the group can suggest any glaring ommissions I've made and I may be able to provide in a later release.

Two logos (Channel 4 and E4) use the original TiVo rendering with a slight resize for C4 and re-position. All others are drawn based on the best available source (varied).

The intended channel for each logo should be easily discernable from the file name.

Any comments/suggestions appreciated.

To download the logos, download the attachment in this and my next post or click on the appropriate link in my signature. This post will contain the type 1 logos displayed in the banner at the top of the screen, and the next will contain the type 2 logo, used on the Now Showing screen.

[aerialplug]

... and here's the type 2 logo set which corresponds to the type 1 set attached to my previous post.

[pahunt]

They look very nice on my PC and hopefully they'll look as nice on the TV once I've loaded them :up:

[sanderton]

Very nice.

[starbug1234]

Is there a way to bulk upload these logos, by FTP maybe??

Its taking me AGES to do it via Tivo-Web! ;)

Thx

S.

[aerialplug]

I don't know of any - I have to admit a bulk loader would have been really handy when I was developing these - often something that looked good on a PC screen looked awful on the TV so many uploads and reboots to get the logos to where they are now.

FTP's no good - the logos are located on the MFS file system.

[iankb]

Originally posted by aerialplug
Second attempt... I typed all this in already by lost it when the forum kindly told me the original attachment I tried sending was too big - and then wouldn't allow me to go back to the original textI got fed up with losing posts when the forum was playing up. Before sending a post, I always select all the text (Ctrl+A) and copy into the paste buffer (Ctrl+C). Then if the post fails, I can always paste it back (Ctrl+V).

[aerialplug]

Originally posted by iankb
I got fed up with losing posts when the forum was playing up. Before sending a post, I always select all the text (Ctrl+A) and copy into the paste buffer (Ctrl+C). Then if the post fails, I can always paste it back (Ctrl+V).

I'm used to doing this with Demon's awful Webmail interface which logs you out automatically after 10 minutes (or so) of inactivity, so if you have a long email - you lose it after you press send as you've "logged out".

I now know better:)

[aerialplug]

The attached image shows a typical Now Playing screen showing some logos. This will give an idea of what it looks like.

[tom_m]

Really nice job there - installed them, and Now Playing looks excellent...

Finally I can tell which BBC channel shows have been recorded from.

[dialanothernumb]

I've had problems loading the second lot of logos, tivoweb telling me that the file was an invalid format. This has happened with another "now playing" logo I tried to install, so it looks like a quirk of my machines (both of them??

Anyone any ideas? Should I be mounting rw or something??

[aerialplug]

Which logo did you have a problem with - or was it all of them?

If it's a single logo, I'll attempt to upload it again here and let you know if it's the logo that's got a problem or if it's something else.

[bobones]

Originally posted by dialanothernumb
I've had problems loading the second lot of logos, tivoweb telling me that the file was an invalid format. This has happened with another "now playing" logo I tried to install, so it looks like a quirk of my machines (both of them??

Anyone any ideas? Should I be mounting rw or something??
I had the same problem using Tivowebplus. I switched to vanilla Tivoweb and the import worked correctly.

[aerialplug]

One thing that could be happening here is that Tivowebplus is doing a more rigorous check of the palette compared to Tivoweb.

Due to inconsistencies in the palette that TiVo provided with the few logos that were initially provided, I've purpled out the first 16 colours in the palette so that these colours aren't used when the logo is being designed. Tivoweb Plus could well be rejecting the logos because of this - but it's strange, because I've done exactly the same with the S1 logo set and this seems to work fine.

If this is the case, I may well re-issue the entire logo set, replacing my palette with the TiVo one. I don't have Tivowebplus, so could someone verify that replacing the palette works for both Tivoweb and Tivowebplus.

[iankb]

I uploaded all of them with no complaint, so I don't think that there was anything wrong with the initial files.

One or two of the colors were a bit odd on the TiVo (e.g. Channel E4), three of them weren't transparent in TivoWeb (Channel Sci-Fi and both Reality), and both UK Drama couldn't be loaded together (different names by default), but overall they were a big improvement.

[sanderton]

I managed to get a half-decent purple for BBC2 (posted way back in this thread); any chance of a purple version? :)

[aerialplug]

Thanks for pointing out the minor errors, ian. I'll get the transparencies sorted out and re-post a new version over the weekend.

Actually I did experiment with a purple using dithering for BBC2 - I prefer the one I ended up using but I'll include the dithered purple in the re-release.

Reality was a last minute rush job - I realised I watch one programme off there (The Tube) so I knocked it together and forgot to turn the transparency on. I did correct it but I wrote the transparent version out to another directory.

Drama - yes, that's an obvious mistake and I'll correct that as well.

Yes, I noticed that E4 was looking a bit ropey last night - I may have forgotten to put the special palette in on this when I first re-rendered it so it got some strange white values - I should be able to fix that I hope.

I may put in a couple of other logos - one channel I occasionally watch is Adventure One so I'll try to get one for that in version 2 as well.

I remember those days when my TiVo's uptime registered hundreds of days.... ;) Now it's unusual to see the day counter pass beyond 1 with all the reboots needed to make hack and logo changes!

[dialanothernumb]

Originally posted by aerialplug
If this is the case, I may well re-issue the entire logo set, replacing my palette with the TiVo one. I don't have Tivowebplus, so could someone verify that replacing the palette works for both Tivoweb and Tivowebplus.

I have TWP, so you may well be right, but for God's sake don't go to too much trouble to ensure compatibility. TWP is okay but I'd guess a minority distribution right now.

If the work isn't too great then... THANKS! The S1 logos that I've uploaded look fabulous.

[bobones]

It would be quite easy for you to install vanilla tivoweb just to import the s2's.

[Sparky007]

Is there any chance of adding a Men & Motors logo while you adding to the package? Just loaded all the logos into the Tivo and they are excellent!

[mrtickle]

I've been busy for a week or so and it feels like a month :)

The palette issue - the way I understand it, someone decided that having lots of shades of yellow, green and grey (for the blobs in Now Playing, and the "Please Wait" tivo icon) was more important than an even spread of colours to use for channel icons.
The other palette doesn't need to have those blobs so it "won" a better set of colours.
They really should have used the best spread of 256 colours (ie something like the Acorn 256-colour palette, and definitely not the netscape or VGA palette), but it's too late now.

When I was going to embark on my set of better logos, which I still haven't started :) , my plan was to make a TiVo palette without the "problem" colours, so that my graphics packages couldn't pick them (eg when dithering or down-mixing from 24bit to the restricted colours). Then when the logo was finished, import the real TiVo palette back. This should result in a logo which looks as good as it can, but doesn't use the entries we don't want to use.

I made these notes a while back:

s1-p1: (channel banner logos - 216 alpha values in tRNS chunk)

index Alpha value
0 0 (appears transparent on tivo, solid magenta in tivoweb)
1-15 255 ("cuts through" background on tivo revealing video underneath)
16-199 255 (these colours seem ok though?)
200-215 128 (these could cause problems!)
216-255 no alpha values stored; (255) displayed in tweakPNG

s2-p2: (now playing logos, really crap selection of colours :-( )
(256 alpha values in tRNS chunk)

index Alpha value
0 0 (appears transparent on tivo, solid magenta in tivoweb)
1-15 255 ("cuts through" background on tivo revealing video underneath)
16-175 255 (these colours seem ok though?)
176-255 128 (these could cause problems!)


I think the only safe colours are 16-199 for the channel banner and 16-175 for Now Playing. Also note that if you redefine the palette as soon as TiVo paints an image on the screen which uses a different paletter (ie the old correct one) the colours change! Whichever one is drawn last wins. I had this issue when I did my "flickering selection bar" fix.

The thing is with the alpha layer you can have the correct colour but if the transparency isn't right it will look like a different colour. I think this is the main issue with Tivo vs TiVoweb (+browser incompatibilities) displays. If you can get not just the palette but the transparancy right (I use TweakPNG), and every image uses the standard tivo palette it should all work :D

HTH

[aerialplug]

Thanks for the hints. I've been OK with blocking only 1-15 to date (probably out of luck more than anything) - if I get any problems I'll start blocking some of the other colours too - that could well be what's messing with the E4 logo.

Also thanks for the logic behind the strange palettes - it all makes sense now :):)

I'll re-issue with a TiVo palette so that it'll work with Tivowebplus - it'll take some time - but I guess it'll stop problems in the long run.

Men & Motors - noted.

I'll spend a couple of hours on this tomorrow so hopefully I can issue a new set sometime over the weekend.

(I wish my brain could decide which spelling of palette to use!)

[Tiny Clanger]

Originally posted by Sparky007
Is there any chance of adding a Men & Motors logo while you adding to the package? Just loaded all the logos into the Tivo and they are excellent!

Try these...

[Sparky007]

Excellent thanks! :up:

[aerialplug]

The new logo set is nearly ready. I've modified the pallete of all S2 logos to hopefully work with Tivowebplus. Also, there's a more purpley BBC2 logo along with a few new logos. I should have them posted here tonight after a few final tweaks.

Does anyone desparately want any specific logos rendered before I put it online?

The new ones I've added so far are Fox Kids, Trouble, Cartoon Network & M&M.

[starbug1234]

Discovery health would be nice, if you have time. :-)

Cheers
S.

[csansbury]

FX would be good (though not desparate)

Thanks for all the good work.

[mrtickle]

Great stuff. How are you doing the palette, exactly? Or rather - it's not just the palette, it's the construction of the png file itself. TweakPNG lets you set this up for each file. I think TiVo/tivoweb expects a png file with:
IHDR chunk
gAMA chunk (0.45455)
PLTE palette, 256 entries
tRNS chunk for the transparency values, 256 entries
IDAT image data chunk
IEND end marker

The images I used to use which I saved from photoshop/PSpro had all sorts of crap in them! times, dates, comments, chromacities, etc. I've noticed that tivo's own UK set of logos don't have a tRNS chunk. - I believe this means that the rest of the screen furniture will impose their transparency on them anyway. So if you have an image without the tRNS chunk, and use the colours which should have had transparency, it will look different on the PC because the PC doesn't have anything else resetting the palette for it!

hope that makes sense :)

[aerialplug]

At the moment, I'm just using PSPro, blanking out some of the pallete values that I've had problems with.

For the S2, up until now hust values 1-15 are adequate - but the S1 is proving more problematic than I thought (hence the longer delay than expected in getting more out!)

[JonO]

Impressed with the logos so far - Thnx.
Is it possible to get a Eurosport Logo?

TIA

[Adlopa]

1. Great job!
2. Toonami (http://www.cartoonnetwork.co.uk/html/frame_exclude.html?section=microsites/uk/toonami) would complete the set...

[aerialplug]

Thanks - I promise to get the revised set out this weekend sometime. This week's been very busy - and TiVo's having very busy evenings (I don't want to reboot and getting the S1 logos right needs lots of these!)

I'm working to get a few more kids channels in as well. I did start on some of the news channels but then realised that (for me at least) a news channel isn't really ideal TiVo fodder.

[aerialplug]

Ok, they're done.

This is the second release - changes since version 1 are:
1. Palette issues in the S2 set causing Tivowebplus failing to load has been resolved.
2. Some transparency and bad colour issues in the S1 logo set resolved. Some still have some minor issues but I'll deal with these later.
3. New logos added: Biography Channel, Boomerang, Discovery Health, Eurosport, Fox Kids, FX, Men & Motors, Toonami
4. An alternative more purple BBC Two has been added.

The logo set is getting too large to even split into two for posting here now so for now, they can be found by following the link in my signature.

[bobones]

The s2 set still won't load in tivowebplus. The reason is that twp checks for an image width of 101 whereas tw checks for 100. I don't know which is the correct value, however changing line 243 of logos.itcl fixes the issue.

TWP line looks like:

} elseif {$width == 101 && $height == 35} {

Change to:

} elseif {$width == 100 && $height == 35} {

[aerialplug]

Thanks for the info bobones, I haven't installed TiVowebplus so I wasn't able to check.

All I can say is that all the images provided on the TiVo (e.g. the BBC logo and the E4/C4 logos) - they're all 100x35. Not one is 101x35 (unless TiVoweb messes with them first). I wouldn't like to try spoofing an upload of a 101x35 image as I've been told that TiVo gets rather uppity with badly formated images.

Presumably twp can and does upload these successfully - anyone care to comment?

All I can assume is that the problem has been with twp all along...

Anyway - safe to say I'm not going to convert all my S2 images to 101x35 - it took long enough to do the colour palette mod...

Incidentally, as a welsh speaker, I can add that "twp" in welsh literally translates to "stupid" or "idiot"... :o ;)

Oh - and I've just discovered that I missed out a logo from the zip file - Adventure 1. I'll post that here tomorrow as an attachment as well as add it to the zip file on the web site. ... when I can find where I saved it!!!

[iankb]

Thanks aerialplug, they're looking great.

I'm sure that your aware of this, but one of the Sci-Fi logos is still not transparent in TivoWeb.

Also, I record a lot of Sky films, and the TiVo-supplied logos for Sky Movies and Sky Cinema are non-transparent in TivoWeb, and very faint on the TiVo (too many shades of blue). If you ever find time to replace them, I would appreciate it, but understand if you have other things to do in your life. ;)

[iankb]

The E4 channel logo has a purple background. I solved the problem by taking the 'image8-tw-s1-p1.png' image which was on my TiVo (I don't know where it came from) and renamed it to 'e4-tw-s1-p1.png' and uploaded that.

[technograndad]

Superb logos.. just two niggles...

1. The new BBC2 purple (bbctwopurple-s2-p2.png) is actually red. But the good thing is it's a MUCH better red than your BBC1 logos which I find too bright or too orange - were you thinking of changing to (or could I persuade you to change to :-) this darker red for BBC1?

2. The alternative BBC2 s1 purple logo is semi-transparent on screen. No big deal, I'm just reporting back.

Well done though!

John

[pahunt]

A brilliant set of logos :up:

But I'm going to add a couple of requests as well :eek: The logos that I'm missing that would complete the list of channels that I record from would be Disney and MTV.

[pahunt]

Just another couple of small discrepancies I've noticed. The s1 and s2 logos for FX News and BBC Parliament are named slightly differently and therefore they have to be renamed before being uploaded so that they get associated correctly.

[ywu]

I'm not sure about the naming conventions, but my own mtv ones attached here. All s2.

[mrtickle]

Originally posted by bobones
The s2 set still won't load in tivowebplus. The reason is that twp checks for an image width of 101 whereas tw checks for 100. I don't know which is the correct value,

I heard from a horse's mouth that 100x35 is the correct one.

Perhaps tivo have changed it for later (series 2?) machines in the US and so the tw+ team have responded - but for us it's 100x35.

HTH

[pahunt]

Originally posted by ywu
I'm not sure about the naming conventions, but my own mtv ones attached here. All s2.

Thanks very much :up:

[falcontx]

100 is correct. The "101 bug" has been present in TWP since the beginning, though I have yet to figure out how it got there. Regardless, it will be fixed in the next release.

falcontx

[aerialplug]

Version 3 of the logo set is now complete and is available for download.

As well as fixing a few bugs in the palettes, requested logos and suggestions have also been added. See the web page linked to in my signature for more details of what's changed and how to get them.

Note that they can now all now also be previewed and downloaded individually as well as be downloaded together in zip files.

This is the first set of logos to be correctly filtered according to mrtickle's information about the TiVo colour palettes so all transparency problems should be solved.

[pahunt]

:up:

Thanks very much for this, especially the MTV and Disney ones :)

[aerialplug]

I love the MTV Union Jack - the S1 logo looks absolutely brilliant on my TV. The S2 can be a little difficult to see - if you don't like it, use the alternative!

[mrtickle]

Wow. Where do you get your free time from :)

[iankb]

Thanks for the Sky Movies logos.