16:9 format from hacked Series 1

[wbrproductions]

Apologies if this topic has been covered many times before, as it probably has.

I've been happily using a fairly well hacked Series 1 for 7 years or so, until I knocked over the applecart by buying an HDTV and ordering up a HD Directv satellite box (which hasn't arrived yet). Obviously, I'm not gonna get very HQ video from my Tivo box until I upgrade to Series 3, but in the meantime...

How can I squeeze the most from my Series 1 until I bite the bullet and buy the Series 3? If I feed it 16:9 (S-Video) format from my new HD sat receiver, will tivo feed me back 16:9? Can I jack the recording quality using hackman and/or tivowebplus? I've got 150 GB of drive space which I rarely max out so there's room to grow... Can I do a hardware hack to squeeze component video into my Tivo?

I prefer running old things into the ground before buying the new, shiny object - especially when the shiny object is currenty 800 bucks.

Thanks much in advance,

wbrproductions

[BTUx9]

the input and output of the series 1 (and series 2, for that matter) SA tivos are restricted to NTSC, meaning no hacks you could reasonably do will give you HD content

[pinballfan]

Yes you can record standard definition 16:9 content that you feed into your tivo. It will come back out in the same aspect ratio that you passed it in.

The main issue you are likely to encounter is an inability to have the Tivo tune to OTA digital stations. I did this several years ago, and my tivo would only tune to normal DirecTV stations. I had to really play games to record OTA stations. If you are getting HD locals via satellite this might not be a problem for you.

The HD settop box I used (Sony HD-100) had a timer function built in. So I could program it to tune to a particular channel at a particular time. So I used that in combination with programming the Tivo to record a program of the regular version of the channel. If memory serves I eventually started padding the front of the recordings by 1 minute to ensure that the Tivo flipped channels first.

The quality of the video recorded this way is no where near HD, but was noticeably better than what I got tuning to the standard def channels. And on top of that it was widescreen!

-- Doug

[wbrproductions]

Thanks Doug - I appreciate the tips, especially about the over the air stations. I'll probably be using the directv locals in the short term, so that should work OK. Time to start saving for the good stuff...

wbrproductions