TiVo HD .tivo file resolution?

[Joz3d]

I've searched and could not find, would think this info would be easy to find though:

What is the resolution of .tivo files pulled from TiVo HD boxes? I just have a Series2 and it has that non-standard 480x480 that is difficult to deal with in most video editing suites. What's the resolution on the files for HD recordings? (720p & 1080i)


And just to slide this extra newbie-type question in here that I never bothered to ask because I got so used to it: when you fast-forward/rewind on TiVo, does it not stop where you are when you press play? IE I do ff or rewind on 2 arrows or 3 (max) speed, then I press play, and it's like 10 seconds away from what was on the screen when I pressed play, 10 or so seconds before when fast forwarding, 10 secs after when rewinding. It's quite annoying and works fine on 1 arrow.

Thanks!

[greg_burns]

I've searched and could not find, would think this info would be easy to find though:

What is the resolution of .tivo files pulled from TiVo HD boxes? I just have a Series2 and it has that non-standard 480x480 that is difficult to deal with in most video editing suites. What's the resolution on the files for HD recordings? (720p & 1080i)

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=376867

And just to slide this extra newbie-type question in here that I never bothered to ask because I got so used to it: when you fast-forward/rewind on TiVo, does it not stop where you are when you press play? IE I do ff or rewind on 2 arrows or 3 (max) speed, then I press play, and it's like 10 seconds away from what was on the screen when I pressed play, 10 or so seconds before when fast forwarding, 10 secs after when rewinding. It's quite annoying and works fine on 1 arrow.

Thanks!

The jump back when fast-forwarding is a feature of Tivo. Unfortunately, it seems with digital recordings it is not quite as consistent as it was with analog recordings. The reason, they say, is related to the encoding of the "I" and "P" frames in the MPEG video. When Tivo encodes analog recordings it has control over where these "frame" types occur. With digital, it is the broadcast provider that determines that. And they are not consistent. Or at least that is my layman's understanding of it. :)

[litkaj]

All digital recordings are saved as they were originally broadcast. The standard resolution for 1080i would be 1920x1080 and 720p would be 1280x720. That said some providers broadcast "HD Lite" where you get 1440x1080 which is then stretched.

[Joz3d]

All digital recordings are saved as they were originally broadcast. The standard resolution for 1080i would be 1920x1080 and 720p would be 1280x720. That said some providers broadcast "HD Lite" where you get 1440x1080 which is then stretched.

Thats not actually true though, right? (the "All digital recordings saved as broadcast" part) or is it? Are you saying that my cable company (time warner) broadcasts digital sdtv at 480x480? I thought they broadcast at 640x480 or 720x480. Even my analog channel's files are 480x480..?

[Dennis Wilkinson]

Thats not actually true though, right? (the "All digital recordings saved as broadcast" part) or is it? Are you saying that my cable company (time warner) broadcasts digital sdtv at 480x480? I thought they broadcast at 640x480 or 720x480. Even my analog channel's files are 480x480..?

If you really do have analog channels being broadcast, then the TiVo HD is encoding those itself, and the resolution depends on what quality setting you have set (probably 320x480 for basic and medium, 480x480 for high, although since I no longer have any analog channels in my lineup I can't really check that myself.)

But for everything that's broadcast digitally, the TiVoHD will just write the digital bitstream it gets to disk. Doing anything else would require the unit to decompress then recompress the signal, and there's not enough decoders in the box to do that.