tivo video quality affecting the IPOD version

[KWilson]

When I travel for work I usually record a couple movies - transfer to PC with tivo desktop and then convert for my IPOD. Everything usually works great!

I just had an idea. If I record my movies at the lowest quality will that affect the file size of the IPOD version once converted - saving me disk space on my full ipod?

And, second will the reduced quality of the recorded movie even be noticeable on the small IPOD screen?

[KWilson]

No one answered. I had thought this would be an easy question with several suggestions but no one did - so I did some tests last night.

I did a manual recording of 5 minutes of a show at all 4 video qualities.
Quality Tivo Desktop size Tivotogo Ipod Size
Best 215mb 31 mb
High 133mb 31 mb
Medium 101mb 31 mb
Basic 60mb 31 mb

I couldn't tell any difference on the video quality on any of the 4 on the IPOD screen but the difference on the computer was not quite as noticeable but very similar to the difference watching the different versions on the TV.

So the moral of this story is it doesn't matter what video quality you record on the TIVO it all comes out the same on the ipod resolution.

[dlfl]

It doesn't surprise me that the final iPod file doesn't differ much for different tivo qualites. The iPod file resolution is 320x240 which is so small compared to most TiVo resolutions, even slightly smaller than basic which is 352x240 on a Series 2 Tivo. Any reasonable re-encoding would end up producing about the same file.

Go to this post (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5635791&highlight=ipod#post5635791)and do a Ctrl-F search on "ipod" for some more interesting information.