HD Photo Viewer not true HD

Are you using the regular photo viewer or the 2.0 photo viewer?

 

Not trying to speak for Martymart, but I have the same concerns... and I'm using 2.0.

Is there a thread or information somewhere which would guide someone to optimizing their picture quality in HD when viewing via Desktop?

Viewing pictures in HD is not very impressive from what I've seen so far. Admittedly, I may be the problem.

 

Ok. My theory is the following. 1080i works out to 1920×1080, or 2,073,600 pixels in total. So no matter what the Tivo does your picture will only show up as a 2 megapixel image.

 

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Tivo is compressing your photos. thats why they look like that.

 

Well I have a very good comparison in my setup. I have a Mac Mini connected by DVI/HDMI and my Tivo HD connected by HDMI to a Sony 1080p LCD. The pictures from the Tivo are OK, but do not seem to be HD using 2.0 , while the pictures from the Mac screen saver look unbelievable and I am using the same exact source files for both.

 

Sounds to me like you are still running the old SD viewer, not the new HD viewer.

To run the HD app, you have to install TiVo Desktop 2.5, then go to Tivo Server Properties and select "Preview Photos 2.0 (With HD Support) for Series 3".

You also have to have the latest Java runtime installed (from Sun) on your PC.

A confirmation window might pop up asking permission to run the HD photo app.

You'll know everything is working when you go to your TiVo and see 2 different photo applications listed under "Music, Photos, Products and More". The HD app runs a little differently too (the look & feel is different, and it fades between each photo in slideshow mode).

The HD photo app unfortunately still has gaps around all the edges of the photos (i.e. it doesn't use up the entire screen to display the photos). But the quality of the photos themselves is much improved from the old SD Photo app.

 

I think it might be due to the Tivo working in 720p while the Mac works at 1080p?

Confirm?

 

That's a good point, but doesn't explain things like the "compression artifacts" martymart reported. I only see compression artifacts in the old SD viewer; never in the HD viewer.

 

Well martymart hasn't said what he's comparing his picture quality to.

 

Possibly, although Mac output is 1080i (upscaled by TV to 1080p).

 

We actually discussed this on the forum back when Tivo Desktop 2.4 Preview came out which I believe first introduced HD photos.

I have a Sony KDS-R60XBR1 that runs native in 1080p (although it only accepts up to a 1080i input it upconverts everything to 1080P).

When I set my TiVo S3 to "Native" video mode and look at the HD pictures the TV is saying the display is only 720P which is 1280x720. I think that is why they don't look so great. (Although 720P technically is "true HD") Certainly they don't look nearly as good as the photo viewer in my XBOX 360 or my Playstation 3 which might be showing photos in 1920x1080 (and hi-res digital photos look amazing on both of those consoles). Granted the XBOX 360 and PS3 has loads more horsepower and memory.

When you look at the photos the viewer looks like this right?

http://www.cifrancis.com/tivo/photos_hd.jpg

http://www.cifrancis.com/tivo/photos_hd2.jpg

http://www.cifrancis.com/tivo/photos_hd3.jpg

I just wanted to be sure you are selecting the new HD photo interface from the "Music, Photos and More menu" and not the old one.

 

My TV does 1080i. I can not tell the difference between 1920x1080 pictures taken with my Sony DSC-T10 using my Xbox360, the TV's built-in Sony picture viewer from a memory stick, or my S3.

Granted my TV is only 30" widescreen HD CRT.

 

That's a great test...the presence of the "Flickr Interesting" folder is a dead giveaway, since only the HD viewer shows this. If you don't see "Flickr Interesting", you aren't running the HD viewer.

If the 720p that results from "native mode" video output is a concern, try setting your video output to 1080i Fixed instead. Personally, I can see no difference between 720p and 1080i on my 50" plasma, but YMMV.

martymart: I'm curious how you found "heavy artifacting" using the HD viewer. I don't see any artifacting at all (but definitely "heavy artifacting" in the old SD viewer).

 

The new photo viewer runs at 720p (which is a HD format). If your TV is a 1080i/1080p TV, then the TV will upscale the image to 1080 (i or p is irrelevant since it's a static image).

This means that if the image you are viewing has a resolution higher than 1280x720 than the image will be shrunk by the TiVo (or TiVo Desktop) to fit on the screen. If it's less than 1280x720, then it is displayed actual size.

FWIW, I have a 1080p TV and there is a noticeable increase in quality between the old image viewer and the new HME based image viewer.

 

Actually, the HD photo viewer will run at whatever resolution the TiVo user interface is set for (720p or 1080i). If you set your Video Output Format to 1080i Fixed, the HD viewer will run at that resolution. Again, I see no appreciable difference with the HD photo viewer running at 720p vs 1080i on my display (even when displaying 8MP photos), but YMMV.

 

I'm pretty sure it's only upscaling to 1080i; it's not 1080i native.

 

It looked pretty good to me when I tried it last night, EXCEPT for the 10-20 pixel grey border around the outside of the screen...

 

That is correct.
It will upscale from the 720p image to 1080i if you set the TiVo to 1080i fixed, the same way it will upscale SD channels to 1080i.