TiVoHD connected to an SD Television

I think you can--just set the Tivo to 480i or 480p fixed output, and you should be set.

I just tried this with my Tivo HD--480i fixed, and played a 1080i program. It looked pretty crappy, but the TV reported a 480i signal.

TTYL
David

 

yes, and do it pretty well.

the Svideo and composite out on the TiVo HD are SD. if the TV has a component connection then it will deal with playing the content from that

 

well downconverting the signal to a large HD TV will of course look worse

 

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The TiVo HD works great with a SD set. One of mine is hooked up to one now and I use CableCards in it. Digital channels will look much better than analog on a SD set. If you can use a antenna, then you could record the digital locals in HD which will be much better quality than you will get from the analog locals from the cable company. Also, analog channels will actually look better than the S2 DT when using the same recording quality.

 

It looks pretty good to me. I've been displaying the output of and ATSC receiver on a 20 inch SD CRT television for years.

I realize the resolution changes, but still, the picture is just fine

--G

 

I've watched HD content on my SD TV that was transferred to the TiVo HD there from the ones in the living room. I'm using the S-video connection. So it can be done. Picture quality is definitely better that what I see on the SD channels.

 

I was going to ask why worry about HD content when in many cases there are SD channels available from which you could record and get "native" content for your display device, but then I thought about the few HD-specific channels out there and figured that's what you meant.

But then as I thought further, I remembered that I'm doing exactly that when I use my Slingbox to watch my TiVo HD on the road. I have a mix of HD and SD content and it's all mostly wonderfully viewable on the Slingbox (although I did have to change the TiVo's concept of having my screen be "Smart 4:3" to being regular 4:3).

 

Only if your SD TV supports SVideo or RCA. The HD doesn't have a coax output...

 

You'd have to have a set that's really old, or really cheap, for it to lack even a composite in with a mono audio input. In that case an RF modulator will take care of the problem.

 

Yes, I know, but just thought I'd mention it since the op didn't specify.

 

Just putting this out there - do a search on my user id to find my posts. I posted a question on this topic back in Nov with regards to what settings should be used. If you look at that post, I replied to it with the settings I'm using that work quite well. If you cannot find it, let me know and ill dig around for the post and re-post the settings here

 

One thing an HD Tivo lacks is the ability to change the aspect or zoom when viewing an HD channel. This means if you record an HD channel the picture will be stretched vertically, worse if you watch a 4:3 program on an HD channel you will have two pillar boxes that you can not crop out.

 

Huh? It sure does have those features - in fact, there's a dedicated button for it on the remote.

Tip: By default the TivoHD is configured for a 16:9 TV. You have to change this to 4:3. Maybe this was the problem you had?

I guess one case where you might have a problem is if you wanted to connect the Tivo to multiple TVs, some 16:9 and some 4:3.

 

I think what kb7oeb was referring to is probably the fact that you can't stretch or zoom widescreen content on a 16:9 TV.

Although I can't imagine I'd ever want to do this on a channel showing 4:3 content with pillarboxes (why mess with the OAR?), the one time it would come in handy is when widescreen content is both pillarboxed and letterboxed on an HD channel. Of course, as long as you have the SD version of the channel, you can simply record it instead and then zoom.

Drew