[smgord]

My Sony TV is normally set to "full pixel" when watching HD and "normal" when watching SD. This works fine, and results in no noise in the picture on my S3 Tivo. (I do see the "noise" that is apparently closed captioning data when watching SD with the TV set to full pixel.)

I just got a DVD Recorder (Panasonic DMR-EZ47V), and have my S3 Tivo plugged in the the line input on the DVD Recorder for purposes of recording Tivo content. When watching the Tivo through the DVD Recorder, if the TV is set to "full pixel", there is a thin gray line of noise across the bottom of the screen, regardless of whether the content is HD or SD. This "noise" is very different from the closed captioning noise. It is opaque and stable, not snowy and jumpy. It is reproduced in the recordings. When watching either live TV or a recorded DVD, I can get rid of it by changing the TV to "normal", instead of "full pixel." It's not clear to me why that change is necessary -- if the Tivo itself can display the video correctly, why should that change when being watched through the DVD Recorder's line input?

FWIW, this is a 1080p upconverting DVD recorder. Like the Tivo, it is hooked up to an HDMI switching receiver via HDMI.

 

[Arcady]

The DVD recorder is digitizing the analog output from the TiVo and converting it to digital. There are a few extra lines in the analog signal that are usually cut off by your TV set. When you set the TV to "full pixel" it shows everything in the signal, whether is was intended to be there or not. Some devices output at 720x483 instead of 720x480, and that's probably where the extra garbage is coming from.

What I don't get is why you would want to watch the TiVo through the recorder, after it has been downsampled to analog, re-encoded to digital, upconverted to 1080p, and probably looks like complete crap.

 

[smgord]

What I don't get is why you would want to watch the TiVo through the recorder, after it has been downsampled to analog, re-encoded to digital, upconverted to 1080p, and probably looks like complete crap.

Thanks. I obviously don't normally watch that way, but I can see it if I am recording, or waiting to record, and, as I mentioned, that is how it comes through on the recordings as well. In any event, the workaround is easy, and I appreciate your answer.