TiVo Community Forums Archives - Picture Quality S1 VS. S2

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Picture Quality S1 VS. S2
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Posted by: N7TB

I am considering the upgrade from my series 1 to series 2 that TIVO is advertising. For those of you that have both, is there a difference in picture quality on the same settings between the two units?

Thanks,

Terry

Posted by: aciurczak

Some people say S2 has better quality. Some say it has worse quality. Some say that they can't tell a difference. It seems to be related to input signal quality. If it is a weaker cable signal, it appears that the S2 video chip doesn't do as good a job in encoding the signal. if it has a stronger incoming signal, it works just fine, or better. If you are unhappy with video quality on your s1, it is unlikely that you will be very impressed with a video improvement on an s2. That said, there are many things to do to improve video quality, on an s1 or s2. Some links:

http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...=quality+series
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...=quality+series
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...=quality+series
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...=quality+series
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...=quality+series
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-v...=quality+series

Posted by: bmgoodman

I gave my parents a 60-hour Series2 for Christmas. I set it up to use Medium as default, which is what I use on my S1. I thought it would be fine, even when my mom wants to archive to tape, because she records in EP (yuck!). I said nothing at the time, but TO ME, it looked like Medium was much grainier than Medium on my S1. I was sure surprised when I visited this past weekend and found she had changed it to HIGH! She said that when she saved the Mediums to tape, they just looked so BAD that she'd rather give up 10 hours of recording for better quality.

I'll grant you that it isn't a controlled test, since we have different cable companies. However, their signal looks every bit as good to me as mine does.

In my opinion, the S2 units picture quality is noticeably worse. IIRC, Tivo contends that they are still learning how to "tweak" the new video chipset in S2. I suspect they got a good deal on inferior video components.

Wait for Series3.