TiVo Community Forum Archive 1 (http://archive.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/index.php)
- TiVo Underground (http://archive.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/forumdisplay.php?forumid=8)
-- Change Quality of Recording for Sony SAT T60 (http://archive.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?threadid=72088)

Nope.

The SA TiVO's have a Analog-Digital encoder that takes the analog video signal input and encodes it into digital format for storage on the hard disk. The chip encodes in MPEG format, with varying bitrates for the different kinds of quality levels (basic ... best).

Unlike the SA TiVOs, the DTiVO has a digital input (the satellite). Hence, no encoding is needed. The data stream from the satellite is encoded directly onto the disk.

I've noticed that my 35hr DirecTiVO can store significantly more programs than my 30hr SA TiVO. I believe that it is because the DirecTV folks have a much higher quality encoder on their end that is able to produce high quality MPEG at lower bitrates. Alternatively, each station that feeds DirecTV digitally has a high quality encoder...

It's amazing the difference a high quality encoder can make. I once watched a VCD containing a movie encoded at very low bitrate, but professionally done by Sony (I think) - it was unbelievable...

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"The human mind is great at inventing complexity."
SAT-T60 v3.1: 68hr + turbonet
SAT-T60 v3.1: 109hr + turbonet
Philips SA: v3.0: 30hr + turbonet
DSR704 v3.2: 35hr