Registered: Mar 2003
Location:
Posts: 6

Hi,

I'm wondering if anyone has ever added component video (either rgb or yuv) output to their tivo.

I'm looking at the service guide for the Sat-T60, and I notice that the video is encoded by a Philips chip, the SAA 7120. This chip accepts MPEG encoded data, 8 bits wide as Cb-Y-Cr (CCIR 656), according to the data sheet.

It only has dacs for Y, C, and CVBS...

So I go poking around the internet, and I run across a different video encoder, the Analog Devices 7175A/71776A.

This device also accepts CCIR-656 data as input, but has video output for CVBS, YC (aka svhs), YUV/RGB, and EuroSCART.

Does anyone think that a modification to the Tivo using the analog devices chip would be possible? I suspect that one of the biggest issues would be all the soldering required to get the appropriate signals from the tivo onto whatever daughtercard this new chip and its support circuitry/wiring/sockets would require)

Maybe the wonderful folks at 9th Tee would like to play with this notion...

It looks from my cursory research that the series 2 units didn't add component outs, so this might be a modifiation that the new units could use too?

Anyway, that's my thought experiement for this Sunday afternoon. :-)

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: Nashua, NH
Posts: 7476

This issue comes up periodically - the concensus seems to be that there isn't much to be gained on a TiVo by going to component from S-Video. If anything, it would probably make more sense on a DTiVo than on a SA.

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Steve

One thousand three hundred thirty-three, zero

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Registered: Aug 2002
Location: Maidenhead, UK
Posts: 265

quote:

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Originally posted by swinokur
Hi,

I'm wondering if anyone has ever added component video (either rgb or yuv) output to their tivo.

I'm looking at the service guide for the Sat-T60, and I notice that the video is encoded by a Philips chip, the SAA 7120. This chip accepts MPEG encoded data, 8 bits wide as Cb-Y-Cr (CCIR 656), according to the data sheet.

It only has dacs for Y, C, and CVBS...

So I go poking around the internet, and I run across a different video encoder, the Analog Devices 7175A/71776A.

This device also accepts CCIR-656 data as input, but has video output for CVBS, YC (aka svhs), YUV/RGB, and EuroSCART.

Does anyone think that a modification to the Tivo using the analog devices chip would be possible? I suspect that one of the biggest issues would be all the soldering required to get the appropriate signals from the tivo onto whatever daughtercard this new chip and its support circuitry/wiring/sockets would require)

Maybe the wonderful folks at 9th Tee would like to play with this notion...

It looks from my cursory research that the series 2 units didn't add component outs, so this might be a modifiation that the new units could use too?

Anyway, that's my thought experiement for this Sunday afternoon. :-)

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Registered: Mar 2003
Location:
Posts: 6

quote:

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I suspect that it is possible - a similar product is marketed in the UK - though for a slightly different purpose. Here a number of companies have produced little daughter boards that tee-off the YCrCb digital data from ICs in DVD players and Digital TV set-top-boxes to add serial digital outputs (i.e. 601/656 SDI) for connection to broadcast and high-end professional gear - so a similar solution might be possible to add analogue component (i.e. not replacing the existing output chip but adding a secondary one?) It isn't the sort of soldering and addition I'd like to have to do though.

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Registered: Apr 2003
Location: Boulder, CO
Posts: 15

quote:

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Originally posted by swinokur
Of course, in the UK you don't have DirectTiVo boxes, do you?

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Since the DirecTV birds are located at 101/109/119 west longitude, I don't think the UK can see them. So that rules out useful DirecTiVO boxes in the UK

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Birmingham, UK
Posts: 2057

We don't have DirecTivo no. But our satellite provider (Sky, owned by Murdoch who has just bought DirecTV) sells a rival dual-tuner PVR with very similar hardware to the directivo. But it's not a tivo . I'm half expecting Murdoch to impose that inferior system onto you guys, hope he doesn't!

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160GB UK 2.5.5 TiVo with 32MB ram running TiVoweb via 512MB cachecard with 170 SPs and some custom channel logos. Other hacks: serial PPP in the UK, TiVoWeb, fix the flickering selection bar, kill the red dot in software and merge recordings.

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Registered: Mar 2003
Location:
Posts: 17

sky news and fox news always had some type of partner ship because they were sister station before all this happened anyways. fox news is owned by direct tv, but i dunno everything about this, so nuf about this.

as to an inferior system, Sky Digital tv channel listing load faster and look better than direct tv's. plus their cards havn't been hacked in 5 years. direct tv battles this a lot in the US.

to whoever said if, in the UK could see the sky birds. it really wouldn't help anybody unless they had an NTSC tv and a direct tv box and card. would be kinda diffcult to pull off. the most reasonable solution would be to have just the box and a power converter for the direct tv box and use a computer with an ntsc/pal tv turner and you could pull it off easier. what is funny is that it would be illegal to pirate direct tv there.

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Registered: Mar 2003
Location:
Posts: 17

quote:

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to whoever said if, in the UK could see the sky birds. it really wouldn't help anybody unless they had an NTSC tv and a direct tv box and card.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Birmingham, UK
Posts: 2057

Sky's dual-tuner PVR is inferior to the direcTivo for several reasons. the most important one is the lack of a lifetime fee; there is a permanent lock-in with a monthly fee - and the EPG is identical in every way to the one that the non-PVR Sky satellite boxes get for free. It's the exact same data. This makes is much harder for them to justify the fee - over here the broadcasters pay Sky for the "priviledge" of being in the EPG, and they pay Sky to have their listings data on it. It's pure profit. Recording functionality is very basic; no wishlists, suggestions, season passes are only for regular shows which are on every week and they vanish if the programme is off for a week; they can't hibernate at the end of the season etc; useless. No concept of priorities either (SP manager).

Nearly all TVs sold here are dual PAL/NTSC, that's not an issue. But if I had the hardware and could see the bird, why would I want to replace my beautiful component RGB output of my UK Tivo (which isn't encoded into either pal or ntsc) with a comparitively nasty S-Video output of a directivo?

It's swings and roundabouts - in the US tivo lets you have a directivo which records the direct bitstream of the broadcast, but then reduces the quality of the output down to S-Video; in the UK tivo provides a series 1 which records the component RGB output of the satellite receiver and also outputs the tivo output in component RGB. The results look very good - the extra bandwidth of RGB is on a different level (perceptively) to bitrates, and often offsets mpeg artefacts. So I'm happy enough!

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160GB UK 2.5.5 TiVo with 32MB ram running TiVoweb via 512MB cachecard with 170 SPs and some custom channel logos. Other hacks: serial PPP in the UK, TiVoWeb, fix the flickering selection bar, kill the red dot in software and merge recordings.

Last edited by mrtickle on 04-23-2003 at 12:23 PM

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Bellevue, WA USA
Posts: 226

quote:

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Originally posted by mrtickle
the most important one is the lack of a lifetime fee; there is a permanent lock-in with a monthly fee - and the EPG is identical in every way to the one that the non-PVR Sky satellite boxes get for free.

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location:
Posts: 807

quote:

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Originally posted by swinokur
Does anyone think that a modification to the Tivo using the analog devices chip would be possible? I suspect that one of the biggest issues would be all the soldering required to get the appropriate signals from the tivo onto whatever daughtercard this new chip and its support circuitry/wiring/sockets would require)

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