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October 09, 2004

TiVo and HD?

I know TiVo doesn't handle HD, but I'm trying to figure out how usable a Series2 TiVo would be for dealing with SD signals on an HD TV.

Using an HD cable box, would I need to put the TiVo on a different tuner than the cable box? Do some cable boxes have multiple video outputs, one which could send the HD signal to the television and one which could send a downconverted signal to the TiVo?

-- Eric Blair

October 9, 2004 in TiVo, TV & HDTV

Answers

I've never had that kind of setup before so I can't be of much help. Anyone ever got a TiVo and HD signal box to play nicely together?

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Oct 9, 2004 10:08:52 PM

Some HD cable boxes will simultaneously output the downconverted SD. This comes up at the TiVo Help Forums and there are several threads there about setting this up. As long as your HD receiver also outputs SD then you can have TiVo control it and record the SD. Alternatively you could get TiVo its own SD box so you can use the HD box to watch something while the TiVo records from the SD box.

'bedelman' on the Tivo Help Forums has TiVo working with his HD cable box.

Posted by: MegaZone at Oct 9, 2004 10:33:48 PM

I use Comcast cable in San Francisco and have their HD service. I simply attached the HD (YpBpR) connections directly to the monitor to watch HD programming, and the regular video outs to TiVo, and it all works. TiVo records the video signals via its connection (it even records the HD signals, just not in HD), the TV switches over to HiDef when I use the direct inputs, voila, simple.

Posted by: Lance at Oct 11, 2004 9:16:54 PM

Here is how I have it set up now...

I have a basic digital cable box and tivo on one input of my TV, I have a digital HD reciever in a seperate input.

I am using a 52" DLP atm. It works great. The only downside is I cannot record my HD channels in HD, but all of my HD channels are duplicates of regular cable channels such as HBO, SHO, ESPN etc.

At the moment, that is the best setup I have found and I do have all the best of all worlds imo.

Posted by: Shawn at May 15, 2006 8:33:45 PM

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