Anyone get it yet? Empegger feedback wanted!

- Jon

You better not be doing a TechTV review of the thing, or I'll have to come down there and steal it from you.

Precioussss wantssss it...

I want one too. No, it looks like my Tech TV days may be over. They were bought by a video game channel and my star reporter doesn't think she'll be there much longer... Bummer. Also, Leo left the channel completely...

- Jon

I'm still waiting for mine...

Also, Leo left the channel completely

I was wondering why I hadn't seen him on Screen Savers in a while. Darn, he was one of the best things about that channel.

Back on topic:

I have one important question about the device. I may have asked it in another thread, gotten an answer, and forgotten the answer, so forgive me. But if anyone gets one of these I need to know the answer to this question:

When you view a standard-definition channel on this thing, something that's shaped 4:3, I'm sure there's an option to stretch, zoom, or pillar-bar the image. My question is: Can the pillar bars be configured to be gray in color instead of black?

TivoCommunity.com has a thread on stretch modes. It appears that you have a choice of black or grey panels in the non-stretch mode. There is much debate about whether it's better to let the HD-TiVo do the up-conversion and stretching or whether it's better to output a "native" signal and make your TV set do the upconversion and whatnot.

My concern, from reading these threads, is that I don't want to have to tweak my TiVo and my TV every time I change the channel. I want to set it up once and just sit down and watch TV. This may not be easily possible.

Meanwhile, I checked on when I might be getting my HD-TiVo. My order number with ValueElectronics is 13460. That means I'm now approximately #800 in the queue. Based on the vendor's estimated dates for receiving new inventory, I'd be lucky if I got one from the May 28 allocation. Most likely, I won't get one until June. Hopefully, by then, they will at least have the first software upgrades finished...

Also, Leo left the channel completely...

Weelll...not completely.

It goes like this (well, this is what I've pieced together), and all of this appears to have happened in the past month:

1- TechTV is being sold
2- Leo leaves the Screen Savers, saying it was time to hand over the reigns to someone else (I'm not the biggest Kevin Rose fan, but maybe with time...). Anyway, Leo planned to do segments on TSS, and remain the host of Call For Help which he had been doing for some time now.
3- The outgoing company threatened to fire Leo completely unless he gave up his shares in the network. He didn't, they did.
4- TechTV "improved it's offer" (whatever that means), and he's back on air.
5- But the network hasn't sold yet. Apparently the top-level company that's buying it is Comcast. More about it here.

So, after all that, it's uncertain whether he'll be on the network. If Comcast has any brains, they'll keep him. I would assume they will. He's like their mascot.

Ah, cool, I get gray bars. No burn-in on my TV.

There is much debate about whether it's better to let the HD-TiVo do the up-conversion and stretching or whether it's better to output a "native" signal and make your TV set do the upconversion and whatnot.

Interesting. It really depends on which TV you have and on just how good the upconversion is on the Tivo unit.

I don't think I'd have a choice in my case... Since my TV's high def inputs will only take 1080i or 540p if I recall correctly. So if I set the Tivo to "Native" then 720p stations and standard-def signals won't show. So if I don't like the Tivo's upconversion, I'll have to switch inputs on the TV set to watch it from the S-video connector. We'll see how it all comes down when the unit is actually in my hands.

My concern, from reading these threads, is that I don't want to have to tweak my TiVo and my TV every time I change the channel. I want to set it up once and just sit down and watch TV. This may not be easily possible.

Agreed completely. This is why I want a high-def Tivo, so that what I currently do with two boxes will be done with a single box and a single integrated program guide.

I've already lived with what it's like to watch standard-def television upconverted to 1080i by a mediocre high-def decoder box. It's not bad, but the TV does a much better job at showing 480i material natively on the s-video inputs than that old high-def box did at upconverting stuff. I'm hoping that the HD Tivo improves on the technology somewhat. We shall see.

Oh, and reading through that thread... Boy, I take it for granted how good I really have it here. Poor guy got ripped a new one for FAQing somebody.

I've got one! I absolutely love it. It seems to be relatively bug free so far, except for problems with my local ABC station.

I've posted screenshots at my website: http://www.jarredinthehouse.com. I hope to have a full review up soon....

Tony, how much grey is grey? 20%, 30, 40, 50%? Do you know if there's a preferred percentage? This is a self-serving message, just part of some research I'm doing. Thanks for bringing it up though because I hadn't thought about it yet.

Bruno

Since the purpose of the grey is to prevent burn in from creating vertical stripes, the 'grey' should ideally be the time-averaged value of all the image pixels when showing a selection of typical programmes. I have no idea what that value is - and it may not in fact be grey. Not also that 'ideal' may not be good as aesthetics are important to. The value used may be dimmer than ideal.

I assume that you want this information for an ATI software product. You could possibly add some code to the card driver to collect that statistic.

Since the purpose of the grey is to prevent burn in from creating vertical stripes, the 'grey' should ideally be the time-averaged value of all the image pixels when showing a selection of typical programmes. I have no idea what that value is - and it may not in fact be grey.

Flesh colour?

Peter

Tony, how much grey is grey?

Very good question! Like Genixia said, it's supposed to help prevent phosphor burn, so ideally it should depend on the average sample of the programming in the middle of the screen.

However, I know that's not practical to do in a lot of applications. Heck, even my Mitsubishi TV set, which has its own gray-bar system built in, doesn't alter the gray level dynamically. It's a flat setting from the factory. It is, however, settable in the service menus if you know the secret handshake to get into the eeprom. I do not know what IRE level the gray is, but it looks close to 50 percent.

If this question is really important to you, I could use my Avia calibration disc to find out the IRE level exactly.

You could, theoretically, take an average sample of the programming content that's currently on the air and decide what your gray level should be based on that. The problem is that someone who watches a lot of X-files would need a different value than the people who watch a lot of South Park. So you can't win.

Also note something cool that my Mits TV set does: When it's doing the gray pillar bars, the horizontal position of the image and the bars varies slowly over time by a few percent. So that even if there is some slight burn because of the difference in the amount of gray, the edges of the bars don't burn into a perfect vertical line. It doesn't move while you're watching it, so it's not irritating, it just changes each time you power on the TV and only changes slightly each time.

My Samsung high def satellite receiver seems to use about the same level of gray for its pillar bars that my Mits TV uses. It does not, however, vary the position like the TV does.

The problem is that someone who watches a lot of X-files would need a different value

So run your algorithm over the current content of the framebuffer to work out the amount of "grey" on the screen right now. Then use that as the border.

So run your algorithm over the current content of the framebuffer to work out the amount of "grey" on the screen right now. Then use that as the border.

Right, that would be ideal. But like I said, depending on the application, it's not always practical to do that. Perhaps it's something you're implementing in software and you don't have enough free memory or CPU cycles or whatever to really do it properly. Or maybe there's just not enough time to work out the code to do it properly before the ship date. Or maybe it's something being implemented in hardware and there's no way to get an average luminance number from the frame buffer. Bruno didn't say why he wanted the gray value or what his restrictions were, so I started with Genixia's comment that it should ideally be an average of the image content, and talked about alternatives if that wasn't feasible.

So run your algorithm over the current content of the framebuffer to work out the amount of "grey" on the screen right now. Then use that as the border.

This could be distracting. If the screen is fading to black, so will your bars. Likewise, if there are rapid MTV-esque cuts between scenes with different lighting, then the bars will change just as fast and become quite distracting. Now, if you wanted to be clever, you could setting the bar to some decaying time average over the past few minutes. I imagine you'd end up with some sort of grey, regardless.

My own TV, like Tony's has the grey level fixed at the factory. My next TV will most likely be DLP or LCD-based, doing away with phosphor burn-in, once and for good.

Flesh colour?

LOL. That or grass green.

"Flesh colour?"

Just what are you watching?

Boom chicka wohw wow.

OOoh yeah....

-Zeke

More about it here.

So I'll be getting G4 over DiSH, huh? Given every other channel that Comcast owns sucks (yeah, I know OLN shows Tour de France), this news ain't that great.

Given every other channel that Comcast owns sucks...this news ain't that great.

Do you mean that Comcast will ruin the network or that you haven't seen it but expect it to be bad because Comcast wants it? My response would be that they couldn't do much damage and that the network is already half-crap anyway.

TechTV has The Screen Savers, XPlay, and Unscrewed (which most people seem not to like, but I do). That's about it for shows that are fun to watch. Call For Help is a great show that I'd recommend for people like my mom and my girlfriend.

Aside from that, they have a large selection of boring British programming (sorry, it just is), including the terrible Robot Wars. Sorry, but while Battlebots was not the best TV in the world, it was far better.

Anyway, sorry to ramble about this. It's a network with a lot of potential. I hope it realizes that. Maybe Comcast will help...