Have had HD digital cable for a few months (don't live in Raleigh, no Time Warner) and they have had me on a waitlist for a DVR box, and they pissed me off, and told me that they have none available and they cancelled the waitlist. Long story short, I ordered a tivo. got it real cheap, but I can't make it work with my HDTV.

I want to have TiVo work for normal everyday watching. And I want to be able to change components to my normal cable to watch my 8-10 HD channels.

I got close this afternoon, but the tivo is not taking cable from the Digital Cable box. (I have my HD wires running from my TV to my digital cable box, so this half of the plan works) We have a motorola DTS 5000 cable box, and the Tivo is not taking the standard (yellow,red,white) cables form that box to the cable (this was the method I found online to accomplish my goal) THe TiVo is just using standard cable, and gives a horrible picture, and none of the digital channels come through.

any ideas? anybody ever tried this? I know most of you probably have a Time Warner DVR so this is probably a longshot, but figured I might find a diehard TiVo fan out there that stayed loyal!

8/30/2006 8:34:49 PM

Does you cable company support Cable Cards (they pretty much all should now)?

TiVo is suppose to be coming out with a cable-card capable box sometime that will do HD, and you would be able to use that. That would be your best option.

For your TiVo to work the way you expect it to, you have to have one with the IR controller (or that has the serial controller, and your cable box has to have the same serial port too). That way, the TiVo can change the channels and stuff on your cable box.

Otherwise, your only option is to just have the cable split to the tivo for the analog channels.

8/30/2006 8:46:36 PM

make sure you run guided setup on the Tivo and make sure the input is set to composite (yellow, red, white) You may have ran the setup and chose coax instead of composite..

BTW.. i highly suggest using svideo instead of composite.. you will notice a difference in the image quality

i'm assuming you're either using component (red, green, blue) or dvi for the hd channels.. the box may disable SD outputs when one of those other outputs is connected and active. try unplugging your hd connections and see if the tivo works.. if it does.. then you know what the problem is.

8/30/2006 9:10:12 PM

^yeah, s-video cable will help, my only real problem right now is the audio. can you split an audio output (red, white) into two, is that possible? because there is an "Audio IN" above where the HD component cables go, and a yellow, white, red input in the front of the box too

why the hell would you need inputs in your cable box anyways. if the svideo cable helps the picture out, i am down to getting audio and I don't want to go behind the Tivo and have to change out audio wires everytime I want to watch the HD channels

8/30/2006 9:19:32 PM

can't find anything that will split an audion output?

would something like this work?

http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat%5Fid=3108&sku=40021

8/30/2006 9:37:10 PM

I have my Tivo hooked up with HD digital cable, just run a splitter out of the wall and run a cable directly from the splitter to the Tivo bypassing the cable box. You won't be able to record in HD of course and you won't be able to record every channel that comes in the digital package but you can record the majority of them, just set the Tivo up with the Time Warner non-digital lineup.

8/30/2006 10:57:05 PM

^yeah, that is how we have it now....is the picture as good, will an s-video cord help from the tivo to the TV?

8/30/2006 11:45:05 PM

just goto a radioshack and buy two RCA y-splitters.. a male to two female..
something like this http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2426141

hook component/dvi/HDMI and 1 set of red/white audio to TV from HD box
hook svideo output and other set of red/white audio to TiVo inputs
hook svideo output and audio output of tivo to second input of TV.

run guided setup

profit

[Edited on August 31, 2006 at 1:54 AM. Reason : ]

8/31/2006 1:52:07 AM

Picture quality is the same as through the box, the only downside is that we can't record HBO which doesn't really bother me because we have HBO on demand. I just hooked it up quickly last night before going to bed though so I might mess with it later and see if I can get it going through the box.

8/31/2006 2:15:57 AM

^yep, I have HBO, showtime, and Max, but all have on-demand, so would not be that big of a deal

8/31/2006 11:27:18 AM

on some boxes.. you can actually output the HD channels in 480i and record them on the tivo.. you won't get HD quality.. but a high quality source will look nicer than a SD channel with the same content. and you'll have a grey letterbox..

you'll be able to record any SD digital channel on your tivo, if you have the box connected to the tivo.. you can go the coax splitter way if you don't plan on recording digital channels

there is actually a way to set it up so you can record channels over coax on the tivo.. and setup channel 1 for example to the video inputs so you can record stuff off the digital box. that way you can record comedy central over coax for example while watching sunday night football in HD.. and later record a show on G4/CSTV/FoxSports(digital)

8/31/2006 7:53:16 PM