Xbox 360 or Tivo mini

[Mparisi100]

Anyone know what would output better video? Xbox 360 or Tivo mini?

[Polen]

You do know that the Tivo mini will not work with Media Center, right?

[blueiedgod]

If the source is Digital and output is digital then it doesn't matter.

[kingwr]

If the source is Digital and output is digital then it doesn't matter.

I don't think that is correct. The source digital is compressed (e.g. MPEG-2 or H.264) whereas the output digital is raw picture information. How efficiently and correctly the decoding is done is very important to the picture quality. I have not run a Tivo Mini, but XBox 360 has a great picture and plenty of decoding heft.

[huntermaz]

Been using a mini for a few days and the picture is great, I would say better than MediaCenter.

[slowbiscuit]

The Xbox and Linksys extenders tend to have a more washed out picture than a Tivo or Mini (I have all of these on different TVs and have seen it on all of them). Can be corrected with TV settings in most cases.

[blueiedgod]

Been using a mini for a few days and the picture is great, I would say better than MediaCenter.

But can it skip commercials?

PQ can be adjusted in TV settings

[huntermaz]

The picture quality has nothing to do with the tv settings. Automatic commercial skipping is nice when it works.

[tzr916]

If your eyes are good and your provider/content has badly flagged channels (like improper progressive/interlace flag or 29/59 issue), then Tivo/mini beats htpc/extender/xbox big time.

[mdavej]

Is Ferrari better than Toyota? Of course it is. But there is a significant price difference. I wouldn't expect a remote desktop session into a PC from a game console to have as good a picture as a device whose sole purpose is to display perfect video from cable TV.

[slowbiscuit]

The picture quality has nothing to do with the tv settings.

If you really don't care about it, sure. Otherwise yes it makes a big difference with extenders.

[blueiedgod]

Is Ferrari better than Toyota? Of course it is. But there is a significant price difference. I wouldn't expect a remote desktop session into a PC from a game console to have as good a picture as a device whose sole purpose is to display perfect video from cable TV.

Is Ferrari better than Toyota at what?

Zero to 60? Yes.

Carrying a family of 5? Not the slightest.

Reliability? Nope.

Cost of ownership? Nope.

Long trips? Nope.

So, Ferrari is only good for one thing, while Toyota is good for many. Does being good at one thing or being good at many things make a better vehicle?

I choose the latter. I can live with 0-60 in 6-8 seconds, as long as everything else is being accomplished.

[IownFIVEechos]

Is Ferrari better than Toyota? Of course it is. But there is a significant price difference. I wouldn't expect a remote desktop session into a PC from a game console to have as good a picture as a device whose sole purpose is to display perfect video from cable TV.

Is Ferrari better than Toyota at what?

Zero to 60? Yes.

Carrying a family of 5? Not the slightest.

Reliability? Nope.

Cost of ownership? Nope.

Long trips? Nope.

So, Ferrari is only good for one thing, while Toyota is good for many. Does being good at one thing or being good at many things make a better vehicle?

I choose the latter. I can live with 0-60 in 6-8 seconds, as long as everything else is being accomplished.

Not to mention the savings you get each month on your insurance premiums.

[mdavej]

Is Ferrari better than Toyota? Of course it is. But there is a significant price difference. I wouldn't expect a remote desktop session into a PC from a game console to have as good a picture as a device whose sole purpose is to display perfect video from cable TV.

Is Ferrari better than Toyota at what?

Zero to 60? Yes...

That's where my analogy stops. My point was Tivo is a very expensive, single purpose machine. Of course the picture is going to be a little better. I'm still not sure why the question was even asked. I agree WMC and Xbox looks perfectly fine and cost a whole lot less. I can't afford a Ferrari or a Tivo anyway.

[tzr916]

...I'm still not sure why the question was even asked. I agree WMC and Xbox looks perfectly fine....

Maybe the OP is trying to avoid what happened to me. I cannot agree that WMC & extenders look perfectly fine and I was surprised and disappointed that WMC had worse picture quality than my Tivo. A few weeks after I sold my Tivo, it was proven that ALL WMC PC's are missing one vertical line of the picture which stretches the image and if your provider/content has badly flagged channels (like improper progressive/interlace flag or 29/59 issue) then the picture will suffer different effects depending on gpu & drivers. Combine the two and you get what I consider to be a sub-standard Tv picture.

I stopped using WMC because my eyes can see the defects in the first 10 seconds of playback. I ONLY use WMC/extenders to watch live local news a few minutes a day, and that's it. Everything else is done by external player/lav because my eyes just can't take the distractions of WMC.

[mdavej]

I guess I'm lucky that that I can perceive one missing line out of 1080 from 10 feet away. Looks fine to me. If it bothered me, I'd get a Tivo. I thought the issues you pointed out were common knowledge.

[huntermaz]

I'd argue that over the first three years a tivo and mediacenter PC cost the same...you can do more with a mediacenter PC but being it is a PC there is more maintenance on the PC. All depends what you want out of it. After close to 10 years of MediaCenter, I am looking for easy and reliable, made the switch to TiVo and a Chromecast and am very happy.

[mdavej]

I have to disagree. I had cable and satellite DVRs for years. They were easy and reliable, but cost me a fortune. Likewise, Tivo would have cost me thousands. My HTPC initially cost me about $100 since I already had all the hardware except a tuner. So, in 2.5 months, that was recouped. I have spent a few hundred more to expand my system to my whole house, but that's a small fraction of what Tivo costs. So I'll accept a little more maintenance and one less line of resolution to save $500 or so per year. I wouldn't break even with Tivo for 6 years, and by then it would be time to buy new hardware. My old, imperfect eyes cannot perceive WMC's terrible resolution problems and frame rate issues anyway.

[huntermaz]

Have to compare apples to apples, your not buying a $100 6 tuner cable card. We could debate this for hours. But if you build a dedicated MediaCenter 6 tuner PC with the same storage as the new Tivo Roamino Plus, it's going to cost close to $900, the TiVo with lifetime is going to cost you $900. Also you don't have to deal with a PC in your livingroom.

[huntermaz]

I'm probably a bit bitter right now, but have been a long time MediaCenter user. Started with Mediacenter 2005 and even had some of the original Linksys extenders. Moved to Vista, then Vista with the TV Pack. Had FireWire connect cable boxes, install an antenna for OTA, bought a Dell so I could have ATI cablecards. Had 4 of the new Linksys Extenders at one time and have 4 xboxes now. Even had two Ceton cablecard tuners in my last setup for 8 tuners. Used MyMovies with close to 600 titles. Just tired of keeping it all going.