So as to not go on a tangent in the other thread, I have specific questions about a couple of things my Tivo has done.

1) On Sundays in the fall, if the Redskins are playing at 4PM, I simply set up Tivo to start recording Fox at 4 and end at about 9, thus making sure I got the Simpsons. I did this today, and was glad I did, because the Simpsons went over the hour or half hour marker by a few minutes, right at the end of the additional time I added to the recording. What I couldn't figure out was that Tivo recorded the exact 4 minutes over. How did it know??

2) I used that ancient of recording machines, the VCR, to record a Daily Show segment on a scandal at UNC for my Islam class. When the teacher stopped the tape in class, I noticed that the screen said "The Daily Show." I was amazed that the program title transfered from Tivo to VHS. Can someone explain how this works to me? I found it very interesting.

Can't explain the first case, but the second case is almost certainly due to the Closed Captioning (CC) and related VBI program data (XDS?) support the Tivo has (theres a menu option under setup for this to enable on-screen captions, not sure about the rest).

The Tivo can insert (and obviously did insert) into the Video Stream going to your VCR (in the VBI signals between each "field" of the picture) details about the show such as title and other info, like captions.

Normally you need a VCR/TV that can read this stuff off the video signal as its played back - and it appears the VCR in this case could do this, and showed the "Show title" via the On-screen display as you observed.
[probably as it was CC enabled].

I don't know if the Tivo was showing the data coming from the local TV station signal, or if it was "making its own" up using the show info the Tivo has in its database of programs.

The Tivo can and does record the CC info on shows and can play it back both onscreen, and in the video stream you can record on your VCR.

This is also what the Tivo does with Macrovision - The Tivo will record any show (even one with Macrovision copy protection turned on), and will then "output" the Macrovision signals during playback to stop you recording the signal to tape if Macrovision was enabled during recording originally.
Thats why you can't record a DVD (with Macrovision enabled) to your Tivo, then copy it to tape to defeat Macrovision - of course if you were to extract the Video Stream from the Tivo then you could possibly defeat Macrovision that way.
But you all knew that anyway right?

Thats why you can't record a DVD (with Macrovision enabled) to your Tivo, then copy it to tape to defeat Macrovision - of course if you were to extract the Video Stream from the Tivo then you could possibly defeat Macrovision that way.


Or go to http://www.videoguys.com/sima.htm and get the Sima SCC or copymaster, put it inline with your line in to VCR, and like magic, all copy protection is stripped. Works like a champ. Has the added bonus of allowing you to run your DVD through your VCR so your VCR remote can control the input. All without losing any signal quality whatsoever. In fact, I find it looks better.

Thanks for the explanation! I appreciate it!

...And, there are a ton of DVD players that can be hacked to turn off Macrovision (and the region code, etc, etc).

Not sure if you've got it in the US or if the Tivo supports it but there is a thing called PDC in the UK which transmits any changes in the programme schedule. This allows the VCR to record the full programme without anything getting chopped off.

An old VCR of mine supported this but I replaced it awhile back so I don't know if it still works.

- Trevor