[hasan]

I am a bit confused about upconversion. I have native off, and only 480p and 1080i selected. (It bombs out on 720 and even on on 480i which puzzles me)

Every station I look at, when I hit the info button on my Tv remote (NOT the hr20remote) says it is at 1080i.

I definitley think that the normal SD stations look much better than they did on my tivo 80gb box. This includes channels I know are not HD, be it CNN, Food Network etc etc. They are all full screen and look much sharper than on my tivo box.

And the stretch does not seem as obvious either. A face does not appear as much 'wider' than it did using my tv format button with tivo. In fact the Format button on my TV remote now does not do anything at all anymore. I presume this is becasue I have "stretch' slected on the same set up screen where I turned native off.

Is it a function of the HR20 to upconvert everything to 1080? Or is my tv doing this, or am I imagining it all? Its all quite confusing. Thanks.

When you turn Native Off in the HR20 it sends out a fixed output resolution, corresponding to the front panel res led. So, with native off, if you have the front panel set to 1080i, everything is reformatted by the HR20 and sent out 1080i. That is how I run mine (stretched as well...you can run pillar box if you want). Mine is set to 720p...and it "upconverts" 480i to 720p.