You're right... I remember reading about the value of the Tiger Tree hash and, without actually looking at the HUGE proposal again to verify it, I assumed it was the proposal where I originally saw it. However, the HUGE proposal does include a provision for a 39 character tiger tree value, but they don't explain how it is used or how it is generated.

I'll see if I can reiterate correctly how it works. Basically the Tiger algorithm hashes a file in 1024 byte blocks. Then it sets up a tree system for finding the final hash which looks similar to:
From what I remember, working with an "expected" hash value, one can then determine if any of the component hashes are bad. For instance, given the value of E, one could verify that blocks A and B are correct. Given the value of G, one could verify the hash totals for E and F. If, for instance, block C was corrupted, the hash total for F would be wrong so E and F would not equal G. Knowing that the hash total for F was wrong, a person could then trace back the fault to either block C or D. And, if given the true hash values for C and D, individual comparisons could be made to determine that C is incorrect.

I hope this makes a shred of sense, it's in the early morning as I'm writing this and my brain is falling asleep. Besides that, I can't seem to find the reference material I got this from.
Or, in my case, broken video files. I really hate having to download a 500+ MB file again because a few frames in the middle somehow got garbled during transfer.