Better music interface.. please!!

[BBCritical]

Ok.. now that we are starting to move into streaming over the net, are there any plans in the near future to work on the music interface of Sage? Will I ever be able to just select an album without having to create a playlist? Wil. my 500gb mp3 collection be accessible on a client or mvp without having to wait 2-3 minutes for everything to catch up as it sorts through my entries? Please narflex ... help!!! Also will there ever be a better letter entry system for searching like the one in sage mc as opposed to the cruddy number pad we use now?? I love this product but my wife is going to ask for a divorce soon if I keep tweaking it... Oh and I almost forgot.. my music playlists showing up in my searches for television shows.. Cmon guys.....

[MrApollinax]

++agree

I'm using this as a media center and I was hoping that I'd be able to traverse my file structure as i would a pc. Basically folder-->subfolder-->file and then be able to 1. add to playlist or 2. play file. Or possibly just be able to navigate to a folder and select that folder and play all media files in that folder. Right now I have multiple files that are not from the same album but under the same folder but they will show up as different "albums" in sage due to the ID3 tags.

Another side note, does SageTV recognize non-MP3 tags? ie I have OGG files that were tagged with info when I ripped them but it seems that these files do not appear in the SageTV media center interface. If i search for a file name that is OGG it shows up but I cannot play the file. It doesn't give me the playback error for unsupported file it selects as if it would play and then does nothing.

[aperry]

Originally Posted by BBCritical

Also will there ever be a better letter entry system for searching like the one in sage mc as opposed to the cruddy number pad we use now??

In Setup -> Detailed Setup -> Customize, there is an option called "Numeric Text Input". Select Configure, then in the popup, disable it. Next time you go into your search screen, you'll see keys on the screen, instead of a numeric keypad.

See p. 184 in the version 4 SageTV manual for a complete description of Numeric Text Input.

p.s. I agree that the music interface needs a complete overhaul.

[heffe2001]

Originally Posted by aperry

See p. 184 in the version 4 SageTV manual for a complete description of Numeric Text Input.

Lol, I saw this part and thought it was Opus .

[mightyt]

Originally Posted by heffe2001

Lol, I saw this part and thought it was Opus .

[lovingHDTV]

Originally Posted by aperry

See p. 184 in the version 4 SageTV manual for a complete description of Numeric Text Input.

This always reminds me of my attorney: You agreed on page 184, section 3, 15th paragraph starting with "In the case of . . . "

Not what I want from a media server

BTW: thanks I always wanted to turn that numeric keypad off. Just had not read that far in the manual. I wonder why they cannot detect that I'm typing on a keyboard and just turn it off automagically for me?

[BBCritical]

Yeah I found it too... it makes searching alot better for me with inputting from a remote... Now back to the original.. Can we get a better music interface????

[mayamaniac]

Seen multiple request for better "media library" interface over the years, particularly pictures and music. This is apparently very low on their priority list of things to do, because every new release has seen major changes in the PVR areas, but the music and pictures remained mostly unchanged. Although they renamed it to SageTV Media Center, but when it comes to what is more important, its definitely the PVR part. The media library stuffs are sort of just added on features and seems not much thought went into the interface.

I was hoping, since Studio went public, that more STVi would be developed to fill this void, but it has not happen yet.

[rtengvad]

I agree completely with what has been said here. With the ever closer integration of computer and media it gets more and more important to have proper music playing facilities in Sage. My mvp is integrated with my music system in the living room, but of limited use.

I love this program but to have only video capabilities is simply not enough today. The first vendor to supply that can turn out to be a serious threat to Sage.

Dear Sage, we need a decent music player.

Rtengvad

[badder2]

Here's some of items I would like to see added to the music interface.

Random playback on album, or artist, or playlist not just the entire collection. I have 200 cool jazz tunes that I have in a playlist. I don't want to listen to them in order everytime and I don't want kid mp3's inter-mingled with them.

Import playlist from Winamp (I thought this was being added to 4? Did I miss it??)

How about having the photo album randomly run as the background vis.

I group my mp3's in "albums" that I have nothing to do with the existing album the songs came off of. I have gone to the trouble of adding the album clipart to the mp3 id's but when I play an album I always get the first album cover for every song in that album. It needs to check each mp3, not just the first.

[src666]

Personally, I would be willing to ship them one of my Audiotrons to play with, so they can see a good interface at work. It's amazing how simple the Audiotron made this with just a 2 line interface - but give a developer a full screen and they quickly lose track of what the goal is.

When I want to play music, the interface needs to:

- Allow me to find the right music (Artist/Album/Genre/whatever) quickly
- Allow me to easily add music to the queue, whether it's a song, an album, an artist or a complete genre, and don't make me press 3 buttons and answer questions - just add the music.
- Allow me to easily remove music from the queue
- Allow me to skip around the queue at will, either directly or randomly.

Anything that doesn't support these actions are extraneous to music playback.

Yes, there should be playlist support, and ways to maintain the playlists. But that's not playing music, so don't make that the focus of the interface.

[gibbygoo]

I'm looking forward to more music features as well, including streaming support. Why can't I add a .pls to the playlist section?