V5 out, what next?

[malbec]

My vote: An HD Extender akin to the MVP ... quite and cheap (ideally with DVD navigation/distribution).

[stevech]

I vote for a user interface overhaul -

More Intuitive.
Less Geeky menu titles
Organize menus to be more user-friendly for the average use-cases

Reduce number of button pushes for top 10 ordinary activities

[sesummers]

Specifically, make them work for ATSC program streams. Since these should all be encoded the same way (unlike with analog cards where it depends on the hardware encoder, and only the Hauppage 250 and 350 support it), maybe this won't be difficult? (Or maybe it works now, but nobody has bothered to try yet?)

I might have to just buy the hardware and try this myself, but since it involves installing a rooftop antenna to pick up HD channels just to see if it works, I'm hesitant to do that without more reason to believe it will work.)

[Goodspike]

When you're in full screen, and a mouse icon to close the program, rather than just standby (or make it an option). Seems so simple I don't know why they don't do it.

[sesummers]

Originally Posted by sleonard

Another issue I have is that Sage doesn't handle large collections very well. After scrolling down the list of albums a few pages, Sage starts to hesitate and put the little spinning logo in the screen. It gets worse and worse before Sage completely locks up and I have to ctrl-alt-del and force close Sage. Most times I have tried I cannot even get to the D's and I have only loaded about a fourth of my CD's into Sage so far! (The more CD's I rip to Sage, the worse it gets.)
Scott

This will be a big problem for me. I'm getting close to done ripping my CD collection and I'm past 16,000 songs. What does SageTV use for the database?

If they're not using a DB engine, I highly recommend they consider incorporating Firebird. It's freely distributable even with commercial products (unlike MySQL), has an embedded version that installs as a simple DLL, and runs in Windows as far back as Win98, as well as a bunch of flavors of Linux. It also has a nice JDBC driver which should make it simple to integrate.

[geogecko]

Originally Posted by Goodspike

When you're in full screen, and a mouse icon to close the program, rather than just standby (or make it an option). Seems so simple I don't know why they don't do it.

That's why you need SageMC 16x9!

[geogecko]

Originally Posted by sesummers

Specifically, make them work for ATSC program streams. Since these should all be encoded the same way (unlike with analog cards where it depends on the hardware encoder, and only the Hauppage 250 and 350 support it), maybe this won't be difficult? (Or maybe it works now, but nobody has bothered to try yet?)

I might have to just buy the hardware and try this myself, but since it involves installing a rooftop antenna to pick up HD channels just to see if it works, I'm hesitant to do that without more reason to believe it will work.)

Yep, that would be nice.

How far away do you live from the HD towers? In my case, I live about 32 miles away, and am able to use an antenna in my attic. Much easier installation than a rooftop, and you don't have to worry about how it looks, or how sturdy it is. One guy told me he used fishing line to tie his up in the attic. I mounted mine using an attic mount from Radio Shack.

[sesummers]

Originally Posted by geogecko

How far away do you live from the HD towers? In my case, I live about 32 miles away, and am able to use an antenna in my attic.

I'm about 32 miles away too, from the Cleveland stations. I do have a couple Akron stations 11-13 miles away, so maybe I can test this stuff with an indoor antenna. Unfortunately, my attic is a crawl space full of blown-in fiberglass and low diagonal rafters. I ran a coax through there once, and I'm not anxious to go up there again!

[geogecko]

Originally Posted by sesummers

I'm about 32 miles away too, from the Cleveland stations. I do have a couple Akron stations 11-13 miles away, so maybe I can test this stuff with an indoor antenna. Unfortunately, my attic is a crawl space full of blown-in fiberglass and low diagonal rafters. I ran a coax through there once, and I'm not anxious to go up there again!

An indoor antenna might be a bit sketchy, but maybe the 11-13 mile stations would be picked up.

As long as you had about 4 feet of space to work with, you'd have enough height to mount the antenna, that is, if you can get to a place to mount it...

I wonder, does CC work on HD feeds? I haven't enabled the option in my properties file...but wondered if it worked. I know it does not work on my PVR-500 (but of course, I'm digital cable now, so I'm just going S-Video over to that card these days...).

[sesummers]

Replies embedded.

Originally Posted by geogecko

An indoor antenna might be a bit sketchy, but maybe the 11-13 mile stations would be picked up.
SES: AntennaWeb lists some of the channels I can get in Blue. I'll need a pretty serious antenna. I'm just thinking I can buy the ATSC card and a cheap indoor antenna to see if the captioning stuff works. If not, the card can go back.

As long as you had about 4 feet of space to work with, you'd have enough height to mount the antenna, that is, if you can get to a place to mount it...
SES: It's a very shallow-pitched roof. The highest points are maybe 4 feet from the "floor"/ceiling boards. On the bright side, it's a ranch, so it's easy to get on the roof, and put a mast on the chimney (where the DirecTV satellite dish currently is.)

I wonder, does CC work on HD feeds? I haven't enabled the option in my properties file...but wondered if it worked. I know it does not work on my PVR-500 (but of course, I'm digital cable now, so I'm just going S-Video over to that card these days...).
SES: From my "theoretical" research, it definitely does- and by law, it has to. And because there's nothing being "encoded" locally, it HAS TO be encoded in the transport stream. The question is how. My guess is that whether it can be displayed or not will depend on the codec, but I can't find any "faq" entries on any of the web sites (e.g. nVidia) that say whether or not their decoders handle this. But it might also need to be "turned on" by SageTV, and who knows if that will work.

[Malfunction]

How about better visualizations for MP3 playback, such as using existing Winamp or WMP visualizers? WMP would probably be easier to implement since we're using it already. (aren't we?).

[sesummers]

Originally Posted by me

Please please please support closed captions- Specifically, make them work for ATSC program streams. Since these should all be encoded the same way (unlike with analog cards where it depends on the hardware encoder, and only the Hauppage 250 and 350 support it), maybe this won't be difficult? (Or maybe it works now, but nobody has bothered to try yet?)

Well, I did get an answer, but I don't like it.

I sent the following email to support:

I'm planning a NTSC only, 3 tuner, Terabyte, client/server (3 TVs) setup, and after researching all the software options, Sage is my top choice... except for one problem.

I NEED closed captioning. (My wife and I both have high-frequency hearing loss and watch with both the sound and the captions on.)

Sage apparently can do this, for analog TV, if using Hauppage 250 or 350 cards. What I need to know is this: Can SageTV decode captions in the ATSC video stream?

If yes, does that work with all ATSC cards (because it's in the stream already), or does it only work with particular cards?

If no, are there plans to add this in the next version?

As far as I can tell, the only software that definitely supports this is MS's media center, which won't do the Client/Server thing except with XBoxes and won't do 3 ATSC tuners, and Myth, which has the Linux learning curve I don't want to climb.

Any answer would be appreciated (although I'm sure you know WHICH answers I'd prefer!)

Thanks.

I received a reply today:

Steven,

I'm sorry, but currently there are no plans for doing that. Right now it's only with the PVR-250 and 350 and even that is not supported by us at this time.

Thanks,
George Oms
SageTV, LLC
support@sagetv.com

I guess I'm looking at Linux and MythTV after all. I'd much rather spend the $120 or so on SageTV and a couple clients than the hundreds of dollars worth of my time figuring out Myth, but captioning is a non-deferrable requirement in my project.

If this applies to you too, be sure to let them know. Maybe they'll change their minds and add this.

[sticky]

Originally Posted by sesummers

I'm about 32 miles away too, from the Cleveland stations. I do have a couple Akron stations 11-13 miles away, so maybe I can test this stuff with an indoor antenna. Unfortunately, my attic is a crawl space full of blown-in fiberglass and low diagonal rafters. I ran a coax through there once, and I'm not anxious to go up there again!

I average thirty miles away and I am able to receive all of my stations with decent signal strength. I use a Zenith silver sensor.

I have pretty ideal conditions to receive the signals. I am pretty sure the towers are higher up then my house is. Its probably worth the 20 dollar investment to give it a try. This is a directional antenna, if your towers are scatter it may not work.

[bcjenkins]

Check out KnoppMyth. It is supposed to make Myth config painless.

B

[Keith]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Now to spend time to clean up the mess and remaining bugs. Things like:

-merging the client and extender license into one
-overhauling the music and pictures interface
-Linux v5? Linux client and placeshifter?

Same here.

I would love a Linux client - as long as I can use my existing license, since I dual boot.

With music, it's not just the interface that needs work, it's the whole "tag based" paradigm that needs to be re-thought from square one. Sure - read the tags, but don't make the tags the sole basis for how things are organized and presented to the user. For example don't make me scroll through hundreds of "singles" all in one "singles" folders when I've already gone to the trouble of organizing them on my hard drive. There has to be more intelligence to the design. I hate to say it but that was one thing that *cough* BTV did right.

<rant>And while we're on the subject of music - there's simply no excuse for the poor quality "visualization". There *needs* to be *built-in* support for WMP and WinAmp (user configurable though a menu option, no XML hacking). Deria's WinAmp plugin is availaible now in source form and a license that should allow it to be included. And don't start in with the "we can't because of cross platform" BS either - that's no excuse. There can easily be a fork in the code for Windows and Linux visulization - this isn't a "nice to have" - it's a flat out "must have" if the product is being marketed as a media center. There's no excuse for features that perform so far below what can reasonably be expected as to be useless.</rant>

[Mahoney]

• HD Extender
• CD Player
• Radio

Ideally the HD extender would have a removeable optical drive, so we can plug an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player in there some time in the future.

The ability to play CDs is such a no brainer it staggers me it still isn't in there out of the box after all this time.

If Sage is really to become the one box in the living room, it needs to have Radio capability to match its TV capability. It should be able to use an EPG lineup to capture radio stations from FM and online streams, and in the future from DVB-T and DVB-S.

[robertmcox]

Originally Posted by Mahoney

If Sage is really to become the one box in the living room, it needs to have Radio capability to match its TV capability. It should be able to use an EPG lineup to capture radio stations from FM and online streams, and in the future from DVB-T and DVB-S.

How about the 100 Music Choice channels that come with Cable that we all just ignore?

[Mahoney]

I don't have cable. And I've tried getting the radio channels over DVB-T and haven't managed to get it to work.

[hllord]

I think the UI needs some sort of 'User Level' switch. Here is what I mean by it:

1. Super/Techie User - All options and all submenus are shown, nothing held back.
2. Moderate/Semi-Techie User - All options except the super detailed items are available.
3. Neophyte/Non-Techie - Just make it work, some menus only. Things like quality settings are reduced to names like "Great / Good / Low"

This idea comes from me doing demos to people and letting them hunt around for a little while. Most get frustrated because the menu structure does not make as much sense to them. Next is sound based feedback, when they click on a menu item a little sqeek letting them know it was selected helps user have auditory feedback. Another next is an easy change to the color scheme. My mother in law is color blind to the blue-green spectrum so she sees the menus as shades of grey, a quick change to orange would help her out.

I have created several SageTV boxes for people and they love them but a common complaint remains that the UI is not as good as *ahem* other applications that do the same thing.

[tmiranda]

How about picture-in-picture?