SageTV Version 6.0 Public Beta is Available

[mayamaniac]

Just got v6 beta installed and played with it for about an hour now. I installed on top of v5.04 after backing up v5.04 first. Here's my report:

- SageTVService.exe starting, it took a while to load, maybe 3-5 minutes. I looked at the Task manager and if kept pegging the CPU between 10-25%. Right now, its using about 180M of physical and virtual memory each.

- Interface/GUI - Mostly the same look and feel as v5.04, I expected it, so no surprise here. Switching from full screen and window mode is quicker now even without Fullscreen exclusive mode. I takes a couple of extra steps to play a TV recordings now as there's a Browse Recordings button. I think they will optimize these button layout before final release, so I'll let it slide. Besides, there's now a generated thumbnail of every video which is very cool. Refreshing the media seems to work correctly now with out traces of dead links or double links.

- Music UI, the ability to view by Folders is great for people who organizes their music collection in categorized folders. This makes looking for what you want a lot easier if you have good folder organizations. If you don't, you can list by Genre, year, artist, album, etc. Overall, its a first baby step to getting better Music features, but I feel it can be improve a great deal still.

- Pictures, overall good improvements. Thumbnails seems to generate faster. I think it still needs some finessing with the navigation, same goes for Music.

- Google Video, finally something new for Online Services. This is just too awesome if you like watching streaming video.. and words cannot express how cool it is that it works with the MVP. I can see myself wasting countless more hours on the couch. If they add youtube, I might never leave the couch.

- Video Conversion/transcoding is a very nice and easy to use feature. I tested one video, it was an hour long. It took less than an hour to convert the video on my 3.2Ghz P4. I set it to Mpeg4 Deinterlace Good quality. It shrunk the 2.4GB file down to 278M. Unfortunately, the quality of the converted video is blocky and a bit poor for my taste. And for whatever reason, playing back that video in SageTV yields black frames. Playing back in other media players is fine. Anyway, I'm doing another conversion at the moment at High quality so we'll see if its any better.

- MVP media extenders, seems to work better and "feels" more responsive. I haven't tested the DVD stuffs yet, but I will tomorrow.

Screenshots here.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by ikarus79m

Andy, is there any chance we might get an overhauled GUI before v6 is officially announced?

Unlike previous beta cycles, this one wasn't released until it was pretty much feature complete. It even comes with a completed manual, for another change.

Originally Posted by rtengvad

Maybe I can help you if you are a bit more specific. But let's move it out of this thread. Make a new one in "SageTV EPG Service" and lets take it there.

Actually, please keep everything related to the v6 beta in the beta forum... though not necessarily this single thread.

- Andy

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by rtengvad

Maybe I can help you if you are a bit more specific. But let's move it out of this thread. Make a new one in "SageTV EPG Service" and lets take it there.

His query was more a DVBT one rather than an EPG one. If you have Danish DVBT frequency details, I'm sure it would be appreciated if you can post them, either here or in a new thread in this forum. Thanks!

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

It takes a couple of extra steps to play a TV recordings now as there's a Browse Recordings button.

Here's another tip for everyone: The Group options pop-up is a new dialog that you'll see when you select a group of airings/recordings/videos (p. 40 in the v6.0 manual), containing (what else?) the options that can be performed on that entire group.

If you would like to skip that pop-up, use the Info command or simply use Right while the group is highlighted.

The same Select/Info/Right usage tip applies when a single video is highlighed: Select for Options, Info/Right to go to the next screen.

- Andy

[Kirby]

Ok so has anyone tried playing back any H264 streams from E* via their R5000 units? I dont have an open timeslot for installing the new version for at least 2 days (unless I skip work).. I really want to know how it does!

Ohh and these long start up times on the server the first time, how long should I expect with roughly 3TB of recordings and imports?

[DIBU]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

WHAT?? AN UPGRADE FEE? Since version 1 to v5, we've been spoiled with no upgrade fees whatsoever, but now we have to pay. So what if you added tons of features that just puts the competition to shame, this upgrade fee is completely absurd and uncalled for. I'll pay this once but there better NOT be another upgrade fee till version 10.

Just placed the order and immediately the upgrade license emailed to me. NICE!. Now I need a downtime slot when SageTV is not recording anything to install the new version. D'oh.

For screenshots, there are some new ones in the manual.

i think that is ok with the upgrade fee..i pay this for the great work

[CPA]

Thanks guys, the new beta looks GREAT! Couple of questions though on the music player:

Does the music player have bitperfect support if the sound card driver supports ks or ASIO?

Does the music player support replay gain tags?

[Bohica]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Here's another tip for everyone: The Group options pop-up is a new dialog that you'll see when you select a group of airings/recordings/videos (p. 40 in the v6.0 manual), containing (what else?) the options that can be performed on that entire group.

If you would like to skip that pop-up, use the Info command or simply use Right while the group is highlighted.

The same Select/Info/Right usage tip applies when a single video is highlighed: Select for Options, Info/Right to go to the next screen.

- Andy

Andy,

This is fine with a remote control... I could probably get used to using the right button instead of the center or 'ok' button... but this is a real pain (IMHO of course) for mouse only use. There are places in my house where I use a mouse and places I use the remote...

[Bohica]

First - I want to thank you guys for all the hard work...

Next I want to gripe about something The imported videos menu... I have 373 DVDs ( I did not know that until v6 BTW - nice job!) -- and you removed the older 'folder' view that allowed for a multi row, multi column view... and opted to seperate out the video types and only provide a single column view... am I correct?

I like the underlying features.. search here for instance was direly needed... but now instead of being able to browse some 16 - 20 movies per screen... I am down to 4 to 8... any suggestions?

[mike_15]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Screenshots here.

Thanks

I look forward to installing it later.

unfortunately it will mean I wont be getting any sleep, due to my schedule and my wife, I have to wait until she falls asleep on the couch and then I can begin to play around with the new version. As long as I can get it done before the alarm clock tells me I have to go to work I am good to go.
I miss free time....

[Bandit]

Originally Posted by jds23

I believe it was processing your wiz.bin file to be 6.xx compatible, some have reported this taking upto 15 mins without any type of dialog (I believe it does not show a dialog about updating if you are in Service mode, but not sure). I think you might need to wait at least 15-20 mins next time you try, as if you have a wiz.bin from 2003, it is probably rather large?!

Just to update you all on a large sage server, mine took about 60 minutes, then the service stopped. I then started it and it took another 90 minutes. Once it was started everything worked great. Stopped and restarted and comes up in normal time now. Was just weird since using service mode and it seeming hung.

[Kirby]

Have another question, on the MPEG4 conversion of HD files, what profile are we talking here, AVC H.264 or SP/ASP? Do we have target bitrate control of the encoding as well as other tuning features?

[SHS]

The only thing don't like is the new Music UI I perf it by sort by album, artist like old ver did, which I thinks is now artist, album which ungroup all the album
Bandit the bigger the data base is the longer it going to take.

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by Bandit

Just to update you all on a large sage server, mine took about 60 minutes, then the service stopped. I then started it and it took another 90 minutes. Once it was started everything worked great. Stopped and restarted and comes up in normal time now. Was just weird since using service mode and it seeming hung.

So assuming your 750GB is full, based on those time estimates, I could be looking at 4 hours and 6 hours for my 3TB of data? Ouch!!! I certainly hope its not that bad!

[gtallan]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

- Google Video, finally something new for Online Services. This is just too awesome if you like watching streaming video.. and words cannot express how cool it is that it works with the MVP. I can see myself wasting countless more hours on the couch. If they add youtube, I might never leave the couch.

The Google video is really fun to play with. My wife spent all evening digging out one awful video after another! Another cool thing about it; when you go back to watching a regular tv show after watching streaming internet video, it's like you just got HD

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Bohica

now instead of being able to browse some 16 - 20 movies per screen... I am down to 4 to 8... any suggestions?

Using the Options command while on the DVD view, you can set it to use 10 rows. The video Search view makes it very easy to find a specific DVD, or see the tips thread I started in this section of the forum for some other browser ideas.

- Andy

[StephaneM]

I've quickly tested V6 now and will post bug report later but right now I can say that :

TS file with H.265 cannot be played (this is a H.264 HDTV French DVB-T broadcast). It seems from the log files that SageTV is expecting MPEG2 and as such failed to render the video portion (It's strange because in the description of the video SageTV has figured out the right content of the Transport Stream : AC3 and H.264 video, but generated an ugly thumbnail)

Another thing that is bugging me is the MPlayer usage; it seems that any DivX, Xvid, H.264 (MP4 for that metter) video is handled by MPlayer internal codecs. So I'm concerned about this :

* Is it possible to handle DivX, Xvid by the DivX decoder for the video portion and by the Cyberlink Audio Decoder : this is currently what I use in SageTV 5 and it's great because the Cyberlink Audio Decoder gives Dolby Prologic II output when needed (that is on regular stereo or with Dolby Digital 2.0)

* Is it possible to handle H.264 content with either CoreAVC or Cyberlink H.264 codec. Without this choice not everyone may be able to play 1080i/p High profile H.264 videos (CoreAVC is a very efficient software decoder, and the Cyberlink does use Hardware acceleration, whereas MPlayer internal H.264 codec is pretty innefficient in that matter).

Maybe there is already a way to choose precisely which codec to use for each media type?

Regards,
Stéphane.

[reboot_this]

Can I skip versions when installing the lastest beta/rc?

in other words, I am running v2.2.2 beta... can I just install v6.x? or do I have to install v4 then v5?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by reboot_this

Can I skip versions when installing the lastest beta/rc?

in other words, I am running v2.2.2 beta... can I just install v6.x? or do I have to install v4 then v5?

There shouldn't be any need to install any other version first. This part shouldn't even be needed, but just to be on the really safe side, I always do what I posted here: How to install a new version of SageTV. It simply makes it easier to revert if a problem is encountered & also keeps every single old database/config file readily available.

- Andy

[LostInSpace]

Originally Posted by jds23

I believe it was processing your wiz.bin file to be 6.xx compatible, some have reported this taking upto 15 mins without any type of dialog (I believe it does not show a dialog about updating if you are in Service mode, but not sure). I think you might need to wait at least 15-20 mins next time you try, as if you have a wiz.bin from 2003, it is probably rather large?!

You're right. I ran it in service mode and it took about 15 min to start. And actually I have big win.bin file

:-) now it's working!!!!! Thanks