SageTV Version 6.0 Public Beta is Available

[reboot_this]

Originally Posted by Opus4

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

Thanks, Andy... will do, I just wish I didn't have to rebuild from ground up before upgrading. My current install is hanging on by a thread due to a previous issue with an underpowered psu that wreaked havoc on things, I've been limping along since.

[GbrNole]

i'm really disappointed in the music playback. maybe i expected more but really it's no better than anything that's been available in sageMC.

it's really about time that CD play (or at least cd ripping) be integrated and some halfway decent vizualizations could be used that actually work with FSE.

it's a nice step forward but still lacks WAY behind MCE as far as features are concerned just thank god that sage is massively better than MCE when it comes to the all important recording of shows.

[CadErik]

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.

It'd be nice to see SageTV integrated with a service that provides real content not just Google or YouTube... Somekind of service that could provide: news, movie trailers, music videos.
I find the content on Google Video rather poor.

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

- 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.

Same experience here. I tried Mpeg4 good quality and the quality is rather poor, not to mention the sound that became phone quality like. I wouldn't name such setting "good quality", any Xvid,r DivX or Nero encoder wouldn't generate such quality on "good quality" settings.

I'd say I'm 1/2 happy with this new version. I gave up long ago the photos and music for JRMC (without DRM support in the music, all my napster collection won't play so that's a big no). I haven't tried the photos, but I hope they are faster now.

I was hoping to see a redesign of the menus and UI. The navigation is not the most straightforward one. The reason why I'm sticking with SageTV is the TV recording features.

Erik.

[mikesm]

One question for the Sage team about the UI... Have you considered adding an MCE based UI to the existing default UI as part of the baseline distribution? I am not talking about all the functions of SageMC, like comskip integration, etc... Just making it look a lot more like MCE.

My wife at this point will not let me move from an MCE UI to another UI, and I suppose that is the case for many homes out there. She doesn't care about the software underneath it, but it needs to have more or less the same basic naviagtion. Retraining is the issue. It seems there are a lot of SageMC users out there as well.

If you guys did something like that, it would be a lot easier for 3rd party folks to add functionality improvements like comskip, etc..., and just leave the UI work for the developers. The way it is now, a major upgrade like to 6.0 could take a few months for SageMC to catch up, and most of that dealing with Ui extensions for the new features that have been added.

I think this would help accelerate Sage adoption, particularly among folks frustrated by MCE limitations.

Thanks,
mike

[Necro]

Two questions for people:
- It seems audio isn't actually improved, GUI wise, very much over SageMC. Is the speed much improved? This was the biggest feature I, and I know many others, were waiting for.

- Video Library: Can we still browse via folder or has that been removed? It seems like people are mentioning it's removed. Short of being able to tag videos automatically or based upon their folder and sort via that, this is kind of a mandatory feature for me since I'm currently torrenting much of my television until FIOS-TV gets up and running in my area.

(And more screenshots of the music interface please...)

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Necro

- It seems audio isn't actually improved
- Video Library: Can we still browse via folder or has that been removed?
(And more screenshots of the music interface please...)

Why don't you just install it and have a look? Back up your SageTV folder and install the Beta, check out the screens rather than screenshots, see if these features are a problem for you. If it's no good, delete the SageTV folder and copy the old one back.

Surely that will give you a far better idea if the new version is a good one for you? Won't take a lot of time...the beauty of Sage is that it's so easy to backup and restore.

[Bohica]

Originally Posted by Necro

Two questions for people:
- It seems audio isn't actually improved, GUI wise, very much over SageMC. Is the speed much improved? This was the biggest feature I, and I know many others, were waiting for.

- Video Library: Can we still browse via folder or has that been removed? It seems like people are mentioning it's removed. Short of being able to tag videos automatically or based upon their folder and sort via that, this is kind of a mandatory feature for me since I'm currently torrenting much of my television until FIOS-TV gets up and running in my area.

(And more screenshots of the music interface please...)

Not that the older version of video was good -- but I liked to be able to view more than 10 videos with album art in a grid view. Now we can view 10 in a list view if you dont mind your cover art being like 10 pixels tall... And again - same sort of woes on my part with the music. I do like the underlying improvements such as AAC support, video playlists, video SEARCH - etc ... but I think the boys are *almost* going in the wrong direction with regards to navigation. I have never really had to NEED customizations for most of what I do - even tho I have written several in studio. I always lived with the default interface before now. If things dont get much improved, it looks like I will need several customizations to make me happy - much less the wife

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Necro

Two questions for people:
- It seems audio isn't actually improved ...

- Video Library: Can we still browse via folder or has that been removed? ...

(And more screenshots of the music interface please...)

Screen shots can be deceiving, especially for the media browsers. The underlying core music support and capabilities of the music browser go a long way past what v5 allowed. Why not check it out to see what all can be done before deciding what it does or does not do? Feedback can help developers, but not when it isn't based on first hand experience.

- Andy

[jominor]

Originally Posted by mikesm

One question for the Sage team about the UI... Have you considered adding an MCE based UI to the existing default UI as part of the baseline distribution? I am not talking about all the functions of SageMC, like comskip integration, etc... Just making it look a lot more like MCE.

My wife at this point will not let me move from an MCE UI to another UI, and I suppose that is the case for many homes out there.

Thanks,
mike

My wife and I have been using Sage since 1.4 and she has never complained about the GUI. In fact, I've only made very minor changes with the Dynamic menu plugin. I would argue that the GUI for Sage is fine for most people.

[Mahoney]

Personally I don't like the default GUI at all; I find it very unintuitive and also rather ugly. But as SageMC exists and is free, I'm happy. Just looking forward to flachbar bringing it into line with V6.

[chrisc16]

I think it's pretty clear at this point that Sage is leaving the GUI enhancements to 3rd party plugin STVs. How could they ever develop a stock STV that fits everyone's needs? They can't, so it's better to let everyone pick and choose from the available customizations.

Just remember that for every person that complains about the stock STV being "ugly" and needing replacement, there are probably 5 that are content and happy with the standard look and feel. I agree with jominor above; my wife has never asked for a different front end, and in fact when I showed her SageMC, she told me she didn't like it at all! Personally I also dislike the MCE look and style altogether.

-Chris

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by chrisc16

I think it's pretty clear at this point that Sage is leaving the GUI enhancements to 3rd party plugin STVs. How could they ever develop a stock STV that fits everyone's needs? They can't, so it's better to let everyone pick and choose from the available customizations.

Just remember that for every person that complains about the stock STV being "ugly" and needing replacement, there are probably 5 that are content and happy with the standard look and feel. I agree with jominor above; my wife has never asked for a different front end, and in fact when I showed her SageMC, she told me she didn't like it at all! Personally I also dislike the MCE look and style altogether.

-Chris

Bingo Chris. You win a brownie point for explaining why the SageTV Studio exists.

[mayamaniac]

SageMC doesn't work well on a laptop because there's no BACK button. And it doesn't work well with the MVP because its designed to have a small preview window of active content. If you put active content in the background, the menu items become very hard to read. And I like the menu animation stuffs in the latest SageMC16x9, but sometime it hangs and is very slow, and those animations won't work on the MVP. I don't want to run different UI on my MVP or placeshifter clients, so I use deault STV just to have all of them look the same. So as for SageMC being default UI, this is a definite No.

[austin]

I am about to build a Linux sage box to complement my XP install (as it seems that windows QAM is still far off) and I wanted to know about the license for Linux. If I buy one now will I get a free upgrade to v6? If not, where do I buy a Linux v6 License, or will the windows license work on Linux too?

Thanks,

Austin

[blade]

Originally Posted by austin

I am about to build a Linux sage box to complement my XP install (as it seems that windows QAM is still far off) and I wanted to know about the license for Linux.

Last I heard Sage still didn't support QAM in their linux version.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by austin

I am about to build a Linux sage box to complement my XP install (as it seems that windows QAM is still far off) and I wanted to know about the license for Linux. If I buy one now will I get a free upgrade to v6?

From Important Version 6 Upgrade Information:

Originally Posted by Narflex

Linux users do not need an upgrade key; all Linux license keys purchased are still valid.

And, a Linux license is separate from any Windows licenses.

- Andy

[austin]

Originally Posted by blade

Last I heard Sage still didn't support QAM in their linux version.

Check out post # 10
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=623935


Can someone please clear this up, I have read conflicting reports. Does Sage V6 Linux support QAM?

[blade]

Originally Posted by austin

Check out post # 10
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=623935


Can someone please clear this up, I have read conflicting reports. Does Sage V6 Linux support QAM?

If you read the linux forum here you'll see it has been asked about numerous times and no real response from anyone that has it working. I know Demo posted in one thread here on the forums about having it working at one time for a specific card, but he wasn't even sure if it was still working in the newer releases.

If QAM was available in linux I'd definetly be looking into purchasing it as well, but unfortunately there is next to no information about it. Until I see others posting with working configs and how they got it going. I'm not taking the chance of throwing $$$ down the drain for nothing.

[Bohica]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Bingo Chris. You win a brownie point for explaining why the SageTV Studio exists.

Personally - I am a default UI user as well. My comments earlier were not geared toward UI preference, but rather navigation choices that sage is making as they expand capabilities in the stock UI. Hopefully those were not lost as this thread took a decidedly left turn on UI preference.

To sum my own thoughts:

The video library navigation in this beta is problematic for browsing large collections of videos. I think we should have the option of a grid view with cover art. I am assuming that once I get used to it - search will be my primary interface, but I did not download 350+ pieces of cover art as I burned my collection -- not to browse graphically as well

The music library navigation is also somewhat clunky now. As with the video library, the underlying technology is great -- it is just the new nav that is a bit touchy to me for the same reasons. For instance, I did not mind browsing by list of authors... but with cover art if you recreate that list the cover art is itsy bitsy...

This is purely my opinion (which is worth next to nothing) - complicating navigation on the way to watching a recorded show, video, music is something I think should be avoided. Dont get me wrong, again - the new features are great such as compression and transcoding. But I really only want to see those options when I need them. In my opinion, those options would best be left to the intellectual equivalent of a right click, or the options command, as opposed to the left click / OK button.

And lastly - I do realize that we have studio, and I have used it quite extensively to integrate third party apps and various other things. I realize most things that I personally dont like, I can change myself -- or that others will have similar ideas.

Hopefully part of our being beta testers (and purchasers ) is providing feedback on the usability concerns we have...

[Opus4]

Did you see the tips thread in the beta forum? I posted some info that helps find media in the browsers very quickly.

- Andy