Important Version 6 Upgrade Information

[nielm]

Originally Posted by Mahoney

1. Fixes to existing advertised functionality should be free
...
no-one has answered Olive's post in this thread, where he links to genuine problems that need fixing in 5.04 and that he was informed would be fixed in the next release, and also told there would be no more V5 releases.

and it is unlikely that there will be such a response from sage in these forums. Communication for bug reports have always needed to go via email.

For the people that reported a bug in V5 directly to sage and was told that that bug was recognised and will be fixed: have any of you contacted Sage directly and asked whether they would be prepared to offer a free upgrade licence in order to get the bug fixed?

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by nielm

have any of you contacted Sage directly and asked whether they would be prepared to offer a free upgrade licence in order to get the bug fixed?

I think we would see a rapid escalation in the people identifying the same bug as Olive in v5 and reporting it!

[Cabalsan]

Originally Posted by doublebogey

I don't think we have a right to complain even then. I think they have to follow whatever business model makes them profitable. At least they participate with the user community, and you see their contributions in the forums all the time. That's something you don't see with many companies... including Big Bill's.

Having to pay to go from v2 to v6 is not an outrageous demand by Sage.. or any other company.

My .02.

Phil

V3 was the best release to date, IMHO. The diff betwixt v5 and 3 hardly anything - the Studio software, which had always been promised as a free seperate ADD ON (emphasis added) and Placeshifter support. Maybe some bug fixes, I dunno. It seems to me v5 to v6 is even more superficial then v3 to v5.

Bug fixes, or security fixes as M$ callls them should be free upgrades. Let Sage's Marketing dept find new users for v6 than squeezing the existing user base for a bug fix. Ask anyone about TiVo, and at least 75% know what it is. Ask anyone about Sage and 0.1% have heard of it. Now I'm not a BD guy, but if I were, I would be getting any amount of media exposure possible - hit every tech site on the net with test rigs, get on G4 tv, adds in tech mags, come up with a late night TV infommercial or something!! You get new users @ $99 a license, you make more money than $30 an existing customer.

Charging for speed bumps or bug fixes are not appropiate, IMHO.

Now this doesn't mean I probably won't pony up the $30. It just means my baby won't get his formula for a week. There's just as many vitamins and minerals in tap water as formula anyway, no matter what the label says!

thats M$ founder Bill Gates' little dinghy.

Also, making fun of Bill's member size is NOT appropiate for this forum!

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by Cabalsan

v5 to v6 is even more superficial

Major Features
1. Integrated Google Video search and playback (also works on extenders)
2. Media Extender DVD playback with DVD menus and 5.1 audio for hard disk based DVDs
3. Thumbnails are now generated and shown for all video files (except for WMV9 or DRM protected content)
4. WMA, AAC (iTunes), FLAC, Ogg/Vorbis music files are now supported for playback with full tag parsing
5. MOV (Quicktime), 3GP, MP4, H.264 Playback
6. DVB-T/S/C Capture devices are now supported on Windows (BDA drivers required)
7. CAM/CI support for DVB-C on Windows
8. EPG Data from DVB capture devices is integrated into SageTV
9. EPG Data from ATSC capture devices is integrated into SageTV (i.e. DTV subchannel data)
10. Enhanced EPG Data for US/Canadian customers includes Series Information and TV Editorials
11. NEW Enhanced Picture Library has improved navigation and also supports lossless rotation/flips of JPEG images
12. NEW Enhanced Music Library has significantly improved tag parsing and much better navigation
13. NEW Enhanced Video & DVD Library has new detailed media format information and improved navigation
14. Database now cleanly separates music, video, pictures, DVD and television content and APIs have been updated to allow many operations to operate on specific types of content (referred to as a MediaMask)
15. Aspect Ratio correction is now fully implemented for all content types
16. Proper aspect ratio configuration is now supported by allowing the user to specify what the aspect ratio of their display is
17. Watched position for imported video files are now remembered
18. Conversion of files (transcoding) is fully integrated into the UI; as well as managing the transcode jobs. Any format SageTV can play it can transcode with the exception of WindowsMediaVideo9 and WindowsMediaAudioLossless.
19. Support for converting files to play on a PSP, iPod or cell phone (3GP/MPEG4)
20. Support for compressing HDTV recordings to MPEG4 while preserving the AC3 surround sound
21. Support for converting any imported file to MPEG4 
22. Support for playback of progressive download Flash content (used for Google Video, can be extended to other things with the Studio)
23. Video Playlists can now be easily setup by the user
24. Song Information can now displayed on the screen as an alternative to music visualizations
25. Picture Slideshow Screen Saver is a new option
26. Significantly improved audio quality for the transcoder
27. Significantly reduced delay between playing back consecutive files on the Media Extender
28. Official support of Full Screen Exclusive mode on Windows
29. Improved conflict resolution user interface
30. OpenGL rendering is now supported with newer GPUs on Linux

Minor Features
1. The network adapter that the media extender server binds to can now be specified in the properties file
2. Audio stream can be selected when playing back content with multiple audio tracks (this is new for non-DVD content)
3. New command to toggle through the different aspect ratio modes
4. MS-DRM detection - SageTV can identify that a file is protected with Windows Media DRM.
5. DVD folders will now display their size in detailed information
6. Placeshifter clients no longer need to restart their buffering when seeking forward within the bounds of their current buffer

Studio Features
1. Re-use property editor windows in the SageTV Studio
2. Add scaling insets to Image widgets to allow specifying what regions are stretched when the image is scaled
3. Add ability to mark a widget as a background, this is now available in the property editor for Text, Item, Panel, Video, Image, Table and TableComponent Widgets
4. Image Widgets should have a property for automatically repeating their event if they're clicked on and the button is held down.
5. Setting the inactivity or screen saver now only resets the corresponding timer instead of both.
6. Added a drop-down list of previously used expressions to the expression evaluator
7. The results of an expression evaluation can now be copied to the clipboard by selecting the text
8. EXPERIMENTAL: There's a Launch Another Studio Frame option underneath Tools now. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. DO NOT OPEN MULTIPLE STV FILES WITH THIS. It is safe to use if you have the same STV open in all of the windows and you can drag & drop between the windows. There's also a Refresh option under Tools to refresh a frame if you change another and then the others fall out of sync.
9. Added LayoutStarted hook (much more useful for animations than RenderingStarted since LayoutStarted fires before the layout calculations are done)
10. Added context variables to Tables of:NumColsPerPage, NumRowsPerPage, HScrollIndex, VScrollIndex
11. Added Ctrl+R as the keyboard accelerator for Set Primary Reference in the Studio
12. Added a 'Recent Files' submenu to the File menu in the Studio.
13. Added HScrollIndex and VScrollIndex vars for scrolling panels (they're floats in Panels). They'll go between 0 and NumPages.

For me, it speaks for itself.

[blade]

Originally Posted by Cabalsan

You get new users @ $99 a license, you make more money than $30 an existing customer.

LOL not even close to being true. If business were that simple everyone would be rich. I've never actually done a financial analysis on MS, but I've always heard the bulk of their revenue is from upgrades.

To keep things very simple we'll ignore the hundreds of other variables and say 50% of the existing customers upgrade. To get the same amount of revenue from new customers Sage would need to increase their user base by 15% (assuming all new users purchased the server software and one client). Of course the higher the % of existing customers who upgrade the more they would need to grow their user base to achieve the same revenue. Sage's user base grows each year anyway so this 15% growth would need to be in addition to their usual growth.

This simple scenario assumes you're diverting funds away from marketing in order to charge your existing user base an upgrade fee, which isn't the case. You're missing the fact that charging for an upgrade will likely have a minimal effect on the number of new customers and isn't causing Sage to divert resources away from marketing. So it's not like they're choosing revenue from existing customers over that of new customers. They'll be getting both.

All industries go through different stages. During the growth stage increasing market share is easy, but as you move into maturity and eventually decline it gets tough. In those stages if you're only relying on new customers to generate income you're going to fail. Sage has been smart, when upgrades would provide minimal revenue they didn't charge. This helped to build a loyal user base that has been great at spreading the word and providing user to user support. Now that they have a good following and there is more $$ to be made from upgrade fees they're starting to charge reasonable fees for additional features which is fair. This revenue can go towards hiring more developers, marketing, etc... to grow the business or go into their pockets. They've earned it and IMO they can do what they want with it.

As long as Sage provides useful new features and doesn't start forcing upgrades or charge outrageous fees I think their move is a smart one from a business point of view. For those that think making money is something evil I suggest going into work tomorrow and demanding a pay cut.

[Naylia]

I have to say I'm excited, particularly about the following:

This one will get me to buy an extender-
2. Media Extender DVD playback with DVD menus and 5.1 audio for hard disk based DVDs

These are just great and might get me to drop XLobby...maybe We'll have to see how good it turns out to be.
4. WMA, AAC (iTunes), FLAC, Ogg/Vorbis music files are now supported for playback with full tag parsing
12. NEW Enhanced Music Library has significantly improved tag parsing and much better navigation
13. NEW Enhanced Video & DVD Library has new detailed media format information and improved navigation

And these are just solid improvements for ease of use in my mind:
15. Aspect Ratio correction is now fully implemented for all content types
16. Proper aspect ratio configuration is now supported by allowing the user to specify what the aspect ratio of their display is

These make me happy, especially since I'm not as home as much lately to sit and watch on the couch: Now I can more easily watch on the road and archive for later.
19. Support for converting files to play on a PSP, iPod or cell phone (3GP/MPEG4)
20. Support for compressing HDTV recordings to MPEG4 while preserving the AC3 surround sound

[Mahoney]

and it is unlikely that there will be such a response from sage in these forums

I wasn't talking about Sage's response, I was talking about the response of people on this thread who ignored Olive's valid point in the rush to say "if you don't want it, don't buy it".

[rickgillyon]

It's a valid point, and has been asked of Sage previously. If there are maintenance releases, my guess is it will happen well after the v6 release. But those who *have* been promised fixes in v5 and don't plan to upgrade need to talk to Sage about it.

[DynamoBen]

Let me start by saying I will likely spend the money for the upgrade; however there is a small sting to it. When I originally purchased the application, I liked the idea that upgrades where free. Call me selfish or cheap but it was a selling point for me. Then the official stance changed to the following:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...3&postcount=16

This was fine and understandable, features that cost money for the company would be passed onto the consumer. Once they released the licenses for MVP and placeshifter I say this change coming. I had hoped their commercial and hardware sales would sustain the company enough to continue to offer the consumer software at no cost.

I understand that the company needs income to continue. I’m also aware that the previous policy was not the industry norm. However, as a long time customer, it is a little shot in the arm to pay ½ the cost of the software as an upgrade periodically.

For me its not entirely about the money. Something to consider is that in the past I’ve been very lacks about expectations when releases had occurred. The features related to the media center portion haven’t always been that comprehensive or competitive. In addition there are Sage “quirks” that I have dealt with for years. In the end I remained patient and didn’t push the issues simply because they didn’t charge for upgrades, I didn’t have room to complain. That isn’t the case anymore, now I have certain expectations for future releases since I’m financially investing in the companies future on a regular basis. By charging an upgrade fee, in my mind, the expectations are much higher. Being happy with excellent TV recording won’t be enough anymore.

I hope that Sage will also be careful about the frequency of major releases. I have seen a number of companies release software so as to generate revenue, ala Microshaft, and not focus on squishing old bugs before moving on. In addition as new releases occur maintenance cannot stop on previous releases. (this was mentioned in this thread) There are going to be a share of people who are not interested in 6.0 or 7.0… Those previous versions will still need to be maintained as problems are found. This promotes good customer relations and could promote a future upgrade.

If Sage stays focused on tight code, limits major releases, continues to maintain previous releases, and becomes competitive feature wise I don’t have an issue with the upgrade fee.

[Olive]

Originally Posted by Narflex

There won't be a V5.1 release.

We're still supporting V5.0...it is our current release product. But there will probably not be anymore updates to it released.

I didn't notice this post at first, but it definitely sounds like an oxymoron to me. So let me guess, there'll be personal support for v5 (i.e. fixes sent directly to me)?

Olive

[sleonard]

Originally Posted by Olive

I didn't notice this post at first, but it definitely sounds like an oxymoron to me. So let me guess, there'll be personal support for v5 (i.e. fixes sent directly to me)?

Olive

I think it means that if you contact support they will help you by suggesting that you buy the upgrade.

Scott

[gblinckmann]

Originally Posted by Humanzee

ok, thats cool, and it seems fair to me. I don't mind giving you all a few bucks every year or two.

I wouldn't have minded every year or two, either. But I just paid $140 in April (this year!) and I'm now asked to pay another $30. That's a shorter time for upgrade fees than I have from other companies. $30 every six months seems steep to the wife.

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by gblinckmann

$30 every six months seems steep to the wife.

So be a man and tell her how it is!

[Kirby]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

So be a man and tell her how it is!

[jominor]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

So be a man and tell her how it is!

Clearly, most of the people posting are NOT software developers. Only that could explain the carping about the upgrade and the ridiculously low $30 price.

If you can't afford the $30, you probably shouldn't have an HTPC.

[GTwannabe]

I sprung for the $30 upgrade... the new features and actually useful media center are worth it.

IMO, Sage has been version happy lately. I'm not going to be a happy customer if in 6 months Sage puts out 6.1, calls it 7.0, and charges me to upgrade from 6.

[DynamoBen]

Originally Posted by jominor

Clearly, most of the people posting are NOT software developers. Only that could explain the carping about the upgrade and the ridiculously low $30 price.

If you can't afford the $30, you probably shouldn't have an HTPC.

First off these arguments have nothing to do with choosing software development as a career. (watch the stereotypes)

Its about a product and the return on investment. Its not about the $30 its more about the long term ramifications of the products upgrade fee system and the companies direction/intentions. I won't call this healthy discussion "carping."

As far as the comment about having an HTPC...give me a break!

If you want pay the fee, then so be it. Don't give others a hard time about their hesitation or economic status.

[mike1961]

For me (and I know a lot of you may disagree but I'm speaking for myself), even one feature alone in the update can easily be worth $30. I'm speaking of the ability to not have jump between my media player and Sage (using the Germsage plugin) to play mp4 files (and DVD's). That alone is worth it and I've yet to even explore any of the other features which I'm sure I'll like. If someone (like me) bought a pre version 5 this year and has to pay another $30 but won't then have to pay for at least a year it's worth it.

I think what a LOT of you are forgetting is that Sage has not just released "bug fixes" but many of their "minor updates" contain some really nice new features.

Also - there is NO COMPARISON in the world between Sage and a PVR. A PVR is totally unacceptable to me forgetting about all the features and add-ons, you lose the "central storage" capability of a true network (let's not even talk about the stupid copy protection on those PVR's). I absolutely love the fact that if my wife calls and asks me to record something, I don't even have to get up out of my chair since I also have Sage on my computer in my home office. If I record it here, I can watch it anywhere in the house - not so with a PVR. Yes, you can network PVR's but there's no central storage and it has to transfer the files. Central storage also means one backup. I have all my archives on Sage including personal videos such as my wedding video, etc. which I can watch quickly and easily without looking for DVD's or tapes. PVR's to me are temporary storage - nothing is permanent because they provide no easy backup solutions and everything is encoded (yea it can be broken, but it's all just inconvenient) and hard drives don't last forever so no backup means nothing is permanent on the PVR. I have backups in my safety deposit box.

Now - one thing I would REALLY LOVE to see (perhaps as a plugin or an update) would be a 411 white and yellow pages directory (ahh, what are those 411 services charging now per call...$1.50 or something and who wants to break out the white/yellow pages)?

Thanks,
Mike

[JDavis]

I have no problem at all with an upgrade fee, though as a user who bought 4.1 less than a year ago it does sting a bit to know that many of you got a lot more for your money than I have. But it was never a guarantee and $30 is very reasonable so that's not a big deal.

However, as was said above, if upgrades now cost money my expectations are going to be higher than when they were free. This new version, for example, has lots of new features that, while well worth it for others, aren't that useful to me. I don't have extenders, or do placeshifting, or use a video iPod. But what happens when 7.0 is released and it has some great new feature for me? If I don't buy the 6.0 upgrade now for $30, will I be hit with two $40 upgrade fees to get to 7.0 (the full price of a SageTV license)? If I pay for the 6.0 upgrade now, will 7.0 be a free upgrade like 5.0 to 6.0 is? If all major version upgrades will have a fee, what is the ballpark estimate for time between versions?

I love using SageTV, but I think the developers have an obligation to provide a clear policy on what I will (or won't) be getting for my money. And it's always a good idea to reduce the chances of a misunderstanding that could lead to angry customers in the future

[nielm]

Originally Posted by sleonard

I think it means that if you contact support they will help you by suggesting that you buy the upgrade.

Don't put words in other peoples mouths