New SageTV Interface

[src666]

Originally Posted by stanger89

First, let's all raise our hands, those of us who have delved into studio enough to understand what's involved in building a new STV, ground up.

An "overhaul" of the UI is definitely non-trivial. SageMC, or Meekell for example, probably share scarce little "code" with the stock STV.

My hand goes up. I never said word one about "trivial" or "non-trivial". I don't think anyone with half a brain thinks it's something they can knock out in a weekend. Of course it's hard. But it's their freaking system, shouldn't they be the best qualified to do it with the minimum of effort and flailing about?

Originally Posted by stanger89

The studio environment is both very nice, and limiting in other ways. But I'd sum it up like this. It may take 15 man-years to redo it. But if it were a "normal" plugin type architecture, it would take 30 man-years to redo it, and would be impossible for end users.

More hyperbole. Using man years is just a way to say you don't really grasp the full complexity, so you are going to use an impressive and daunting figure just to get people to leave you alone. I've been a professional software developer for well over 20 "man years", so I'm pretty well qualified to talk intelligently about software development efforts. 15 man years to redo the Sage UI is nowhere near realistic. And they know it.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Non-trivial is the point it was trying to make.

Then that's what they should have said.

Originally Posted by stanger89

How? What exactly should be moved? How should stuff be organized? I know I (and probably most long-term users) find the stock UI easy and logical. I assume it's the same for the devs. It requires the perspective of a new user to figure out what could be improved for new users.

Well, as I mentioned in my post, how about having one entry point for watching videos? Why is there a serious navigational difference between watching recorded, archived and imported videos? That makes no sense to a layman. They don't want to have to sit down and figure out what to do, they just want to do it. Other people have mentioned other navigation issues in their posts, so I'm not going to recap them all. But there are plenty to be found.

Originally Posted by stanger89

MCE is flashier, but I'm not sure I'd say it's layed out any better.

What you dismiss as "flash", most normal (i.e. haven't used Sage since 1.6) users see as inviting, friendly and easy to use. I shouldn't have to explain to the 10 year old that "yes, you recorded spongebob but it's not in the recordings, it's been archived so you have to go HERE", then "no, that episode wasn't archived, it recorded, so it's HERE" and "No, that's not recorded or archived, you have to go to HERE". It's a confusing morass to non-techies, and most "normal" people won't invest the time to make it better or easier.

Honestly, the default UI looks like something from the 80's, and they can do better. Even just skinning, with no core changes, can make a huge difference (i.e. SageMC). But frankly, they need to sit down and review the flow and organization of the whole operation, because the current UI is the result of several generations of growth, and it shows. It's not natural, it's cobbled together.

[lotusvball]

Even the stock can be helped... some..

[jbarr]

lotusvball, is that a "real tweak" or a "PhotoShopification"?

[lotusvball]

That is my real stock GUI. With custom menu STVi, a different background and different highlight bars.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by xred

My personal view is that any time debating whether or not a new UI is needed is time being wasted not working on the new UI.

This is kind of what I was getting at earlier. You can complain about the UI until the cows come home, and hope that the Sage devs are listening and understanding what you're trying to say. Or you can pick up the tools and show them exactly what you want.

Originally Posted by src666

My hand goes up. I never said word one about "trivial" or "non-trivial". I don't think anyone with half a brain thinks it's something they can knock out in a weekend. Of course it's hard. But it's their freaking system, shouldn't they be the best qualified to do it with the minimum of effort and flailing about?

My hand's up too. I use a home-brew STV that I've been working on for a couple of years now, and it's only just getting to the point where I would even begin to think about releasing it.

But even if we grant that the Sage devs are better qualified to do this kind of work (and it's not clear that they are), that doesn't mean it's the best use of their time. There are way more of us than there are of them. If some of us less-qualified folks can do some of the trial-and-error prototyping of new UI concepts, wouldn't that make the process of redesigning the stock UI more efficient if and when the Sage devs get around to it?

Originally Posted by jbarr

lotusvball, is that a "real tweak" or a "PhotoShopification"?

On one level there isn't any difference. You can do a lot of UI tweaking just by Photoshopping the stock backgrounds and icons, without ever opening Studio. Also fonts can be customized from the .properties file.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by src666

More hyperbole. Using man years is just a way to say you don't really grasp the full complexity, so you are going to use an impressive and daunting figure just to get people to leave you alone. I've been a professional software developer for well over 20 "man years", so I'm pretty well qualified to talk intelligently about software development efforts. 15 man years to redo the Sage UI is nowhere near realistic. And they know it.

I only use that figure because it's what was used before, of course it's not a real figure, but we're not bidding software development here.

Well, as I mentioned in my post, how about having one entry point for watching videos?

What do you mean "one entry point" That they should be grouped together? That would be a mess.

That they should all be in the same menu? Well then you have to go through two menues to get to everything (more "clicks" to get to the recordings which is the most commonly used function).

That they should all be in the main menu? Well there's only so much room, what get's bumped?

Why is there a serious navigational difference between watching recorded, archived and imported videos?

Seems to me they're different activities. Recordings are a day-to-day activity, where as imported and archived stuff would be less frequently used.

That makes no sense to a layman.

I guess I probably don't qualify as a Sage layman though, and that's the point I've been trying to make, neither are the Sage devs, the layout probably makes perfect sense to them. If it's to be fixed, they need laymen to tell them what's wrong, not just say it's bad.

They don't want to have to sit down and figure out what to do, they just want to do it. Other people have mentioned other navigation issues in their posts, so I'm not going to recap them all. But there are plenty to be found.

What you dismiss as "flash", most normal (i.e. haven't used Sage since 1.6) users see as inviting, friendly and easy to use.

How does transparency, animations, and other "flash" make something easier to use? I agree they appear more refined, and more appealing on the surface, but they don't affect usability at all.

I shouldn't have to explain to the 10 year old that "yes, you recorded spongebob but it's not in the recordings, it's been archived so you have to go HERE", then "no, that episode wasn't archived, it recorded, so it's HERE" and "No, that's not recorded or archived, you have to go to HERE". It's a confusing morass to non-techies, and most "normal" people won't invest the time to make it better or easier.

I don't know, the last thing I want is all my DVDs mixed in with my recordings, and my misc videos (which is what it sounds like you're proposing).

Honestly, the default UI looks like something from the 80's, and they can do better. Even just skinning, with no core changes, can make a huge difference (i.e. SageMC). But frankly, they need to sit down and review the flow and organization of the whole operation, because the current UI is the result of several generations of growth, and it shows. It's not natural, it's cobbled together.

Again, the current UI makes perfect sense to me, and probably the Sage devs. I'm not using that as an excuse to say it's right, or optimal the way it is. But if the layout seems logical to you, it's very hard to see what makes it illogical to others.

And despite all the posts complaining about the navigation, I still don't know how people expect it to be.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by nielm

[The default STV file defines] about 32,000 user interface elements (studio widgets).

If we consider 1 user interface element=1 line of code [...], and the average rate for designing, implementing, debugging and testing lines of code is 10 per day then the standard STV is the result of 15 man-years of work!

Ok, This is a back of the envelope figure, and completely inaccurate (show me a software metric that is!) but even if you divide it by 10, it is a lot.

Originally Posted by src666

I'm going to have to call shenanigans on this (the word I wanted to use is probably not polite enough for the forum).

Obviously, you were practicing hyperbole to make a point, but it's a bad point.

no, I was not. I was trying to get an random estimate myself (can you do any better?). Also bear in mind that the standard STV has been under development by various developers since mid 2003.

And I said in the original post that the figure (10 widgets/day) was completely inaccurate. I also think from experience of developing with Studio, that 10 times faster than that (100 widgets/day or 1.5 man years) is much too little. (my rss newsreader contains 860 widgets -- it definately took more than 8 days to write),

I would not be at all surprised, however, if MCE's UI took 15 man-years to develop if you consider the time needed to perform:
Human interface studies
prototyping
trialling
designing
developing
testing
redesigning
redeveloping
retesting
etc

Originally Posted by stanger89

Non-trivial is the point it was trying to make.

Originally Posted by src666

Then that's what they should have said.

I said it, I am not an employee of SageTV, just a user and a dev with experience of large SW projects.

Originally Posted by src666

But it's their freaking system, shouldn't they be the best qualified to do it with the minimum of effort and flailing about?

C# is MS's freaking system, but I doubt if every single MCE developer knows the ins and outs perfectly.

(by the way, you do know that you can include archived videos with Sage recordings by changing the Sage Recordings filter?)

[JREkiwi]

Originally Posted by nielm

(by the way, you do know that you can include archived videos with Sage recordings by changing the Sage Recordings filter?)

Thanks nielm , I for one, didn't know that.

John

[real_per]

Originally Posted by stanger89

As for why there aren't more, well for one, there's Meekell, which is a totally different take from SageMC. But beyond that, it's definitely non-trivial to build an STV from the ground up I've started to in the past, but I quickly became aware of just how big the issue is.

That said, it's impossible to make custom UIs for other PVR programs, MCE, BeyondTV can't be skinned at all AFAIK, maybe that's part of the price you pay for all the "flash" that you can't have that flash and easy skinability.

That seems like quite a contradiction to me.

It seems like there are a couple of long-time users who are "defending" the current interface.
Goodspike compares it to WinDVD, and says it could be a lot worse. That imo is a completely wrong way to look at it. What one should compare it too, is the apps that are being praised for their nice looking UI's, such as Vista MCE.

About the techies, vs non-techies discussion, i think it's wrong to say that just because you know your way around a computer, means that you're either not interested in the way your HTPC application look, or that you can just design or install your own skin. You have to actively look for STV's.

My brother-in-law is a "semi" techie, and I've promised to help him build a HTPC. When i installed Sagetv and show him what it could do, he said; "yeah that looks good, but I'd much rather have the one you use." Needless to say, I use SageMC.

I don't think Sage can afford not to prioritize their UI, because a lot of their potential customers will choose or dismiss the, based on it. And if I am going to spend $'s of dollars on hardware, and a nice looking TV, I don't want ruin it by running a frontend that looks like windows 3.1...

[JUC]

I think many of us can agree on one thing--we all want sage to grow. To grow, I mean sage needs to sell more licenses/hardware. For sage to sell more hardware, sage needs better publicity. For better publicity-sage needs better reviews. For better reviews sage needs to fix the one issue that every reviewer harps on = the UI. And i'm talking about looks/skins not really functionality. I am content on functionality through plugins. I think many new users would be content too out of the box if the UI was "slicker" looking. How many of us use sagemc over the stock. That should give you a good indication.

I can tell you that if I was starting over with today, i would be very tempted to go with vista and an xbox 360---because of the slick user interface. Many people starting out go with the 'eye candy'. Thats the way we work (at least i'm fairly superficial about stuff like that). When I show off sage to friends when they come over I don't go, "hey-check out how sage manages recording conflicts and how sage handles intelligent recordinds and X,Y,Z. I say, "doesn't this look nice! Isn't it smooth. See how cool the movietimes plugin is when set as a screensaver? dostn' that look good. (well, not exactly what i say but you get the point).

Many new users or people looking into PVR's read the PC mags, read the reviews and go from there. I for one, started using sage right after v2 came out. I switched from Showshifter. Why? because sage looked so much better--better than BTV even. Showshifter was purple and ugly! I didn't even consider what functionality sage had.

Anyway- a nicer, flashier UI = better reivews = more sales = faster production of an HD extender for us!

[lovingHDTV]

Originally Posted by JUC

Anyway- a nicer, flashier UI = better reivews = more sales = faster production of an HD extender for us!

Now how could anyone argue with that conslussion

I personally think the kludgy add on for the music/pictures is horrible and does not fit into the Sage UI theme at all. What's up with all the crappy looking buttons on the left side of the screen? When I first saw that in the beta, I could not believe how ugly it was and figured that it would be fixed before it was released.

This coming from someone whose wife won't allow SageMC in the house, but uses the stock UI only.

[src666]

JUC has cut to the core issue - sales.

Why did Sage decide to charge for an upgrade to V6? Either they wanted more money, they needed more money, or felt that the "free upgrades for life" was economically unsustainable in the coming marketplace. Whichever choice you pick, it boils down to the fact that new sales were not producing the income they need or want. They had to go back and mine the existing customer base. That's a good short term solution, but it's not a sustainable bump in cash flow.

The fact is, Sage doesn't have to please you or me - they already have the bulk of the money you or I will send to them. They have to please tomorrow's customer. And the customer after that, and the one after that, and so on. They need new customers and new sales. And they need them in a marketplace that has just been radically altered.

With the release of Vista, you are going to start seeing MANY new turnkey DVR systems, and not just the ones that sell for $4K+. You will see a LOT of sub-$1000 systems on the market, and that's going to be the place where most new customers go. Sage has to either get to those customers before they buy something else, or offer a product that will change their mind after the fact and make them want to pay for new software.

Is designing a new UI the best place for Sage's resources? Maybe. Is it in the top 3? Absolutely. Sage has already built just about the most technically sound and complete product on the market. Now it's time to position it so that it compete against Vista and Tivo et. al. in today's marketplace.

Pleasing you and pleasing me was fine - yesterday. But for tomorrow Sage has to clean house, starting with the UI.

Let me give you one example. 5309. Need I say more? Why, after 2 full versions, is this additional functionality hidden behind the "super secret hidden feature" code? I could see that for a test release, but this stuff is cooked. Put it into the normal configuration.

That's exactly the type of thing I am talking about when I say the UI is cobbled together. Every time they added a feature, they had to figure out where to shoehorn it into the existing interface. Well, at version 6 it's time to sit down and think about the whole feature set and design a UI that fits the features, instead of fitting the features into the UI.

Times have changed. It's going to be very hard to tempt people away from Vista's media center. That's because it comes in the box (with in-place upgrades), but most importantly it looks and works in such a way that the average windows user can "get it", without having to dig around in forums and install plugins.

And if they put 15 man-years into their MCE UI design, it's because they kept putting it in front of potential users, asking "what do you think?", and taking the answers back to make it work/look/feel better for the users.

Let me give you one last example. My wife and I will be going on vacation for a couple of weeks. We have a friend who house sits for us. He's been doing it just about as long as I have had SageTV. I have a Harmony 880 remote control, with pictures and one-step buttons to control my media center. He's been using my media center for a couple of years now. You know what he does when he house-sits? He watches Cable. Through the cable box. Because even with SageMC, using the HTPC is just too daunting for him, and he's always afraid he's going to "screw something up". That's the mentality that sage has to face, and why they need to redesign.

They need to make it so simple, a cave-man could use it.

[src666]

And to put my money where my mouth is, here are a few things that I think need to change.

Archiving:

What is archiving? In SageTV, it means "I want to keep this show, but remove it from the normal list of shows". To most people I have talked to, it should mean "I want to keep this show, but I want to move it off the drive". Archiving should mean something more than a flag, or at least have the option to. You should be able to specify an archive drive that the show gets moved to, or have it compress the show, or burn it off to DVD. When I archive something, I _put it away somewhere else_. I don't just cover the label with a post-it and leave it where it is.

Multiple-watcher support:

My ReplayTV's understood (to a degree) that there were probably multiple people in the house. When I started watching a show on the ReplayTV in my living room, it knew that at an earlier time someone watched, but didn't finish, that show in the bedroom, and it offered me a choice of where to start playback.

Sage needs to "get" the fact that there are multiple viewers in the household, and they have their own schedules and their own lives. Replay's location dependent playback logging was a good start, but Sage needs to have a way to let me know that we have a new episode of Heros that I haven't seen yet, but my wife has already watched it. That way I know I can go ahead and watch it alone guilt-free, instead of waiting 2 weeks to find out she has seen it. Perhaps a modified watched flag, that says "this has been watched, but don't take it off of the unwatched list". That way you can at least see that the new show is there, and that someone has watched it.

Multiple-library support, or parental controls:

We need a way to make sure that the kids only see and record programming from channels that parents approve of. This needs to be integrated into the UI in a way that makes it possible to restrict some playback devices (i.e. the extender in the kid's room) to certain content.

My idea is setting up a second SageTV server that only has the channel lineup the parents want, and the kids can record/watch what they want on it. But this breaks down because the moment the kids walk downstairs to the family room, all of their programs disappear. The main SageTV server has no idea what the kid's server has done. It would be nice to have a way for one server to have access to another's data, without making it a two-way street. That way the main system can play anything, but the kid's system only has access to the kid's shows.

Just a few ideas. That last one has little to do with the UI, but it would make a very marketable difference.

Edit: In retrospect, I see that this list has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. These are all new features that would have to be included in the interface, not really improvements to the existing interface. They add no value to the discussion.

The first thing I would fix in the interface is the video library. Recorded shows, archived shows and imported video shouldn't be separated. As was mentioned by someone else, you can include archived shows in the normal list, but if I recall correctly that's either part of the "super secret hidden features" or part of an import. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong about that.

There is no reason you can use filtering to integrate these items into a unified interface. SageMC has a set of fairly useful filters in the recorded shows menu, and this can be extended to include more. One key element is that Sage really needs another way to get metadata _into_ the system. I should be able to put enough data in about an imported file for Sage to toss it into the list with all the recorded shows. For example, 2 weeks ago the cable company screwed up and Battlestar was nothing but macroblocks. So I found a replacement file, tossed it onto the system, and now it lives out in the Imported Media space. That's fine for me - I put it there. But it does no one else in the house any good. I should be able to tell sage that the file belongs with all the other Battlestar shows. Ideally, I would be able to tell sage to substitute the good file for the bad one, so that the new file has all of the old file's metadata.

A media center should pull things together, not keep them apart. Allow us to categorize, to modify the metadata, to organize - that would be a useful UI change.

[blade]

Originally Posted by JUC

Anyway- a nicer, flashier UI = better reivews = more sales = faster production of an HD extender for us!

Not necessarily. It could even delay something like the HD extender. All companies have a finite number of resources. To overhaul the UI Sage would need to hire additional programmers or divert resources from other areas of development. Sage is a small company and doesn't have the resources or economies of scale that MS does so it's difficult.

Quite a few people have been making this very simplistic argument. I'm not picking on you or anyone in particular. Any businessman should ask how much time and cost will be involved in overhauling the UI? How much sales growth will it generate? What features will be delayed due to the diversion of resources? Will the overhauled UI generate more sales than the features being delayed? These are just a few of the questions the company would need to answer before making a decision. None of us are in a position to answer these questions.

For example would a slicker UI or a HD extender generate more sales and publicity for Sage? If you had to choose between your developers working on a new UI or a HD extender which project would be in the best interest of Sage to complete first? None of us can even begin to give an educated answer. All of us would be giving opinions and guesses.

I think most everyone would agree that nicer eye candy would increase sales and publicity and needs to be addressed. The question is whether adding eye candy would yield better results than the projects the company is currently devoting its resources to.

[Goodspike]

Originally Posted by nielm

(by the way, you do know that you can include archived videos with Sage recordings by changing the Sage Recordings filter?)

Okay, since there are tips coming out, how about this one?

Is there a way to have Sage start on the Sage Recordings page? Thats where I want to go 99.9% of the time I start Sage, but I've never found a way to do that.

There very well may be a way to do that, but it's not in detailed setup, where you'd expect it. Rather than calling SageTV ugly, I would say it's not terribly intuitive about many things--like the tip above, or those icons that appear on the TV schedule which mean nothing obvious.. To do basic things, you shouldn't have to RTFM.

[Goodspike]

Originally Posted by real_per

It seems like there are a couple of long-time users who are "defending" the current interface.
Goodspike compares it to WinDVD, and says it could be a lot worse. That imo is a completely wrong way to look at it. What one should compare it too, is the apps that are being praised for their nice looking UI's, such as Vista MCE. .

I've never used MCE because I had no interest in their file format. But one question about it's interface. Is it as mouse friendly as Sage? My complaint about a lot of these computer programs is they forget they are designed for a computer, and try to make them so that they work with a remote, sometimes completely forgetting about the mouse. If Sage moved that direction, that would be taking several steps backward.

[blade]

Originally Posted by src666

JUC has cut to the core issue - sales.

The core issue is actually profit not sales.

Why did Sage decide to charge for an upgrade to V6? Either they wanted more money, they needed more money, or felt that the "free upgrades for life" was economically unsustainable in the coming marketplace. Whichever choice you pick, it boils down to the fact that new sales were not producing the income they need or want. They had to go back and mine the existing customer base. That's a good short term solution, but it's not a sustainable bump in cash flow.

MS charges for upgrades as does BTV. If you look at Sage's pricing structure it's nearly identical to BTV. Saying the change is proof they're having problems is a false statement. They are following the pricing structure that is standard for the industry.

The fact is, Sage doesn't have to please you or me - they already have the bulk of the money you or I will send to them. They have to please tomorrow's customer. And the customer after that, and the one after that, and so on. They need new customers and new sales. And they need them in a marketplace that has just been radically altered.

If Sage continues to charge for upgrades (as their competitors do) then yes they do have to continue to please their existing customers.

And if they put 15 man-years into their MCE UI design, it's because they kept putting it in front of potential users, asking "what do you think?", and taking the answers back to make it work/look/feel better for the users.

MS also has more resources and greater economies of scale. They can afford to spend more on the UI and development in general because the cost can be spread across a greater number of units.

Business isn't just about sales it's about profit margins. The bottom line is Sage will most likely never be the market leader. Their best chance is to differentiate their product by offering features not available from MS while maintaining a healthy profit margin. If not they'll be driven out of business.

I agree a nicer UI would be a plus, but at the same time I realize there is no free lunch. If resources are devoted to the task they're being taken away from another project. That's one reason why I think the UI should be ever evolving and not scrapped in order to build a new one from scratch.

[Rob]

I for one sure hope sage finishes the HD extender before trying to figure out what ugly, eye candy, poorly layed out and all the other generic statements mean.

[src666]

Originally Posted by blade

MS charges for upgrades as does BTV. If you look at Sage's pricing structure it's nearly identical to BTV. Saying the change is proof they're having problems is a false statement. They are following the pricing structure that is standard for the industry.

Except - they used to have a lot of people running around saying " ... and in addition to all that, upgrades are free! They aren't trying to milk you for every new feature." They don't have that anymore. That's a feature that was removed from the product.

Now, we honestly have no idea if this was a one time thing, or if every version upgrade will incur an additional charge. But until now they have been able to play fast and loose with their versioning, with many bug fixes being rolled into the next version and everyone upgrading because it was free. You start charging for upgrades, and you are going to start leaving some portion of your customer base behind. Period.

They are going to have to start doing a better job of code management, fixing V6 bugs in V6 releases, instead of just rolling them into V7 and charging everyone [insert some dollar figure here]. We've already seen this happening, and a number of users were complaining about having to pay for V6 to fix V5 bugs.

I can almost guarantee that they agonized over the decision to charge for upgrades to V6, and that they did it for a better reason than "everyone else is doing it". SageTV is NOT an "everyone else is doing it" company, or at least hasn't been one in the past.

Like you said - profit. I'm not saying that they are "in trouble", but they are certainly playing in a different marketplace than they were a year ago and the reality of that situation cannot be lost on them.

If they sell an average of 1 server, 1 client (PC/MVP/Placeshifter) per "user", then they are looking at about $120 per sale. Unless they are just a couple guys in a garage, then they need several hundred NEW sales per month to stay afloat. Heck, even a couple guys in a garage will find it challenging to run a long-term company on less than that.

They charged for upgrades because they need the money, either now (decreased sales/increased expenses) or anticipate needing it later (preparing us to expect upgrade charges in the future). And the best way to increase revenue is to increase sales (obviously, without increasing the cost of a sale or reducing the income from a sale). They need to be able to compete with the products in the market today. They need to have a new user look at the system and say "Yes, that's it!". They need to ensure that the user experience is good enough that the non-geeks in the family accept it without a struggle. Otherwise, they won't be able to grow their market, and they will be stuck living off of what they can get from you and me for the next upgrade.

[Goodspike]

Originally Posted by Rob

I for one sure hope sage finishes the HD extender before trying to figure out what ugly, eye candy, poorly layed out and all the other generic statements mean.

I'd hope they deal with the stuttering issue first too!