SageTV V6.1.6 Release Candidate

[Narflex]

Howdy again everyone!

This is the next release candidate for V6.1; we rejected 6.1.5 so we're at 6.1.6 now.

As always, you can report bugs you find here: http://sagetv.com/bugs.html. For forum discussions, please start new threads.

After the download links you will find the latest release notes. You are encouraged to look them over.

Here's the short list of what's new in V6.1:

Lots of Bug Fixes
New Logo + UI Enhancements
Experimental: YouTube Videos
DVB-T/QAM on Linux
New Cards: Hauppauge HVR-1600 (supports dual ATSC + NTSC) & HVR-950; VistView Saber 2020;AverMedia M780
Windows Placeshifter client remote control support (MCE, IRMan, USB-UIRT, Windows Messages, Multimedia keyboards) (this one's for you Mikal )

Downloads:

SageTV Media Center V6.1.6 for Windows
http://download.sage.tv/SageTV_V6_1_6Setup.exe

SageTVClient V6.1.6 for Windows
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVClient_V6_1_6Setup.exe

SageTVPlaceshifter V6.1.6 for Windows
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVPlaces...6_1_6Setup.exe

SageTVPlaceshifter V6.1.6 for Mac OS X
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVMacPla...ter_V6_1_6.dmg

SageTVPlaceshifter/Client V6.1.6 for Linux
http://download.sage.tv/linuxbeta/miniclient.tar.gz

SageTV Media Center server V6.1.6 for Linux
http://download.sage.tv/linuxbeta/server.tar.gz

And here's the release notes back to 6.1.1:

SageTV V6.1.6 Release Notes 3/20/2007 RELEASE CANDIDATE 5

Core Updates
1. DVB frequency updates for Sweden
2. Fixed various bugs related to not using an always increasing clock. The most notable one being when SageTVClient would disconnect from the server whenever it did a significant clock change.
3. Added property optimize_metadata_mem_usage which defaults to true and removes the unused metadata map from the media format objects in memory
4. Fixed bug where service and non-service mode would accept different types of parameters for StringList variables (caused AddShow to not work right in a bug report)
5. Improved detection of 'live playback boundary' so SageTV won't stutter when it's close to live TV
6. Added restriction on the volume range to hold it between 0.0 and 1.0
7. Added support for stopping a DVD when it reaches the end.
8. Fixed bug where the audio formats were listed in the wrong order in the language selection dialog sometimes
9. Fixed bug where track numbers of the format #/# sometimes didn't get parsed correctly
10. Fix out sync of telext stream in DVB-T causing PTS fixing messing up.
11. Updated transport stream processing code to new cross-platform codebase
12. FIX crash caused by TS stream error that PMT program id is not consistance with program id in PAT (KAZA-DT station)
13. FIX: parser is not able parse a stream (illregular stream) that two channel's PMT share a PID. (WYSR-DT)
14. Fixed bug in getEventTime0 so that it isn't thread-dependent on its return value
15. Bug fix: New z offset feature caused the text to be hidden on some item renderings

Windows Updates
1. Fixed bug where the audio was muted when playing back non-TV files on Windows sometimes; and also where SageTV wouldn't obey the last volume when using media player volume for TV files
2. Added H.264 stream support to the SageTV Demux (you'll need to have an H.264 decoder installed)
3. Added H.264 decoder filter insertion. The property that controls this is: videoframe/h264_video_decoder_filter and it will default to one of the Cyberlink H.264 filters if installed (or it'll just remain as an empty propery and not show up).
4. Fixed hang when learning infrared commands with SageTV in service mode
5. Fixed bug where Plextor transcodes no longer worked
6. Disabled alpha cutoff in Direct3D since it had undesirable UI effects
7. Reduced priority of thumbnail generation process on Windows
8. Reduced priority of format detection process on Windows

Macintosh Updates
1. Fixed bug where rendering sometimes was off by a pixel on the bottom (was seen on OpenGL placeshifter client)
2. Fixed fullscreen mode on Mac OS X
3. Added JOGL text rendering support

Linux Updates
1. Added JOGL text rendering support

Studio Updates
1. Fixed bug where save on close prompt would keep reshowing if Yes was selected
2. Added more Studio close warnings about losing unsaved data. Added Cancel buttons to those warning dailogs when possible (i.e. not on shutdown)
3. Added Widget API call "IsSTVModified()"
4. Added MediaFile API call: IsThumbnailLoaded(MediaFile) which returns true if a MediaFile's thumbnail from GetThumbnail should load quickly
5. Updated Utility API call: IsImageLoaded(Object) so that it can take as a parameter a MetaImage, MediaFile, Album, File or URL to determine if the image is already loaded into the cache

Extender Updates
1. Added support for handling DVD angles correctly
2. Improve aspect ratio handling on dvds

STV Updates
1. Use smaller logo image for menu header so it doesn't have to scale down as much on lower res displays.
2. For online videos, set NewDur via If-Branch statements rather than via an If() function on a single line, to better handle the case where it is null.
3. While on the Main Menu, the Info command jumps to the System Information screen.
4. Fixed display of long lists of audio and subtitle options to choose from during playback.
5. Get "seeker/<media_type>_library_import_filename_extensions" properties via GetServerProperty() call.
6. Added Fork() call before calling LearnCommandForInfraredTuningPlugin() and AddRemoteForInfraredTuningPlugin() in AfterMenuLoad hooks.
7. Added system to delay thumb display in media browsers after user input to scroll/update the list. This allows for faster scrolling.


SageTV V6.1.4 Release Notes 3/6/2007 RELEASE CANDIDATE 4

Core Updates
1. Fixed bug where FLAC files with pictures in them could crash the metadata parser in an infinite loop
2. Added support for album art extraction from FLAC files
3. Updated cable frq data for "Finland-Helsinki"
4. Fixed bug where removing sources on the service wouldn't propogate the lost channels to the client until the EPG update was finished.
5. Fixed bug where EPG data scanning wasn't recurring reliably
6. Reset infrared remote control delays to be their old settings; but still allowed for optimized timings with new RC5 protocol
7. Fixed MP3 duration parsing so that it'll skip the ID3 tags if found
8. Added support for importing 'Rated' and people metadata for imported video files.
9. When reimporting a MediaFile actually update the DB with the new info
10. MPEG4 conversions of HDTV shows when selecting a non-HDTV transcode format will convert them to SD resolution so the 2-pass encoding should work
11. Fixed bug in font texture map generation where a glyph sometimes overwrote other glyphs.
12. Fixed bug where a transcoding job could end up using the same file path as an already existing file
13. Added support for metadata properties parsing. This will extract metadata from .properties files of the same name as a media file (just append .properties; i.e. foo.mpg.properties). It uses name=value pairs just like standard Java properties files.
14. Added back support for the MediaFileMetadataExtractor plugin interface (but now it should return a java.util.Map instead of an Airing)
15. Added core detection of H.264 streams inside MPEG2 PS/TS containers
16. Various bug fixes in transport stream parsing code for recording ATSC/DVB/etc.
17. Fixed bug where small images (less than 8x8) which the scaler couldn't handle would crash the image loader

Windows Updates
1. Preserve the volume setting when using player specific volume control on Windows
2. Disable autoinsertion of the NVidia PP for DVD playback by default
3. Updated VMR9 rendering code to handle dynamic aspect ratio changes
4. Fixed bug related to listing the audio capture devices in the system
5. Added support for AverMedia M780 PCEi capture card
6. Fix broken code for Happauge Hybrid card
7. Added support for faster channel changes by setting the DirecTVSerialControl FastChannelChanges registry setting to 3
8. Fixed support for Win98
9. Fixed bug on Vista where SageTV wasn't able to detect the existence of the SageTV service unless SageTV was invoked as an Administrator using Run As...

Linux Updates
1. Updated linux DVD burner code to use FFMPEG to do the DVD remuxing instead of mplex

Placeshifter Updates
1. Fixed bug where the Placeshifter would sometimes transcode when a LAN client connected even though there was plenty of bandwidth. (this was due to an invalid bandwidth calculation issue)
2. Disabled use of smooth fast forward/rewind when using the transcoder since this never really works right anyways
3. Fixed bug where the Placeshifter could startup with an empty server list and wouldn't discover the servers
4. Removed dependency on ksProptyUtl.dll
5. Fixed support for the USB-UIRT remote control on Windows

Extender Updates
1. Fixed support for playback of TS files on extenders
2. Fixed issue with playback of DVDs at the end
3. Fixed lockup issues in DVD playback
4. Disabled use of smooth fast forward/rewind when using the transcoder since this never really works right anyways

Studio Updates
1. Added preliminary support to the FileDownloader to handle streaming MP3s
2. Added 'ZOffset' property to UI widget components (Panel, Item, Table, etc.). This will affect the Z order for rendering and receiving events. 0 is the default. Positive numbers are higher in z (closer to the user) and negative numbers are farther.
3. Fixed bug where the MediaFilesImported hook wasn't getting called on all of the UIs
4. Added NumHPages and NumVPages attributes to scrolling panels
5. Added property "ui/enable_image_corner_arc" which defaults to false; and controls the 'corner arc' property for images (this is not supported on all rendering platforms and is deprecated)
6. Changed GroupByArrayMethod so that if there's a zero-length or null array for an element it gets mapped to the 'null' key
7. Fixed bugs where AddWidgetChild and InsertWidgetChild allowed doing illegal parent->child relationships

STV Updates
1. Removed folder icon from multi-column folder views.
2. Changed default layout of multi-column media browser views to 3 rows x 3 columns.
3. Media browsers: delayed preloading of thumbs for item gaining focus until some time has elapsed. Uses ui/thumbnail_preload_delay property; default = 300ms.
4. Fixed issue with music browser's Artist view where the thumb search was locking when only a single unknown album entry is in the list.
5. Clarified the option of whether to ask to delete recordings when playback ends by noting that the option has no effect for shows watched while they were recording, since that is considered to be live TV.
6. Increased size of menu bg fill color so that it is behind entire menu button area when video is playing as the background.
7. Video conversions: Reset the destination filename if it is cleared when edited.
8. Video conversions: Fixed usage of NTE for setting the dest filename when converting imported videos.
9. Video conversions: Fixed usage of renamed destination filename when converting to the original folder.
10. Music by Artist: Added "Unknown" artist entry when the chosen types of artists to be shown contains empty tags.
11. Used LocalizeString() when specifying role names for calls like GetPeopleInShowInRole()
12. Fixed incorrect display of recent playlists for pop-up music options menu.
13. Fixed listing of Unknown artist entry in the music browser's Artist view.

SageTV V6.1.3 Release Notes 2/15/2007 RELEASE CANDIDATE 3

Windows Updates
1. Added ATI decoders to DShow decoders list

Linux Updates
1. Added EPG data scanning support on Linux for ATSC/DVB

Extender Updates
1. Prevent non-repeating keys from repeating when using the RC5 infrared optimization
2. Synchronize time reading (fix problem in dvd still screens)
3. Bug fix for when doing a fast file switch with the extender the audio stream wasn't set correctly

STV Updates
1. Changed media browser view names to use the same size font to prevent having to load many different font sizes.
2. Applied new transparent background to all buttons that previously were outlined when not highlighted.


SageTV V6.1.2 Release Notes 2/13/2007 RELEASE CANDIDATE 2

Core Updates
1. Fixed regression bug caused by last bug fix for async Fav issues that would cause all favorite & IR recordings to stop
2. Fixed regression bug where the channel lineups were not initially loaded on the client
3. Fixed regression bug where the display would power off while the user was watching video
4. Fixed bug where some RSS Enclsures didn't parse the duration correctly

Windows Updates
1. Fixed regression bug of timing issues in playback of previously recorded HD content

STV Updates
1. Rearranged Online Services Menu. Used 3x5 array of choices for YouTube & Google Videos. Used new background for non-selected online video options. Removed item numbers from lists of online videos.
2. Modified YouTube & Google Video menu layouts for single line text all at roughly the same size & changed order of menu items.
3. When setting or clearing MR for an airing, close dialog first so the options don't appear to change as the MR status is being updated by the core.
4. Display "Tuning into..." pop-up message when starting playback of a TV show that is currently airing, since it can take a little while for the recording to start so playback can begin.
5. Channel Setup: use a 'waiting' type of dialog when channel scanning is initializing.
6. Fixed use of wrong variable name in animation of music thumb list in Artist/Genre/Year views.


SageTV V6.1.1 Release Notes 2/9/2007 RELEASE CANDIDATE

Core Updates
1. Added persistence for Airing objects that were linked to completed TV recordings. They will now remain in the DB forever. To clear them out; set the property wizard/retain_airings_from_completed_recordings=false
2. Updated CaptureDevice merit sorting so that when merit is equal the device that has the higher quality input will be chosen first.
3. Fixed bug where a newly added Favorite may not get recorded because the profiler does an async update which clobbers the Favorite airing data (normally it would restart but we had added something to stop that if it kept restarting...now that's been adjusted to work in this case as well)
4. When playing back a DVD with the NVidia decoder, automatically insert the NVidia postprocessor unless another PP is specified or the property videoframe/use_nvidia_pp_when_decoder_selected is set to false
5. Fixed bug where channels that had a subchannel number greater than 10 didn't get properly sorter by subchannel number
6. Fixed bug where old channels that weren't mapped to anything stuck around in digital TV lineups
7. Fixed IR repeat timing issue
8. Disabled multipass encoding for PSP & iPod conversions
9. Fixed DVD AC3 encoding so that it doesn't use 5.1 channels unless the source material also has 5.1 channels
10. Transcoding of TS files now go through the remuxer instead of the transcoder
11. Added optimized video thumbnail generation so it won't take 'black frames' of video and will try to find a 'good' thumbnail
12. Added extra check when doing MediaFile verification where we don't fail if the file is not zero length and doesn't exist
13. Fixed bug where the file path index in the DB got broken when files were removed
14. Fixed bug where the timeline for a file would be messed up if it was converted & replaced but with different times
15. Added support for asynchronous loading of URL based images
16. Fixed bug where an unwatched favorite can get deleted before a watched recording if the system was very low on diskspace.
17. Fixed bug that occassionaly caused SageTV to hang for 30 second when shutting down
18. Fixed bug where converted files that were placed in an import directory got imported in addition to their TV metdata linking
19. Fixed bug where the wrong duration was shown sometimes during playback of non-DVD content
20. If there's no Wiz.bin file, but there is a Wiz.bak file; be sure to load the backup file instead of creating a new DB!
21. Recording of DVB/ATSC/QAM will now generate more compliant Program Stream files (the previous ones generated were missing some fields that some editors/players required)
22. When scanning for QAM channels; don't list any encrypted/unviewable channels.
23. Fixed bugs related to transcoding of HDTV files (there may still be issues with recordings that have been made before V6.1; we will release a tool to repair those recordings in the near future)
24. Added support for parsing comments from an Ogg-Vorbis file.

Linux Updates
1. Use Program Stream as the default recording format for digital TV on all platforms
2. Fixed error printouts for eval errors so the expression gets dumped to the log as well
3. Fixed bug where the broadcast standard wasn't getting set for DVB capture devices on Linux
4. Fixed OpenGL video rendering code so that it also takes into account the source rectangle for the video (not just the destination rectangle).
5. DVB-T is now fully supported on Linux
6. ClearQAM is functional on Linux but still considered experimental

Windows Updates
1. Fixed bug where we didn't properly clean up FSE when it was shutdown
2. Set a max limit on D3D VRAM usage to be 120MB.
3. Added more cleanup calls so that when we drop out of FSE or have to destroy the rendering engine everything comes back correctly. There was a repro case where locking the screen would cause the 3D system to fail and not recover. This fix solves that problem.
4. Fixed bug where disabling overlay color keying caused SageTVPlayer to hide video even when using 3D render
5. Fixed support for .tivo imported media files on Windows
6. Fixed bug where SageTV would hang if awoken from the system tray with a double mouse click and video background always on is enabled
7. Optimized detection of current screen bounds which is used to calculate PAR. This should eliminate some of the pauses/stuttering that happen in the UI because it'll no longer be enumerating all of the displays on every image render and every VMR9 callback.
8. Added support for VistView Saber 2020
9. Added support for Hauppauge WinTv-HVR 1600 (can act as an ATSC + NTSC tuner that supports both inputs at once!)
10. Disabled secondary copy of video texture unless it's required to do the BLT (major performance increase for VMR9)

Macintosh Updates
1. Fixed OpenGL video rendering code so that it also takes into account the source rectangle for the video (not just the destination rectangle).

Placeshifter Updates
1. Updates to add support for infrared receive in the Windows Placeshifter client
2. Increased buffer size used to push data to the extender/placeshifter
3. Added support for integer coordinate rendering. This'll fix floating point rounding errors that would occur in the Placeshifter & Extender.
4. Fixed bug in localhost placeshifter license detection so it doesn't count the localhost as a license in use.
5. Fixed bug where we were using premultiplied alpha for sending images to the placeshifter when it was in LAN mode
6. Updated server discovery process so it updates the list in realtime rather than waiting for the whole discovery to timeout
7. Added version information to the About tab in the SageTV Placeshifter

Extender Updates
1. Added support for integer coordinate rendering. This'll fix floating point rounding errors that would occur in the Placeshifter & Extender.
2. Fixed bug where FF/REW play would sometimes continue onto next media file when the last one ended with it on
3. Performance enhancemnts; should be faster.
4. Optimized usage of RC5 remote controls so they're much more responsive

Studio Updates
1. Fixed bug where the Studio allowed loading of menus while the debugger was paused (now it resumes)
2. Retain multiple selections when doing a Refresh in the SageTV Studio
3. Fixed bug where the Studio could be closed while it was stopped on a breakpoint (now it resumes and disables stopping while it's hidden)
4. Fixed bug where ensureVisiblityForVariable wouldn't always work on non-wrapped tables
5. Fixed bugs where horizontal scrolling and hor/vert scrolling didn't work correctly
6. Added support for dynamically changing the H & V alignment of image widgets
7. Added Configuration API calls: GetServerSubpropertiesThatAreLeaves, GetServerSubpropertiesThatAreBranches, RemoveServerProperty and RemoveServerPropertyAndChildren
8. Added Global API calls: IsLinuxOS and IsMacOS

STV Updates
1. Added YouTube Video menu - NOTE: This is currently experimental
2. New Logo!
3. Channel Setup: station remapping dialog will remember its sort setting, if it has been set in the remapping dialog. Otherwise, it will sort the same way as current setting for the list of channels.
4. Channel Setup: After remapping a station to the highlighted channel, enable visibility of the remapped channel if the highlighted channel was enabled originally.
5. Added error dialog if google video download failed after calling StartFileDownload()
6. Google Video Search Results now displays in a 4 col x 2 row format & shows the google video thumb for each item.
7. If an imported video or google video has a description, show it as part of the playback OSD.
8. Google Video Search Results: Right listener no longer acts as video selection. Full width of area at the top is used for video info unless it is used as the preview window for a playing video.
9. Allow setting sort direction for photo browser.
10. Conflict Resolution Options: Disabled vertical wrap scrolling in grid. Make sure conflict airing is visible in the grid after entering the menu.
11. Default screen saver style is a photo slideshow. If there fewer than 2 imported photos, the logo will be used instead.
12. The imported media browser items that are in focus will transition their thumbnails to rotate through the contents of the browser item when multiple thumbs are available.
13. Music folder view: when using Play on a folder w/no songs in that folder, don't show the pop-up message that says songs were added to the Now Playing playlist.
14. Fixed the Clear button on search screens so that it clears all input correctly on all types of SageTV clients.
15. Photo Viewer: modified menu layout & added "More Options" area that auto-expands when focus switches to it.
16. Changed animated dots to rotating circle for "please wait" animation in some dialogs.
17. Channel Setup: During a channel scan, added a line that lists the number of channels found so far.
18. Playback: Entire bottom portion of OSD is now shown when using FF & other commands that affect the timeline.
19. Modified the clock display to show day of week + current time.
20. Photo viewer: Added mouse listeners to the tip text, so clicking on the tip text does what it says. Narrowed the semi-transparent buttons slightly. After closing the Info and Rotate options, return to menu w/last-selected button still highlighted.
21. Video conversion: fixed use of start & duration times when the converted video will replace the original.
22. Disabled loading the Placeshifter login STV as the current STV, or importing it.
23. Added scroll bars for all vertical scroll areas.
24. Added temporary pop-up message when adding a music item to any playlist, to provide confirmation that the music was added. Display time is controlled by the "music/add_to_play_info_time" property, default is 1 second.
25. Photo slideshow screen saver: image placement is random.
26. Updated "TV Shows Editorials" menu to new style w/some editorial info on the button. Also modified the "TV Show Highlight" screen to use the series info image if there is no editorial image.
27. Detailed Setup: changed right-side display when "Setup Menu" option is highlighted so that the last-used section above that button wouldn't continue to have the active section highlight.
28. Overscan adjustments: added Page Up/Down/Left/Right as commands to adjust the screen using a larger increment.
29. Aspect Ratio adjustment: added Page Left/Right listeners to adjust the aspect ratio using a larger increment.
30. Photo Viewer: Changed photo rotation menu to semi-transparent style and added ability to use left/right/ff/rew as commands to rotate/flip the image.
31. Improved Play command consistency in Recordings menu and Video browser -- If a video is currently playing (not paused) & the Play command is used while highlighting that video, it will jump to the playback screen. If Play is used while a video is playing and a different video is highlighted, or the viedo is paused, it acts as the Play command to unpause playback. If no video is playing, the highlighted video is started.
32. Music browser: The Play command now adds the current music item to the currently playing music playlist, not just the Now Playing queue. Also added "Add to Current Playlist" to the pop-up music options menu.


Hope you all enjoy!

[Opus4]

A patch has been released after this was reported:

Originally Posted by flavius

My kids and I have been able to crash the system half a dozen times now.

1. Read recently that recording transport streams not as program stream is not longer supported, so I made the switch and set the propertie value to true: Touching any of the previously recorded SD shows (ts, from my HDHR) would crash the server - if playback was initiated from the MVP. EDIT: same for show in mpeg containers.

2. Now, after the switch I was trying to watch the Simpsons which were being recorded by my HDHR, one of my boys was doing the same using a client: as soon as I hit play the server crasher whereas playback through the client seems fine.

The patch that was reported to work:

Originally Posted by donkey

Try a fix http://download.sage.tv/users/qian/DShowPlayer.dll for this bug

- Andy