SageTV questions from a hopefully ex-Tivoer

[tchapin]

Hi there. I've been a TiVo user for many years, but am getting tired of the slowness of the interface & the increasing # of ads. Plus, the integration w/ the rest of my media is less than stellar.

I'd also like to have the same media interface at each of my displays.

I had a post a few weeks ago asking some questions about Sage and so I'm giving it a try. I purchased a MVP & PVR150 card and hooked everything up. Technically, things are working fine.

I tried the default interface and the MC16x9 interface.

I'm wondering if anyone has thoughts on these questions.

general questions
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- It seems like it takes a lot of cursor movements and key presses to get things done. Are there any interfaces that are simpler?
- I would like to get just a list interface for all of my non-TV media. I don't care about thumbnails or album art. MC16x9 lets me have this for audio, but seemingly not for video and photos. The default does not seem to be able to do this at all.
- Does Sage read the ID3 tags from MP3 files?
- The YouTube integration doesn't seem to work.
- How difficult is it for someone to create or modify an interface? I am familiar with general programming concepts, but haven't done any real programming in perhaps 10 years.

MC16X9 specific questions
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- In MC16X9, is there a way to enable the channel buttons to act in a "page up / page down" capacity?
- In MC16X9 is there a way to search the media list without using the "search" command? i.e. press 3 for "d", 33 for "e", etc."? In not, then is there a way to have the search command just search through how the current list is filtered? If I'm viewing only artist names, I probably don't want to search by album or song title.


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I'm loving ComSkip; that's sweet. I love the fact that I can create queues and playlists for my media. I find searching for programs to record more difficult than it should be. The recording quality (analog cable, SD) is great. I'm technically quite happy with Sage so far. I did try GBPVR as a way to make sure my hardware is working correctly, and I like Sage better, although I may try it again and do some customization.

Also, some command that my remote is sending out is putting my Tivo to sleep. Has anyone had that experience before?

Thanks.

Todd

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by tchapin

- How difficult is it for someone to create or modify an interface? I am familiar with general programming concepts, but haven't done any real programming in perhaps 10 years.

Making small mods to an existing UI is not hard, once you get the hang of the Studio programming model. I suggest working through the Studio tutorial exercises to learn the basic concepts.

Building a complete new UI from scratch, or doing a major redesign of an existing UI, is not that much more difficult (from a coding complexity point of view) but it is time-consuming, just because there's so much ground to cover. The standard UI is over 40,000 lines of widget code, and even a stripped-down custom UI without all the configuration screens can be well over 10,000 lines.

There is section of the forum specifically for UI development and Studio coding questions, if you get that far.

[pjwerdna]

Originally Posted by tchapin

- Does Sage read the ID3 tags from MP3 files?

It read all the ID tags in my Mp3's, and I know some of them are ID3.

- The YouTube integration doesn't seem to work.

Yes it does, you need an updated STV from the sticky on the "SageTV Software" forum though.

- How difficult is it for someone to create or modify an interface?

The UI is very easy to change (via CTRL+SHIFT+F12), most of it is simply what to display where.

In MC16X9, is there a way to enable the channel buttons to act in a "page up / page down" capacity?

Yes. Map the Channel up and down keys to "Channel Up/Page Up" and "Channel Down/Page/Down" via "Detailed Setup" -> "Commands" -> "link infrared/keystroke to sagetv command"

[tchapin]

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the pointers. I've read a lot of the other subforums here, but not that one. I'll stop by...

Hi pjwerdna,

I guess I have some cleaning up of my ID3 tags to do then!

I'll look for the YouTube update.

Does these instructions also work with a MVP? I'm running my server headless and plan to have MVPs scattered around the house. I'll give it a try though.
"Yes. Map the Channel up and down keys to "Channel Up/Page Up" and "Channel Down/Page/Down" via "Detailed Setup" -> "Commands" -> "link infrared/keystroke to sagetv command""

I figured out the MC16X9 dynamic menu system and organized things a little more to my taste. Tough to do on an MVP! That phone style typing is tedious.

How hard would it be to replace the phone style typing with a layout of the alphabet?

I really want my wife to like Sage, as it'll allow me to vastly simplify the amount of software on my server, stop paying fees to TiVo, and integrate my media in one place.

Thanks.

Todd

[briands]

Originally Posted by tchapin

Tough to do on an MVP! That phone style typing is tedious.

Easiest way is to configure your menu on a regular sage installation and then when you are happy with it copy the files over to the corresponding MPV folder on the server.

[pjwerdna]

Originally Posted by tchapin

How hard would it be to replace the phone style typing with a layout of the alphabet?

Easy! Just press the pause key on the remote. You can change the default as well, it's under the Visual section of the SageMC options. It's called "Numeric text Entry" (about 4 pages down)

[tchapin]

Originally Posted by pjwerdna

Easy! Just press the pause key on the remote. You can change the default as well, it's under the Visual section of the SageMC options. It's called "Numeric text Entry" (about 4 pages down)

Sweet! Thanks a billion.

It's nice that the software is so tweakable, but sometimes it's difficult to understand and/or find the option you want.

Also, I found out, in terms of the page up / down thing, that my remote had identical codes for up / down and channel up / channel down. I've got a Harmony, which in general, I really like.

In terms of the Sage software on my server vs the MVP (both running the same STV), I find if I make a change in one of the interfaces, then close and reopen the other, that the changes are reflected there.

Does anyone know if it's possible to run different STVs on different MVPs? I have one 13" TV in the house that I think might need larger fonts than the rest.

Thanks again.

Todd

Todd

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by tchapin

Does anyone know if it's possible to run different STVs on different MVPs?

Yes, each MVP (or other client) can use separate STVs. But, whether certain settings affect just one client or multiple clients may depend on how the STV saves those settings. Since you said you are using SageMC, give more details about what you are trying to change & maybe someone else can comment on that.

- Andy

[tchapin]

Interesting. I was thinking that the MVP that I'll be hooking up to my 13" TV might need to run an interface w/ larger fonts.

I'll play around with the interface editor and see what I can do.

Thanks.

Todd