SageMC Feature Requests

[KJake]

Port over, or a way to tie in the Browse Media Files feature of the default STV (including Network browsing). I have a ton of Anime, but I don't want to take the time to categorize it, etc to be imported into the main Media Library and clutter things up, so just being able to browse my network and watch video files without having them be in an import folder would be nice.

[nyplayer]

Brent
I use Dynamic menus to launch game emulators.. like nes genesis etc... I need that menu to be Text. See the genisis Image attached... Under My Menu I have the Games Sub menu... then Genesis Nes etc...

This causes My Menu to change to all Text and it looks crappy :-).

See Images Attached.

[KJake]

Please scale the coverimage to a reasonable size in the playback screen. This will allow us to store higher resolution DVD covers while not looking so strange when you do something to show the top "info" bar in the playback screen.

[cjohnson]

1.) Add a "Title Only" option to the "Video View Style". Right now the only options are "Cover Only" and "Cover and Title". I typically just want to see a list of movies or shows because it's a lot faster for me to pick one vs. scrolling with images or scrolling through large pictures. Also, for tv episodes the covers aren't terribly useful. I some ways this is mostly an aesthetic issue as I can just not have cover art for the files, but I do like cover art for the detail screens and the default cover art icon doesn't look very nice.

2.) Folder indicator more like the "My TV" indicator. The folder indicator for my videos includes some cover art and then a number of items under it. I like to configure my videos with 8 rows and one column because that it is the perfect balance between readability and maxmimization of screen real estate. The problem is that when I set it to 8, the folder icon doesn't quite fit and I can't really read the number of items. I'd love to able to configure it to show just text ('More') like the My TV folders or even a simple folder icon (with no text) just to incidate that it's a folder.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by KJake

Port over, or a way to tie in the Browse Media Files feature of the default STV (including Network browsing). I have a ton of Anime, but I don't want to take the time to categorize it, etc to be imported into the main Media Library and clutter things up, so just being able to browse my network and watch video files without having them be in an import folder would be nice.

+1 on this one. I have to fall back to stock STV whenever I need this ability.

[mickp]

Originally Posted by KJake

Port over, or a way to tie in the Browse Media Files feature of the default STV (including Network browsing). I have a ton of Anime, but I don't want to take the time to categorize it, etc to be imported into the main Media Library and clutter things up, so just being able to browse my network and watch video files without having them be in an import folder would be nice.

Interesting. I'll have to go take a look at this feature in the default stv sometime. It's a pain to have to run the import media each time a torrent arrives and being able to browse unc paths would alleviate this nicely. +1 from me.

In the meantime you could create a share 1 level up from where your anime collection is (or move your anime collection 1 dir level down) and add this to your imports so that you end up with a separate sub item in your video list.**

** Assumes that you are using the file system view.

Mick.

[gveres]

I just spent a bit of time exploring the dynamic menu capability of the main menu. Its very nice. But at the end of the day, the default main menu was fine for me, what I really want (and end up changing the xml file to achieve) is to change the My TV menu items.

It would be great if the left side menu could be modified in much the same way as the main menu. For instance I have my "my tv" menu items read:

Recorded TV
Schedule
Search
Live TV
Guide
Movies

I had having LiveTV first since I never use LiveTV (ever) and I always use Recorded TV.

If these top level menus for the various media types were dyanmic menus that would be great.

Greg

[deanm]

Hi all,

Not sure if this has been brought up before but here goes.

I would like a way to password protect Customize Screen Layout the same way you can with Dynamic Menus. So for example if I password protect Dynamic Menus and press the options I’m presented with the password prompt. The way this is set up now is if I press options I’m presented with “Choose Options Menu” then if I select “Main Menu Options“ I’m then prompted for a password but not if I select “Customize Screen Layout”.

One idea is to move Customize Screen Menu within the Dynamic Menus setup.

Another idea I would like to see is the ability to download and install plug-ins, themes and updates, etc via the remote control without login onto the Sage Server. Think this is more of a change in the Sage Core but would still like to see something like this.

Dean,

[opusinteractive]

Howdy-

I see that web browsing support is already on the list. However, to really make such functionality useful, it would be great to be able to choose the browser engine to use (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Etc.). I found a Java util that makes this possible here.

One excellent use for this would be to get seamless integration with the ZeeVee Viewer plugin for Firefox.

And I'm eager to donate to someone to help with this and all future development of SageMC. Is this possible yet?

[wayner]

One other thing that would be nice is to make SageMC more mouse friendly - it is much less so than the default UI and some things are rather hidden - like clicking in the top left corner to go Back. There doesn't seem to be a way to go from fullscreen to windowed mode with a mouse in SageMC - there is the keyboard shortcut of Ctr+Shft+F but who remembers that?

Some may say that SageMC was designed for a remote but remember that some of us will use Placeshifter on a laptop where we will not always have a mouse and it is nice to use the same UI as you use on your main PC/exteneder.

[flashbacck]

There are numerous settings in SageMC where you're suppose to enter a number only value, however, when you select it to change the value, a phone number pad type menu pops up that will cycle through letters before arriving at the number. Those number only fields all should be changed to use number pads that don't cycle through letters.

[popechild]

Originally Posted by KJake

Port over, or a way to tie in the Browse Media Files feature of the default STV (including Network browsing). I have a ton of Anime, but I don't want to take the time to categorize it, etc to be imported into the main Media Library and clutter things up, so just being able to browse my network and watch video files without having them be in an import folder would be nice.

You can bring up the options menu and browse directly to any file you want that way. I'm not sure how the default STV works, so maybe it's different, but I do a lot of video work where I'm constantly moving new files onto the machine that I want to playback, and instead of re-scanning the import directories each time, I just pull up the options menu within the videos menu and select the "Play other file" option, which allows you to browse for any file you want.

[sjrx0213]

Maybe this is functional in SageMC and I'm missing how to get it working, but there was a plug-in/add-on for the stock STV that displayed icons indicating whether a show had or had not been Comskipped.

This was huge for the WAF.

--Steve

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by sjrx0213

Maybe this is functional in SageMC and I'm missing how to get it working, but there was a plug-in/add-on for the stock STV that displayed icons indicating whether a show had or had not been Comskipped.

This was huge for the WAF.

--Steve

If you hit the info button in the Program Info screen, you will cycle through various info styles at the bottom of the screen. One of them has the time bar showing the comskip markers.

Aloha,
Mike

[chrisc983]

I know this has been requested before but from the thread that it was discussed on was just a workaround. I would like the ability for genre view to deal with multi-disc dvds like the file view does. If not automatically is there any way to add subfolders in genre view to the different genre categories and I could assign the file manually?

After a long time user of using the standard Sage TV and switching over to SageMC one of my favorite things was the looks of SageMC and the ability for it to organize the movies into the genres automatically and would love to keep using that view rather than the old file view.

[sjrx0213]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

If you hit the info button in the Program Info screen, you will cycle through various info styles at the bottom of the screen. One of them has the time bar showing the comskip markers.

Aloha,
Mike

Thanks, Mike. Didn't know that. I did a little remote re-mapping and showed the better half.

--Steve

[KJake]

Originally Posted by popechild

You can bring up the options menu and browse directly to any file you want that way. I'm not sure how the default STV works, so maybe it's different, but I do a lot of video work where I'm constantly moving new files onto the machine that I want to playback, and instead of re-scanning the import directories each time, I just pull up the options menu within the videos menu and select the "Play other file" option, which allows you to browse for any file you want.

Most of the browse dialogs that I have seen in SageMC don't have a network workgroup browsing builtin like the default STV has. If you want to, you can type in the share manually, but that isn't real fun. I asked for this to be fixed a few posts up.

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by chrisc983

I know this has been requested before but from the thread that it was discussed on was just a workaround. I would like the ability for genre view to deal with multi-disc dvds like the file view does. If not automatically is there any way to add subfolders in genre view to the different genre categories and I could assign the file manually?

After a long time user of using the standard Sage TV and switching over to SageMC one of my favorite things was the looks of SageMC and the ability for it to organize the movies into the genres automatically and would love to keep using that view rather than the old file view.

Ditto to this. We have lots of DVD boxed sets (mostly TV shows) and about the only way to navigate through them is to keep them in folders and use file system view. However, we miss out on all the other nice organization views.

[autoboy]

I would like to add "Intelligent Sorting" to the feature request list. I really like the way the default SageTV UI sorts my shows by what is most relevant to me. It will also differentiate b/w manual recordings, Intelligent Recordings, and Favorites using different boarders allowing me to instantly know what I am looking at. For people that use Intelligent Recording, this is pretty important to sort the good from the bad.

From our discussion on MissingRemote.com

I think SageTV's stock UI does one thing so right it has kept me from using SageMC because I haven't figured out how to duplicate it.

The SageTV recordings menu organizes my media by what is most relevant to me. The most relevant to me are often manual recordings. I don't manually record something often, and they are not automatically deleted so it presents them first. The next recordings are the newest automatic (favorites) recordings. The further down I go the older the recordings are. I get the newest, most relevant recordings first. If I get through all my favorites and I still can't find something I want to watch, it then presents me with the Intelligent Recordings (things it thinks I want to watch).

This satisfies my "newest media" first craving, because as it gets older it is more likely I've seen them before and passed them over already.

This one menu keeps me from using SageMC because my recorded media is most important to me and I don't like the way SageMC presents media to me. It doesn't differentiate between favorites, manual recordings, and Inteligent Recordings. It just presents newest media first. Since most new media is the Intelligent Recordings,(which is not very intelligent) then I am stuck without a good way to browse my media. I sometimes switch to SageMC for some things but 99% of the time I am in the stock UI.

I miss out on a lot of shows that I don't know I would like so Intelligent Recordings is useful to me. I just wish it didn't have the intelligence of a rock. It just seems to record randomly. I had 10 recordings of the same stupid infomercial. Setting it to don't like only reduced that to 3. Come on! Are you serious! I've never even watched an infomercial. I really want someone to find a good way for me to find new shows to record.

[rsagetv99]

How about adding more sorting/filtering options in the Recorded TV screen, with the ability to choose a default setting or, even better, make the last setting stick.

I think that the malore 3 part sorting works great in the default STV.

You can choose how shows are grouped, sorted, as well as adding additional filters. Even better, you can save these views and name them so you can switch to them later.

I had several views configured, but the possibilities are endless.

Here are some examples of the views I had setup.
A view called TV by Show grouped by title, sorted by Episode number, and filtering out Movies and Archived.

A view called TV by Favorite, that I grouped by favorite, sorted by Episode number, and filtered out Movies and Archived.

A view called HD grouped by title, sorted by Episode number and filtered out SD recordings. I used this to identify what I could watch/delete when I was running out of space.

A view called Movies by Genre, that I grouped by Genre, Sorted by Title, and filtered to the "Movie" category.

A view called Movies by Rating, that I grouped by star Rating, Sorted by Title and filtered to the "Movie" category.