Beta .11 feedback

[drbenson]

This is all offered to the Sage staff in the spirit of beta feedback. The first 2.0 beta was unusable for me, so the following is based on a couple of hours with the latest .11. It's entirely possible that some of this is my ignorance, and not the beta's design- in which case please straighten me out. I also realize that some of this is duplication of other posts; I decided to give my narrative impressions rather than searching out individual pieces to 'ditto' on the board.

I'm not all that excited about your turn toward becoming an all-in-one media player; I'd rather you do the Tivo thing superbly than waste resources on the rest. I have great programs for all the other stuff. If you wanted to provide a button that brought up Theater Tek or Media Center 10 when clicked, then came back to Sage when the program was closed, that might be fun.

Give me a way to turn off the blasted Preview! When I'm looking for a program to view, the last thing I want is for Sage to start recording and playing whatever happens to be on the currently tuned channel. I also don't want to be joining a program five minutes in because part of it has played in the preview window. This was not a bright idea. You could provide a button for people who want a preview, or a Setup option to use it or not.

Separating recordings and live TV as the beta has done is not a great idea. The integrated Guide and recordings scroll was fine; I would simply like to have had buttons to jump quickly to the recordings, the record schedule, or live guide (rather than having to scroll sequentially). Seeing the whole scope of what's available to view on one screen was a plus; just needed better navigation.

I like having all the recordings of a particular program come up when one is clicked in Recordings. Good move. Now how about letting me order and reorder recordings by show title, by date, or by other criteria. Right now they seem to be displayed in no discernible order, thus requiring extensive scrolling. Also need some break or indication when one has scrolled past the end.

On my system, the (Airboard) arrow keys seem to scroll a page at a time- I'd really like to arrow one show at a time, and use PgUp / Dn to go pages.

There seems to be no way to exit from the Live TV guide short of putting Sage to sleep and starting over. On other screens the left arrow works, but it's used for scrolling in the Guide.

Similarly, when watching a prerecorded program, there appears to be no way to exit the screen other than putting Sage to sleep and starting over. Do you guys have something against the Escape key?

Why have the guide able to scroll back to dates for which no information is available? It should just stop scrolling back at the current time and date; if someone wants to see still existing program info further back, there could be an override key (eg alt-left arrow) to do that. What possible reason could there be to scroll farther back than the Guide keeps info?

Give me a way to delete a program in the Recordings guide. When I hit delete on a highlighted program, give me a delete confirmation box, but let me do it. And when I do, delete it- from the guide and from my disk. If I feel I need an 'oops' function, that's what the Recycle Bin is for.

[falchulk]

Just a FYI that may make the preview more tolerable, the play, stop, ff and rw keys all work on it. I found that I like to just stop it.

[phenixdragon]

Give it some time. V2 will be customizable when it is released, so if you don’t like certain aspects, such as being a media center, then change it to how you like it.

Also some suggestions you have in here will be added. Remember, this is beta and some things don’t work yet and they know about it.

I personally love how .11 is coming out. I even now plan on running Sage for music playback because the latest version is so pretty and features are being added.

[justme]

I agree with phenixgragon, just give it some time. Some ideas I like some I don't(different people) but at least you are participating.

if someone wants to see still existing program info further back, there could be an override key (eg alt-left arrow) to do that

I personally like to scroll back into old data, so i'd prefer this be an option in the properties if implemented. As for why sometimes I'm watching real TV and catch the last part of a show I like, but don't catch the name. If the data is there I can go back and find it. I then have the info I need to find out if/when it's on again or just mark it a favorite. This does two things it's makes sure it will be recorded when it plays agian and it teaches Sage Intelligent Recording feature. It's like a TV for idiots. I did this alot in 1.4.10 but haven't tried it in 2 yet as I'm still playing with alot of other things.

This was my main reason I posting. I guess I just panicked at the thought of having to do anything different to go back. Rereading this post it seems like such a nonissue. Oh well, I guess I'm getting spoiled.

[glbrown]

drbenson, a lot of your observations are button related. I too was dismayed at the seeming inability to simply 'escape' or 'return' to the guide. The good list members told me about the 'go' button on a hauppauge remote that turns out to be the TV mapping in properties. I mapped that button on my remote and what a difference it made in general navigation.

Now falchulk gratefully gives me another important key, the nav buttons work in the preview mode. Sometimes I like the preview and sometimes I don't. Now I have a bit of a choice. Thanks a bunch falchulk.

I would like to see a comprehensive guide to the properties file, especially the remote button mappings. I'll bet there are some more jewels buried in there.

[fventura]

>I'm not all that excited about your turn toward becoming an all-in-one media >player; I'd rather you do the Tivo thing superbly than waste resources on the >rest

I have to say you echo my thoughts exactly. But I am sure others would disagree. I like to use mhHTPC as the front end to choose best of breed media players. The closer Sage gets to the ease of use of my DirecTivo the more likely my wife is to stop using it Having said that though this version is darn close.

[pawn]

drbenson:

I think this is a good post. I agree with you on the issue with keeping recorded content in the same guide as Live TV.

However, some of the other suggestions, such as the Live preview window, are very subjective, and are the result of many customers asking for them. I consider that feature alone worth moving to 2.0. I like to peruse the guide a lot, and it's nice having something to watch while doing so.

And the comment about Sage being a total media centre, I would have agreed a few months ago, now I like it a lot, mostly for streaming audio to client machines. I'm guessing they do focus 90% of there energy on the PVR functions though.

I guess the point is, SageTV 2.0 wil include the Studio, which will allow people to customize it. I'm guessing there will be other users with your taste, and there will be some who go about creating your style of SageTV instance.

[salsbst]

I, too, hope music and DVD aren't occupying precious development time!

[reverse]

I feel the PVR aspect is important, however I feel to make the product complete and appeal to the masses the other features are just as important.

[trevorst]

I am in total agreement with drbenson I don't like the direction Sage is taking either. That is OK there are many that do. What the Beta release did was to make me look at Snapstream again. After 5 days of running Snapstream I must say I have been impressed. It has been 100% stable and the PQ every bit as good as Sage.

My wife loves the UI (a bit too much Glitz for me), but very useable with a mouse, keyboard or remote. The ability to set a recording from work is great and has worked 100% of the time, even when I set a recording 10 mins before it was supposed to start. It deletes when you tell it too, I even used it to clean up the 100,s of things Sage left on my system.

I know it does not have multi-tuner support but that is not critical to me. Neither does it have a true client yet, but I have found a good workaround for that.

Well yesterday I downloaded the new Sage Beta and loaded it. After 10 mins I gave up and registered my trial copy of Snapstream. I will still watch the progression of Sage but for now Snapstream has become my production system.

I wish Sage all the best and hope 2.0 is a success for them.

[falchulk]

glbrown, I mistyped. I meant pause. Stop does not appear to o anythig

[White94Cobra]

the last thing I want is for Sage to start recording and playing whatever happens to be on the currently tuned channel.

That's what a true PVR should do. Tivo does this as well. The major difference is you don't see all of the partial recordings when you channel surf on the Tivo.

I'd love it if Sage would always buffer the last 30 (configurable) minutes of whatever channel a tuner happens to be on. I like turning on the TV/Tivo and seeing something interesting and being able to rewind back to the beginning.

[nielm]

A few useful keys for B11 (or mappings for a remote control):

Home: Always goes to home screen (mapped to 'Stop' for me)

Back: Go to previous screen (whatever it was) (by default not mapped to anything on keyboard; I assigned it to backspace)

TV (ctrl-V): Go to full screen TV for whatever is (or was) playing in preview window.

[stanger89]

Originally posted by drbenson

I'm not all that excited about your turn toward becoming an all-in-one media player; I'd rather you do the Tivo thing superbly than waste resources on the rest. I have great programs for all the other stuff. If you wanted to provide a button that brought up Theater Tek or Media Center 10 when clicked, then came back to Sage when the program was closed, that might be fun.

Personally I really like this. My ultimate goal is to have all my media (TV/DVDs/Music) available via one unified UI, and Sage is getting really close to this. The core PVR functionality has been in place almost since I started using SageTV, and that's always been a halmark of Sage, I doubt they'll loose site of that fact. Look at the competition though, MCE, myHTPC, MythTV, Snapstream, even Tivo (sort of, in the form new DVD recorders) either have full up frontend functionality or are working on it. For a lot of people PVR on the PC is a way of integrating their whole media experience in to one box that does everything, and does it at least as good if not better.

Give me a way to turn off the blasted Preview! When I'm looking for a program to view, the last thing I want is for Sage to start recording and playing whatever happens to be on the currently tuned channel. I also don't want to be joining a program five minutes in because part of it has played in the preview window. This was not a bright idea. You could provide a button for people who want a preview, or a Setup option to use it or not.

I actually think the preview windows is a great idea, however it's opperation needs to be changed to make in really good/useful. I don't like how it automatically starts itself, and I'd like to be able to jump directly to playing a program, .11 is better (enter twice) but being able to press play for example would be better.

On my system, the (Airboard) arrow keys seem to scroll a page at a time- I'd really like to arrow one show at a time, and use PgUp / Dn to go pages.

You can always re-map them in Detailed Setup -> Commands, if you want keys to do something else.

There seems to be no way to exit from the Live TV guide short of putting Sage to sleep and starting over. On other screens the left arrow works, but it's used for scrolling in the Guide.

Similarly, when watching a prerecorded program, there appears to be no way to exit the screen other than putting Sage to sleep and starting over. Do you guys have something against the Escape key?

Home (I think) takes you back to the main menu from anywhere. If not check the mappings.

As always YMMV.

[mattsm]

I like the all in one DVD/TV/Video/Music setup also. Please don't even think about getting rid of it

Matthew

[theMixxMaster]

Same here, I would much rather use a single app as a frontend, and PVR, than having to use something like myHTPC(which is not exactly easy to set everything up, and get things working smoothly), and Sage(which doesn't have any command line operations).

Ideally, it would be great to have the best of both worlds, with all the functionality and room for customizations. Sage seems to be going in this direction, and I can't wait to see them integrate the front end aspects, with all the ooohs, ahhhs, bells and whistles!

[pawn]

This thread is becoming a raison d'etre for Sage Studio.

There's no way to make everyone happy, so give everyone the tools to make themselves happy.

[justme]

so give everyone the tools to make themselves happy.

After Sage2 main UI/core is stabilized, I'm sure we'll see the Studio soon after. Could you imagine trying to support a beta that is constantly being altered by the user base?

[Watter]

drbenson's points:

1. Moving to an all in one media center
I agree completely. I'd much rather all of the effort were put toward the PVR functionality even if the other stuff is easy and only takes 10% of your time, I'd still rather that 10% of your time were put into the PVR side.

2. The preview
Again, I agree completely I'd rather that space were used for additional information about the show or perhaps just a larger font.

3. Seperating recordings from live TV guide
Wow. I couldn't "disagree" with your more on this one. I've always hated thwe way Sage grouped those two things together. Live TV and recordings are two completely different things that need to be handled in different ways with different options and methods of organization.

-Watter

[phenixdragon]

I think everyone needs to remember that SageTV is not just for DVR, but for the whole HTPC. Even sage.tv main page will remind you that this is Media Center software.