Sage becoming XBMC?

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by LehighBri

Totally understand, but a warmer user experience is never a bad thing. Heck even XBMC's default skin is nothing special but turning on other skins like Mediastorm really take the user experience to new levels. And I'm not saying I'd like a slower/less stable experience to make things look pretty, I'm really saying that user experience should be considered much more than it has in the past to take Sage to the next level. Whether it's implementing a new set of APIs (ala MCML in Vista MCE), expanding existing APIs (more UI support in Core sage) or including more built-in support for items which have been historically a slew of separate plugins (e.g. auto album lookup), anything to take the experience to the next level.

Heck, why not just make Sage a command prompt application I know this is an age old argument that neither side will ever win, but all I wanted to do was highlight some of the "oh wow" features in XBMC that perhaps Sage may be interested in taking a look at (not sure what the typical profile of a Lifehacker pollster is, but it's interesting to see the Lifehacker poll in the first post only had 3% votes for SageTV and 68% votes for XBMC/Boxee).

Look at the "Performance Options" in XP/Vista. If you "Adjust for best appearance" it turns on the bells and whistles at the expense of performance and in some cases you'll need better HW to even use some of it. However, if you "Adjust for best performance" the OS still does it's job, it just doesn't look as "pretty."

Think of how much cheaper, more stable and less of a resource hog XP/Vista would be without the effects and eye candy? Frankly, fancy screen savers and fading windows that flip, spin or are skinned do nothing for me but slow it down.

I have nothing against those that want "pretty" but I'd rather pay less for the OS (or SageTV in the case of this thread) and leave the pretty to 3rd parties. Sure you can actually BUY fancy screen savers but the "blank" screen saver does what it's supposed to do for free and and while using less resources. Rounded corners on windows doesn't make the windows better than square cornered windows in any way, imo.

If Sage wants to bundle SageMC with SageTV and even make it an option at install time that's fine by me but I'd rather they NOT spend time and money on developing eye candy that's going to run up the cost for everyone, including those of us that don't care so much about "pretty." I'd rather they work on other features and performance issues. I'd much rather see bluray support in Sage than skins and glass effects.

As always, YMMV...

[bialio]

The problem with the UI, from a marketing perspective, is that I'd guess that 3 out of 5 people that are looking into HTPC setups don't even consider Sage because of the default UI. Love it or hate it, Sage is losing potential customers.

We all know that functionally Sage can't be beat. And there really aren't any unhappy Sage users - either the "I dont care how fancy it looks" variety that use the Stock STV or the "I want it to look fancy" variety in the SageMC camp.

Right now Sage is adding customers. Give it a new UI that doesn't turn potentials away, and I think Sage would be multiplying the customer base.

And expanding the customer base is something which we all want to happen so that the $1000s of dollars we have sunc into our Sage TV setup wasn't in vain.

btl.

[S_M_E]

I'd be less happy if I had to pay double because people that are easily distracted by shiny toys and icons that move when selected, they could lose customers if they had to raise prices too. When the eye candy gets out of control the 200 dollar extender needs an 8 core CPU and quad GPUs just to display the "pretty," and then costs 800 dollars, and even more customers go away.

If Sage people *want* pretty they can have "3rd party pretty" but I shouldn't have to pay for it if I don't want it. The current model of a core app with a functional default UI and 3rd party plugins makes more sense, imo. If you want pretty you can have it, if I don't want it then I don't have to pay for it (or shouldn't have to) unless Sage caves in to the eye candy crowd. The option for eye candy is already there, no need to reinvent the wheel at the cost of increasing prices for features that not everyone wants. I'd bet most Sage users are perfectly happy with the stock UI. Internet polls mean nothing in the real world, sales numbers do.

[Brent]

I really don't understand the naysayers here. What makes you think improving the UI from the way it has been for so many years means any of these things:

• more cost
• slower
• fewer new features or stability and just flashy stuff

cmon guys, we're not talking about throwing out the tools to get a fancier toolbox here. We're talking about cleaning up the toolbox, putting on some nicer looking paint and getting rid of some of the rust. It doesn't have to be totally drastic, just something that will help SageTV compete with the competition which is:

• Media Center
• BeyondTV
• Freeware
• Apple (I think we'll see some more serious competition from them in 2009)

I don't see BTV as much of a competitor any more. Media Center is tough competition because many already have it on their PCs and don't realize they could have better just by paying a little more. Freeware is tough competition because... well it's free and easier to get big publicity from the Lifehackers and Gizmodos of the world. Nobody here is calling for sacrificing function for looks. Just adding some improvements to the looks is the direction we're looking for.

Grow the community, bring in new users and probably new developers to continue the improvements. To do that you need quality functionality (already have that pretty much) and you need to grab the attention of the first-time installation. Lose them in the first 30 minutes and its all for nothing. Lets not get caught in the "don't change anything" trap or you'll end up like the five BeyondTV users still saying "don't change the UI" and not understanding why nobody is left to talk to on the forums and nobody at SS cares to update the UI.

Whew, off of that silly soapbox. XBMC, Meedio, Media Portal, VMC and even BeyondTV all have worthwhile things that could be added to SageTV. We shouldn't discount them to avoid change. Just having the discussion makes sense in my opinion - and if some of the good ideas are incorporated into SageTV then you have a better product and bigger community in the end. Thats good for all of us.

As mentioned in some of the above posts, the following should be priorities for future versions of SageTV (presumably SageTV 7.0) imo:

• Improved UI
• Easier To Install & Use - Usability
• Maintain the Power & Flexibility (while keeping with the above points)
• New Features (Blu Ray, Online Content, Flash Video, etc)

Oh, and yeah I like shiny toys, but only when they work well. So of course I don't want shiny at the expense of something that works and works well. But I do think you can have both, or at least a very good compromise.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by Brent

What makes you think improving the UI from the way it has been for so many years means any of these things:

• more cost
• slower
• fewer new features or stability and just flashy stuff

cmon guys, we're not talking about throwing out the tools to get a fancier toolbox here. We're talking about cleaning up the toolbox, putting on some nicer looking paint and getting rid of some of the rust...

You think UI development is cheap and not time consuming? How many development hours do you think it would take to make a new UI? How many hours is in SageMC already? How much time did it take to write your 3 themes? Of course more eye candy is going to take from performance as XP/Vista themes and effects prove. Time and development resources are limited and has to be paid for, if the Sage team does it. They're not all volunteers like those that write 3rd party plugins. If they spend 100 hours working on a new UI, that's 100 hours they could have spent on improving picture quality or format support or bug fixes.

There's *nothing* wrong with the stock UI. Are you willing to pay 40.00 more for eye candy or do you expect the development to be free? If you're willing to pay more for "pretty" then donate to SageMC or start your own UI and charge users that want it instead of expecting everyone to pay for "pretty" that we're not interested in.

What's wrong with a 3rd party UI?

EDIT:
What's wrong with the default UI for that matter?

Also, don't get into the mindset that forum members are all of the sage community/customer base. For every 10 forum users there's probably 1000 (or many more) Sage users that don't visit the forums and I'd still say that most are fine with the stock UI.

[opusinteractive]

Glad to see this is being addressed in the forum - and that there's obviously many people who share these observations and feelings. I had actually been thinking about sending an email to Jeff to share some thoughts on the matter.

As an owner of a marketing communications agency for 14 years, I have some insight into what drives consumer decisions. I feel strongly with others' comments in this thread that SageTV is at - or nearing a major tipping point.

As expected for some time, the convergence of TV and the Internet is here today. Now, practically anyone with a computer can watch a huge variety of quality content in HD via a web browser from sites like Hulu, Netflix, CBS, ESPN, and on and on. This means the market for media integration solutions is rapidly expanding to "non-techies".

There's many choices for STB's to bring this content to the big screen TV. There's also no shortage of choices for open source and commercial software solutions.

I suspect/assume that as the market expands, many of these new prospects will be heavy social media/social network users. Enter newcomer Boxee. Union Square Ventures has some pretty smart folks who decide where to put their venture fund dollars for maximum returns. In a dismal and uncertain economy, the venture folks like to play safe. In mid-November, they decided that putting $4,000,000 into Boxee was safe. I'm confident that Jeff at SageTV, LLC is paying attention to things like this because that's his job.

All the things mentioned in this thread are important. They can be summarized as:

• Attractive and user-friendly UI
• Features that at least match the competition

However, the key is to differentiate (in the eyes of the consumer) from the competition. Some of the most powerful ways to differentiate are accomplished through branding and customer contact/touch points. The stuff above falls into place when this component is dialed in to perfection.

Knowing what today's and tomorrow's consumers would like and will want is extremely important. Market research goes a long ways here.

So, that's my two cents. I have tons of feature ideas that I'll put out here soon.

And, for the record, I'm not trying to pitch anything in this post.
I exchanged my shares the marketing agency in May for 100% of the managed services/data center division of the company.

Hopefully, this thread will get really long and lots of noise and ideas will come from it.

Cheers,
Mark

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by opusinteractive

All the things mentioned in this thread are important. They can be summarized as:

• Attractive and user-friendly UI
• Features that at least match the competition

The first item in your list is subjective. I'd say the default UI is, indeed, attractive and user-friendly.

The second item has nothing to do with the UI, it's about features and I'd much rather they spent time and money working on features and bug fixes than eye candy, which is my point. The time they spend on eye candy could be used for more important things, especially since there are already other options for the user interface. I didn't switch to Sage from beyondtv back in 03 or 04 because of the eye candy, it was about quality and features. In the end, it doesn't matter how it looks if it doesn't perform.

[Dreameriz]

Sagetv
ok is one of the best out there. mabye there is some lack on gui to some of you but really its not all about the gui to me it the features of being able to use everthing off one server to multi rooms this is a feature that out stands the rest and xbmc does not support the biggest thing that i love about sagetv uh the TV part you are a idiot that if you use sagetv for recording and then import it to xbmc why dont you support more sagetv if you got great ideas then help build them instead jumping board on a great product.

To say that I will not be leaving sagetv as long as it lives it might be a little slow on something but they do things stable and the best selling point is the HD200 that they have worked on this is there first step i think because they are smart this will lead to more standerd use for common people out of the box working and still being able to teak i think it was smart of them to get the hardware part out becuase the only true compater is tivo but there not even one sagetv is on another level

[jaminben]

I totally agree that Sage needs to update the UI.

Do you think Apple's products would be so popular if it wasn't for the "Bling Bling" factor?

If it wasn't for SageMC I wouldn't be using Sage. The default UI is a disgrace IMO, yes it all works and works very well but to look at Urgh, this is 2008/9 not 1984.

As you properly already know I've been taking my own time to try and improve SageMC's UI and having NO knowledge or formal training in programming its a bit of a struggle but has still only taken a few weeks to complete. If a Sage dev was to have a go then I doubt it would take more than a few days to change and improve. So spending money on an updated UI isn't going to cost them that much.

Regards

Ben

[stuckless]

As a default STV user and a long time user of XBMC, I'll weigh in When I first tried SageTV, I actually thought the UI was quite simple, and fast. I did miss features of XBMC (video stacking and scrapers mainly), and I did miss the slick UI, but mostly I missed those features. Now that I've had the HD extender for about 8 months, I haven't even turned on the Xbox. I recently had to use XBMC again and I must admit, I'm always impressed with their UI, BUT, they only have a small fraction of features that SageTV has. If SageTV 7 came out and it was a direct rip-off of XBMC but they had to exclude features in order for that to happen, then I'd happily stay with version 6.

Do you think Apple's products would be so popular if it wasn't for the "Bling Bling" factor?

That's sort of the same flawed logic that MS thought about with Vista. I think the market proved that statement wrong. Bling is nice... but Bling for the sake of bling is not good, especially when you start to prefer bling over performance. I can boot up apple OS on my quad core in less than 30 seconds.... Linux is about 30-40 seconds.... Vista is over 3 minutes... All on the same machine. Apple is sucessful because they can do bling without sacraficing performance, but if you look at the AppleTV, you'll see there is NO bling there. The main menu is simply a rectangular box with items. Even Apple realizes, that ultimately, people would not buy an AppleTV if it ONLY had bling without performance.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by stuckless

As a default STV user and a long time user of XBMC, I'll weigh in When I first tried SageTV, I actually thought the UI was quite simple, and fast. I did miss features of XBMC (video stacking and scrapers mainly), and I did miss the slick UI, but mostly I missed those features. Now that I've had the HD extender for about 8 months, I haven't even turned on the Xbox. I recently had to use XBMC again and I must admit, I'm always impressed with their UI, BUT, they only have a small fraction of features that SageTV has. If SageTV 7 came out and it was a direct rip-off of XBMC but they had to exclude features in order for that to happen, then I'd happily stay with version 6.


That's sort of the same flawed logic that MS thought about with Vista. I think the market proved that statement wrong. Bling is nice... but Bling for the sake of bling is not good, especially when you start to prefer bling over performance. I can boot up apple OS on my quad core in less than 30 seconds.... Linux is about 30-40 seconds.... Vista is over 3 minutes... All on the same machine. Apple is sucessful because they can do bling without sacraficing performance, but if you look at the AppleTV, you'll see there is NO bling there. The main menu is simply a rectangular box with items. Even Apple realizes, that ultimately, people would not buy an AppleTV if it ONLY had bling without performance.

I wasn't referring to AppleTV but more the iphone and ipod. I do see your point but is their any reason why Sage can't have both? A Bling UI and performance with all the features?

I don't believe they want to and would rather rely on the community to provide the nice UI and Bling for free. Not a bad business plan I suppose.

[pjpjpjpj]

For arguments' sake:

Question 1: If Sage 7.0 came out tomorrow, and (finally!!) fully integrated streaming online content, including netflix, hulu, all network websites (CBS, ABC, etc.), channelsurfing.net, etc., etc. BUT you had to use the default (same as now) GUI to access them, which would you choose? Your current "slicker" SageMC GUI with no streaming video, or the "ugly, outdated" standard GUI with this long-awaited "hallelujah" feature?

Question 2: If Sage 7.0 came out tomorrow and had a slick, glassy/glossy interface, with lots and lots of "bling", all the best bells and whistles that these other products have... but had no new features... AND required you to:
a) pay for the software again because it is a complete redo, and now it costs $350, and
b) required every one of us to buy/build a new, much-beefier server PC (and client PCs if used), because the demands of the new GUI were that much higher,
how would you feel about SageTV?

(Yes, this is a dramatization - I realize that your first reaction will be to say "we'd figure out a way to make SageMC for question 1 and my PC is as beefy as it gets so I wouldn't have to get a new one for question 2"... but that's cheating. Skip that attitude and just answer the questions - this is meant to spur conversation, not offend someone )

[Brent]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Skip that attitude and just answer the questions -

I think it's impossible to choose your option 1 or 2 because I know neither of them are remotely close to what will happen. Just to appease though and go along with this train of thought I'd do this:
Choose 1 and use it 99% of the time. Then when I needed to view a Hulu or Netflix video I would use a menu item mapped with dynamic menus to open up those pages in the default menu. Yes you can very easily switch between SageMC and the default UI right now.

The silly thing about these arguments are that you can have both. It's ridiculous to think SageTV would have to forgo the functionality they already have to improve the look and feel of the UI. What makes you think they would throw out the whole thing and copy xbmc or any other HTPC program?

Another point some seem to be missing here is the original post is not just talking about UI. Basically there are some things in xbmc he'd like to see with SageTV. Lets look at his initial list:

• Slick user interface, the animations, the amazing skins - this is possible and wouldn't take too much work by SageTV. Why wouldn't you want this as long as it didn't take away from the performance? Make 3 different options of UI's. The default for those that don't want/like change, SageMC and the new Shiny one (I'm using the word shiny for the naysayers enjoyment ) that doesn't exist today.
• Built-in support for scrapers that automatically download metadata AND banner/fanart - As said above, this would need to be a user-made plugin.
• Built-in skins (especially mediastorm) are very eye-pleasing and have very high resolution support - I see no problem with this, but keep in mind it's not too difficult to install a skin in SageTV default or SageMC today.
• Built-in support for apple quicktime trailers (also pulls down very eye-pleasing movie posters for each trailer) - again this would be nice, but I'd be fine if this were available from a simple plugin (not movietimes as that is pretty involved to install).
• Future support being built for fanart for music - This is 90% available with SageMC already today. Much work is happening to make this easier and more workable for us in SageMC.

I think the biggest additions SageTV could add to the core are the following:

• Improve the newer user experience - usability
• Build in support for quick switching between STV's (UI's). Make the default installed UI nicer looking and "flashier" - get more new users and appeal to the blogs etc.
• Built-in Flash support for SageTV AND the extenders. Through this we could attain much of the online video we want.
• Get built-in Netflix watch-now support and Amazon Unbox support for the extenders.
• Improve the music functionality
• Improve the photo functionality

Those are the tops in my wishes for SageTV 7. I'd pay quite a bit for a new SageTV7 that gave me those things.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

For arguments' sake:

Question 1: If Sage 7.0 came out tomorrow, and (finally!!) fully integrated streaming online content, including netflix, hulu, all network websites (CBS, ABC, etc.), channelsurfing.net, etc., etc. BUT you had to use the default (same as now) GUI to access them, which would you choose? Your current "slicker" SageMC GUI with no streaming video, or the "ugly, outdated" standard GUI with this long-awaited "hallelujah" feature?

Question 2: If Sage 7.0 came out tomorrow and had a slick, glassy/glossy interface, with lots and lots of "bling", all the best bells and whistles that these other products have... but had no new features... AND required you to:
a) pay for the software again because it is a complete redo, and now it costs $350, and
b) required every one of us to buy/build a new, much-beefier server PC (and client PCs if used), because the demands of the new GUI were that much higher,
how would you feel about SageTV?

(Yes, this is a dramatization - I realize that your first reaction will be to say "we'd figure out a way to make SageMC for question 1 and my PC is as beefy as it gets so I wouldn't have to get a new one for question 2"... but that's cheating. Skip that attitude and just answer the questions - this is meant to spur conversation, not offend someone )

Answer 1. I dont actually use the online features. Being in the Uk my braodband isnt that quick so it wouldn't effect me.

Answer 2. No I wouldnt pay $350 for a peice of software and if I did then I'd expect the new version to run fine on the HD extenders that I've already shelled out for so no need for a beefy PC.

Originally Posted by Brent

The silly thing about these arguments are that you can have both. It's ridiculous to think SageTV would have to forgo the functionality they already have to improve the look and feel of the UI. What makes you think they would throw out the whole thing and copy xbmc or any other HTPC program?

Totally agree As it stands they have no reason to improve the UI as we the consumers are doing it for them.

[Brent]

As I review the path this thread has taken I imagine Narflex will get a chuckle out of it when he reads it.

[S_M_E]

As I siad before, I'm not easily distracted by eye candy. I don't own an ipod nor an iphone and I wouldn't buy either just because some people think they're the "in" gadgets.

Q1) Yes, there's nothing wrong with the default gui despite people saying it needs an update.


Q2) That's my point, I don't care about bling and I don't want to pay more for it because some people think it's "cool." BTW, chrome valve covers on a V8 doesn't make a car go faster either.

Originally Posted by Brent

The silly thing about these arguments are that you can have both.

At what cost? You can't have both, for free (if Sage does it) and I don't want the silly animations and other superfluous eye candy so *I* shouldn't have to pay more for the product so you can have *your* chrome valve covers that do nothing for me. If you want "slick" use SageMC and if your willing to pay for it, great, donate to SageMC to get the bling you want without having to drive up costs for everyone else.

Why didn't you answer my questions from earlier?

What's wrong with a 3rd party UI?
What's wrong with the default UI for that matter?

[bialio]

What's wrong with a 3rd party UI?
What's wrong with the default UI for that matter?

Both keep some prospective new customers from trying out Sage. IF you go read about Sage on any other forum, the comments from non Sage users are amazingly consistent. They don't like the UI, and don't like the fact that a different UI (SageMC) is provided by 3rd party.

btl.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

At what cost? You can't have both, for free and I don't want the silly animations and other superfluous eye candy so *I* shouldn't have to pay more for the product so you can have *your* chrome valve covers that do nothing for me. If you want "slick" use SageMC and if your willing to pay for it, great, donate to SageMC to get the bling you want without having to drive up costs for everyone else.

Nobody is asking you to upgrade to a new version. Stay with SageTV6, use the default STV and enjoy it. You don't have to change.

Why didn't you answer my questions from earlier?

Because I was ignoring you

Seriously, I just missed them in the mass of the posts...

What's wrong with a 3rd party UI?

Nothing. I use SageMC today and love it. Try to contribute in any way I can as well.

What's wrong with the default UI for that matter?

I think I and many others have covered that in detail in the above posts. But here's the cliffnotes version:

• It looks like it did in 2004 (or earlier). I used Meedio and then BeyondTV and both of them looked better than SageTV's default UI. Any time you see SageTV mentioned in the press, they always diss it's look and say it needs a refresh. I agree wholeheartedly.
• The menus are overly complicated in my opinion
• I don't like the videos page.
• It isn't easily customizable like SageMC is.
• There isn't nearly as many plugins and themes available to the default STV - want to know why? There are many reasons for this, but one of the big ones is because new user/developers that come to SageTV go straight to SageMC because it has a more popular UI and they code for that UI.

I'll have to do a more detailed comparison between to two with screen-grabs and stuff on GeekTonic. I think I'll do that tomorrow and post on Friday to give you and others my reasoning. I don't hate the default STV, but I never would have gone to SageTV without being able to use SageMC as my UI. I like the fact that there are choices and I see nothing wrong with SageTV (the company) spending some resources to spruce up the default UI if for no other reason - at least to bring in new users and probably new developers as well.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Brent

The silly thing about these arguments are that you can have both. It's ridiculous to think SageTV would have to forgo the functionality they already have to improve the look and feel of the UI.

Just to play devils advocate, any development, whether it be new features, bug fixes, or UI improvements takes time. And Sage has finite resources to devote to those activities. I think we can all agree that bug fixes (at least most) should be, and probably are top priority.

Now, when it comes to new features and UI improvements, that's basically what this whole thread is about, which is more important?

Blu-ray rip support, Hulu, Netflix, etc
Slicker graphics, better animations, super-easy skinning system...

Obviously we'd like it all, and I'll jump for joy if they can give us everything, and I'd gladly pay another upgrade fee to get it (probably). But my guess is there isn't enough time/money/people to do everything....

• Built-in support for scrapers that automatically download metadata AND banner/fanart - As said above, this would need to be a user-made plugin.

Again (and I know you aren't saying this) SageTV will never include scrapers for legal reasons. As for supporting them, that's there already. I wrote a DVD Profiler importer, babgvant has this, stuckless has one. Sage provides a MediaFileMetadata Plugin interface, and also the full SageTV API to build UI elements to control them...

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by bialio

Both keep some prospective new customers from trying out Sage. IF you go read about Sage on any other forum, the comments from non Sage users are amazingly consistent. They don't like the UI, and don't like the fact that a different UI (SageMC) is provided by 3rd party.

btl.

As I said before, people (and polls) on forums are a small percentage of actual Sage users and that doesn't answer my questions.

What is wrong with leaving the "bling" to 3rd party developers?
What's wrong with the default UI?

The answer to both, imo, is "nothing."
3rd party "bling" is still available bling and it doesn't drive up costs.
A lack of "bling" doesn't make the default UI bad in any way just as a lack of chrome valve covers doesn't make a car bad.