Why I don't like the default STV Part #1: The Main Menu

[reggie14]

Before we move on to a different topic, what is suppose to be the final product of this thread? Do we want to provide Sage with a specific list of design goals? Are there any enterprising individuals that are going to try to make some mockups that we can try to reach an agreement on? Or, is this just suppose to be background information for any future UI designers, be them from Sage or elsewhere?

I think there's been a great discussion in this thread, but I'm a little worried right now that nothing is going to come out of it unless we can come up with a more concrete plan.

[gveres]

Hehe, I guess I am selfish. I figured out that SageMC fully satisfies my view of what the main menu should be. I would be perfectly happy if the Sage development team rebuilt the SageMC main menu.

But ... realizing that for some reason or another people don't like SageMC ...

I think that only the Sage dev team can figure out the fundemental question that has to be answered before any refinement of the main menu can happen ...

Is Sage a multi-media application or is it predominantly a TV application?

The following steps are the same regardless of the answer, we have to articulate what we, the users want to do on the main screen. I already articulated what I want to do:

1) I want to see a status of my "life" - health and state of the system, weather outside.
2) be given a reasonable set of choices for what type of media I want to consume

point #2 is really where Sage's dev team have to answer the question. If this predominantly a TV app, then the choices in 2 are different than if they said it was a multi media application. I really hope they come back and say it is a multi media application with kick @ss TV functionality.

In the end you can't satisfy everybody, so something like the dynamic menus is a great thing. It allows you to customize your experience. (the key though is that the customizations need to be persistent across upgrades.)

Greg

[S_M_E]

There's already SageMC so SageTV doesn't need to become another one...

[bialio]

First of all, I really like the main menu in nBlue, although I’d say that bialio’s screenshot looks nicer than that one used in the first post.

SageMC is very flexible - just for reference sake here is how nBlue looks on my systems at home right now.



Whether or not you have or like things like recent recordings on the main screen is a matter of personal preference - I frequently can get to what I want after powering on just by scrolling down to my recent recordings - it fits the way we use our TV. But that's what is so nice about SageMC - it's flexibility is almost unlimited.....

btl.

[Halstead]

I don't want to take this off topic (the topic being the home screen), but I just discovered this discussion (thanks EP!) after posting a request for a media-agnostic 'what's new' screen here. Seems closely related to some of the comments here.

[wallaceff]

I'm a VistaMC user looking at moving to SageTV. But... like others, I think its ugly.
Its 2009 now, not 2005. The default Sage Menu could pretty much have been done in DOS with a bit of ascii code.
The first post commented on people saying they wanted 'bling' but not able to articulate it? Thats because some people don't have the programing vocab to describe the different transitions etc. Its like saying I want the game to look more like Doom 4 than Doom 1 when you don't really understand the technicalities of 3D gfx design.

As I've said somewhere before, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and well, when Microsoft wanted to take over the spreadsheet world from Lotus 1-2-3, they copied much of the design/layout/keyboard commands. Same with WordPerfect.
So, simply put, how about just completely ripping the VistaMC or 7MC interface and having them as an option, with some/lost(/? all) of the limitations of those interfaces, but just so that the initial user can jump right in. Then, have an advanced menu or even a web browser interface that people can tweak all the other settings.
All the fantastic developers could then tweak these defaults and extend the menus out as far as they want. I know many / most people want a remote only setup, but I think to be honest, most people have a mouse/keyboard initial setup, get everything running just right, then disconnect mouse/keyboard and just terminal server in or vnc in to change things. Most people don't change the settings once everything is working.
So... I want a 'pretty' UI that jumps/pops/dances. I don't need 100's of advanced options to be able to be setup from my remote. Others may differ.
1 obvious advantage here is that XP users could have the 7MC UI without upgrading the OS!

[Fuzzy]

Something you will learn is that the Sage UI has two major strengths, that complement and actually build upon each other.
1. Simplicity - Not a lot of content/info that is not needed is presented to the user, highlighting just what is important.
2. Customizability - Everything in the UI can be changed by the intrepid hobbyist developer. This is partly due to them opening up pretty much all functionality within Studio, but ALSO because of the inerrant simplicity leading to easier modifications.

I have not really USED vista or 7 media center, but i do know there isn't really anything i find lacking in the sage experience. The customizations out there are very good, and this is because they are based on specific needs/wants, instead of trying to simply clone another product.

[wallaceff]

Yeah, but to win over users like me who LIKE VistaMC interface, just copy it, then I'll feel comfortable... then I'll tweak it.
At the moment, I'm inclined to just stick with VistaMC as its working fine, but I miss features that I might use if I were to go to Sage.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Something you will learn is that the Sage UI has two major strengths, that complement and actually build upon each other.
1. Simplicity - Not a lot of content/info that is not needed is presented to the user, highlighting just what is important.
2. Customizability - Everything in the UI can be changed by the intrepid hobbyist developer. This is partly due to them opening up pretty much all functionality within Studio, but ALSO because of the inerrant simplicity leading to easier modifications.

I can't really agree with #1. The default STV used to be a bastion of simplicity. Things have gone a bit beyond simple. The layout of recordings with selections going along both the top and the left side leaves a bit to be desired. SageMC, of course trying to be a clone of Windows Media Center, has a much more simplistic layout. Things are presented in a simple no-nonsense way. With the exception of the music library area SageMC is very good.

However, even as good as SageMC is everything looks very sophmoric to me when compared to the interfaces of the competition. SageTV very much lacks bling. They could begin to use the basic 3D capabilites of video cards just as all modern OS's have done. That would essentially give them effects more easily than they could be done by the CPU.

It is nice that the interface has stood up for such a long time but times change, technology improves. SageTV's interface just lacks the panache of more modern PVR UI's.

[sainswor99]

I'm wonderng if I should bust out the popcorn again, or have we already beaten this horse to death (and ground it into glue)?

[wallaceff]

Yes, its beaten to death. The winner is clearly the "just fix it and give it bling" camp while retaining the option to apply a "Sage 6 original" skin.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by wallaceff

Yeah, but to win over users like me who LIKE VistaMC interface, just copy it, then I'll feel comfortable... then I'll tweak it.
At the moment, I'm inclined to just stick with VistaMC as its working fine, but I miss features that I might use if I were to go to Sage.

I think you are missing that Sage isn't Vista and is better in every way (including interface) Sense I can make it look like whatever I want. If I don't like it I change it. I could never do anything like that with Windows MC.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by wallaceff

Yes, its beaten to death. The winner is clearly the "just fix it and give it bling" camp while retaining the option to apply a "Sage 6 original" skin.

I agree, the topic has been beaten to death time and time again. I really think it's very telling that the topic keeps coming up. To the "keep the UI as it is crowd," if it weren't really a problem then the topic would never come up, let alone keep coming up time and time again in different threads. It's obvious due to the number of times this topic keeps being revived that something needs to be done. It's up to the powers that be to make that decision. Any discussions here are merely academic and only amount to peon sword rattling.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

I think you are missing that Sage isn't Vista and is better in every way (including interface) Sense I can make it look like whatever I want. If I don't like it I change it. I could never do anything like that with Windows MC.

The interface could be given more bling and still keep the customizability. There might be different or more advanced options to customizing it but that could still be there.

Certainly Sage is not better than VMC in every way. Otherwise this topic wouldn't keep appearing. The fact is that you CAN'T make the interface whatever you want. I've never seen the fluid effects that are done with other PVR interfaces done inside SageTV. As customizable as SageTV may be it seems the basic design of the UI system is also it's greatest limitation. Even SageMC looks sophmoric in comparison to almost everything else.

[bcjenkins]

Keeping in mind though.. There is a need for an extender to maintain the UI as well. When compared to other extenders and media players, which are not PCs, SageTV does fairly well.

B

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Keeping in mind though.. There is a need for an extender to maintain the UI as well. When compared to other extenders and media players, which are not PCs, SageTV does fairly well.

B

Considering other extenders with similar or the same hardware have interfaces with more pizazze SageTV I really don't think that is necessarily the limitation.

[Fuzzy]

This horse did not wiggle on the ground with exactly the same argument, it was a request to clone VMC, which, is not a good reason to change anything. I will admit that the default STV has acquired a bit of bloat recently, but thankfully, it is easily slimmed back down with dynamic menus and turning off some options (like the stupid icons on the left of the malore style recordings menu).

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

This horse did not wiggle on the ground with exactly the same argument, it was a request to clone VMC, which, is not a good reason to change anything. I will admit that the default STV has acquired a bit of bloat recently, but thankfully, it is easily slimmed back down with dynamic menus and turning off some options (like the stupid icons on the left of the malore style recordings menu).

Be that as it may that still doesn't change the fact that the overall style of any SageTV interface has a kind of basic sophomoric quality to it.

Unfortunately, I'm no expert on UI design so I don't have any kind of answer about what would be better. But what I do know is that SageTV's underlying UI layout engine needs some updating.

Even if more advanced effects are possible with the current API nobody has done it. Since SageTV has such a basic looking default UI people don't expect to get anything else and are immediately turned off by the look.

To use an analogy, when people are shopping for a house to buy the first 8 seconds determine whether someone likes it or not. Maybe that's very superficial but first impressions are key. If someone is looking for something to just sit down and use right off without any other considerations that first impression is going to make or break the decision. Certainly, a fancy UI isn't going to bring anything technically better than what was before but it may make a better first impression on more people and bring more possible users into the fold. I want SageTV to be a successful company. Their current UI is not going to win any awards and is not a reason for someone to consider SageTV over something else. SageTV may be the most functional PVR software on the market but at the end of the day it's what people see with their eyes that makes most of them want to stay. It's only the die hard few that are in denial or accept the UI for what it is that really stay.

[Fuzzy]

I think the distinction needs to be made between the UI, and the UI's appearance. They are different aspects, and should be looked at seperately. I believe navigation around the Default sage menus are much more natural. The up/down left/right of VMC is much more cumbersome, in my opinion, and ends up even hiding options that are out of the visible range of the rotating menus. It LOOKS better, because of the little mini-effects, such as the buttons minor scaling effect when pushed, and the little glints flashing across them, but that does little to improve the navigation hurdles.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

It LOOKS better, because of the little mini-effects, such as the buttons minor scaling effect when pushed, and the little glints flashing across them, but that does little to improve the navigation hurdles.

But it's the little things like this that people are talking about when they complain that the SageTV UI needs improvement. No, little effects don't really add anything functional to the interface but it's these little things that people notice even if unconciously.