SageTV 7 Software...

[Brent]

Originally Posted by reggie14

BTW, Brent, did you check to see if the time is visible on your 4:3 TV on the OSD in SageMC? If you get very many icons up there (recording, favorite, first run, HD, etc.) it quickly takes up all the room, leaving no room for the time. I have a photo of it, but then I'd have to find some web site to upload it to.

I'm not positive I'm understanding. Do you mean on the Guide?

Post the photo for free to http://photobucket.com/
That will help me understand (I'm kind of slow sometimes )

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Brent

I'm not positive I'm understanding. Do you mean on the Guide?

Yeah, I know about some of those sites, I've just never used one before. Usually I just use Facebook if I want to share photos. I can upload a photo to one of those sites sometime after I get home.

But, I can describe what I mean. I think we were thinking of different things when I said the OSD. Watch a video and hit the info button (I think). That will pop up the on-screen display, with the title and description at the top, and the time bar at the bottom. The bottom line on the top part includes (if I remember correctly) the time and date of the recording, and some icons that indicate what tuner recorded it, if it was an HD recording, if it was a first run, and if it was a favorite or manual recording. To the right of those icons (right justified to the screen) is suppose to be the time. But, most of the time I have so many icons and/or long timestamps so that I run out of room on the line before the current time is displayed. So I just see a couple digits and some "..."'s.

I know it probably seems like a silly thing to get annoyed about, but popping up the OSD has been, and continues to me, a pretty common way for me to check the time. There's a workaround in the SageMC menus that lets you also display the current time right above the time bar on the bottom half of the screen. So, at least when you can't see it up top you can see it down there.

[turak]

I've had issues with text getting truncated in SageMC as well. I use the "upcoming" and "recent" recording displays on my main menu. I had to do a lot of tinkering with sizes to keep the text from getting truncated in those elements. This is on a 61" wide screen running at 1920x1080.

I wish there was a way to individually scale the font of the different interface elements.


EDIT:
The default UI is a 1000 times better then it was in SageTV version 4. I remember thinking how sexy it looked when it was first revamped. Now I agree that it does look very dated.

[reggie14]

Here are a couple examples of what I'm talking about with SageMC truncating things (in the first one the current time gets cut off entirely). Click on the thumbnail for a bigger picture.





turak-

I agree Sage has made some nice improvements to the UI since 4.0 from a functional perspective, overall I think the look and feel isn't all that different from 2.0. In terms of look and feel, the gap between v6 and v4 is probably less than the gap betwen v4 and v2. Of course, the gap between v1.x and v2 is huge compared to both of those!

[razrsharpe]

not sure about how to fix your truncating issue without delving into studio and modifying how the text is displayed (should be fairly easy if you are experienced in studio but can be pretty daunting if your not)... but you can get around it by adding the time to the bottom OSD (timeline). There is an option in the settings somewhere... i believe its under SageMC -> Screen Specific -> OSD ... or something like that

screen shot showing the time on the bottom part of the OSD:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/down...ar%202_sSI.jpg

[reggie14]

Right. I'm aware of that setting and I use when I run SageMC on a 4:3 TV. It's really not a big deal, and neither is the truncation issue in buttons. My main point overall can sort of be summed up as saying SageMC isn't quite ready to be Sage's default UI. Part of that is the little bugs. Part of that is that it wasn't really designed to work on every possible setup like Sage's default UI does. It's a great project, I just don't think it's quite "commercial-grade" yet.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Right. I'm aware of that setting and I use when I run SageMC on a 4:3 TV. It's really not a big deal, and neither is the truncation issue in buttons. My main point overall can sort of be summed up as saying SageMC isn't quite ready to be Sage's default UI. Part of that is the little bugs. Part of that is that it wasn't really designed to work on every possible setup like Sage's default UI does. It's a great project, I just don't think it's quite "commercial-grade" yet.

There is a reason its actually called SageMC 16x9. Its designed primarily to be on a 16x9 display.

[razrsharpe]

ahhh oki i see your point now... and yes i agree with all of it SageMC is a great UI and wouldnt dream of using the default ui but yes i agree it's not quite commercial grade and 100% on ALL the different platforms out there.

[dbone1026]

Very interesting conversation going on here about SageTV. In my setup at home I have a combination of SageTV and VMC running, sprinkled in with an XBMC or a MediaPortal here and there (but those are more for testing or one off features). I won't go into the details of what I like/dislike about each software as I am sure that has been beaten to death, but right now I use VMC on my HTPCs for all my media playback (Movies/Music/Photos) and SageTV for watching LiveTV. I have an HD200 as well but have not used much as I got moreso to set up for a family member.

I just wanted to comment on a few things. There was a discussion about whether SageTV/SageMC was difficult to install. I think the key to this is maybe the tech level of each person. Yes, for most of us "techies" doing a lot of the installs are not difficult (aside from feeling like you have to print up a checklist at times to load in some of these things and make sure you enable/disable the right options). However, give SageTV to a "noob" or someone who is just getting interested in this kind of stuff and I would say that yes, it is difficult. That being said, I think the install process for SageTV does lend itself to a lot of potential mistakes regardless of your tech level. Anytime you rely on unzipping/exporting/writing over/editing config files that is a risk that will always be there (or maybe I am just the only one who has written over a wrong file, imported a wrong stvi, etc...).

My second comment is about some members wanting SageTV to remain a niche product. I have been lurking through the SageTV forums for some time now and you can definitely get a sense of this. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, a lot of members have put a great deal of time and effort into SageTV and they are entitled to feel this way. I also believe though that this is the reason why SageTV's UI has fallen behind all the other Media Center Apps out there. I don't know enough about SageTV/Frey the company, but I would wonder whether being a niche product is enough since SageTV is a revenue generating product (as opposed to MediaPortal or XBMC). Probably just the business side of me talking here...

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

There is a reason its actually called SageMC 16x9. Its designed primarily to be on a 16x9 display.

Right, that was sort of my point a while back. SageMC was designed to be controlled with a remote control and displayed on a 16:9 TV. The default UI for Sage is going to have to be more mouse-friendly and better tested on 4:3 TVs. It's going to have to be a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none.

[loomdog32]

IMO, If SageTV is to stay a viable, competitive product, it needs to become something where the answer isnt ALWAYS "There's a plugin that does that" The stock product should be able to do it WITHOUT the plugin. Now obviously, say something new comes thats when I would look for the plugin - But its like well theres a plugin that does it, so why bother adding it?? SageMC falls squarely in this category!!

The stock UI is dated, if its really that much wanted, keep it as a theme. There needs to be a remote centric theme as well tho ootb...

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by turak

I've had issues with text getting truncated in SageMC as well. I use the "upcoming" and "recent" recording displays on my main menu. I had to do a lot of tinkering with sizes to keep the text from getting truncated in those elements. This is on a 61" wide screen running at 1920x1080.

I wish there was a way to individually scale the font of the different interface elements.

There is a way to do it; its called 'Shrink to Fit' and is a setting for text items when using the Studio. Of course there's also a minimum text size that it won't get shrunk below so it may be that setting which is preventing it as well (that's in our Detailed Setup->Customize section and is a global setting).

[panteragstk]

I think I have an important question that is relevant to this discussion. How many programmers work for Frey Technologies? This doesn't include any of the volunteers that make sagemc or any of the plugins. I'm talking about paid employees. An answer to this should shed some light on a few things.

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I think I have an important question that is relevant to this discussion. How many programmers work for Frey Technologies? This doesn't include any of the volunteers that make sagemc or any of the plugins. I'm talking about paid employees. An answer to this should shed some light on a few things.

While we don't know the answer to this, we can at least set bounds on the problem:

1 <= # of programmers at SageTV < Microsoft

Hmm, that didn't help nearly as much as I thought it would...

Aloha,
Mike

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

Hmm, that didn't help nearly as much as I thought it would...

Aloha,
Mike

At least you get my point...I think