SageTV 7 beta starts on Thursday May 20, 2010!

[cat6man]

now how did they do that?

my hd-pvr boxes have been behaving themselves perfectly until
last night and again today................and here comes sage7 with
improvements to hd-pvr stability................hmmmm

and while i'm wasting time on this thread waiting for sage7,
is this going to be tomorrow LA time, so us right-coasters have
to wait an additional 3 hours waiting for them to wake up and
put the beta on the server.

conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this

[jpaddock3000]

Originally Posted by CanadianEh

Wow!! I think the new UI looks amazing compared to V6.x! Amazing job, Sage team, as always.... I can't wait to try V7 out later this weekend

I don't think I could wait till the weekend. I'm really happy that I was already scheduled to work a half day tomorrow and I'm working from home on top of that.

Also, Sage, I don't think there will be any complaints if you want to release the software tonight instead of tomorrow.

[bcjenkins]

If you don't like the blue bars at the top, change the background. The gray objects are floating on the background, and the light blue is not part of the page design.

B

[jpaddock3000]

Does anyone know for sure that SageTV 7 works with the ancient MediaMVP? I sure hope so as that is all I have.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by jpaddock3000

Does anyone know for sure that SageTV 7 works with the ancient MediaMVP? I sure hope so as that is all I have.

Yes limited in some areas but there where some beta testers using it sucessfully.

[jpaddock3000]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Yes limited in some areas but there where some beta testers using it sucessfully.

Great! I can sleep well tonight.

Who am I kidding, I won't be able to sleep knowing I have a new toy to play with tomorrow.

[David G]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

I don't think he's reserving judgement at all. You lied!

But since you are in the mood to rant, I mean, critic, here's more fuel to your fire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbVW5JZFl10

What? Unbelievable. I mean, you have "The Haunting in Connecticut" in your collection? REALLY?

[JetreL]

Darnit, I am so ANGRY. SageTV why would you go and ruin such a perfectly entertaining tread as "IT seems awfully quiet in the beta department."

Now WHAT AM I GOING TO DO AT WORK!!! Not to mention where is the lo-Jack system you authorized me to post about? Now I am going to loose all my street cred in the Sage community. THANKS!

(Glad to hear it's released, Looks great.)

[Tiki]

As someone posted earlier, a lot of UI design is a matter of personal preference... While I agree with some of your comments, I disagree with many of them. I will make some comments on your comments:

Originally Posted by David G

The top part:
* "Program Guide" - it's pretty obvious what I'm looking at, you don't need to tell me.

I like having a title on the page, but probably wouldn't miss it too much if it were gone.

Originally Posted by David G

* Blue strips - those are apparently part of a new UI element, so I'm not sure what they do, but here they're pretty visually jarring color-wise and draw attention to themselves. At a minimum, they should be visually subdued.

Agreed, I don't care for the blue strips either (though I assume this could change in a later beta or with a different skin).

Originally Posted by David G

* The icons - the standby and maximize icons won't appear in an extender (the most user friendly scenario), but that leaves us two red icons that are again 1) distracting, 2) useless in this screen. Do I need to know that something's being recorded? Do I need to know that... well what is it anyway that I apparently need to know? If I can't tell what the icon means at a glance, it probably shouldn't be there.
* I'll give a pass to the date and time, but they're part of the problem to some extent - all that white text in the same font all over the screen. Could probably be placed where 'Program Guide' now resides.

Absolutely we need it. I want key information such as recording conflicts, error messages, etc. available on every screen so I don't have to hunt for it. I want to know if something is recording so I know if it is safe for me to do some maintenance on the PC without disrupting something, so I like the recording indicator. I also like having the date and time there - I look at them all the time.

If we were designing a mobile phone or iPod interface, I would agree with you that we have to strip out everything but the most essential items, but on a big screen with plenty of real estate, I say take advantage of it.

Originally Posted by David G

* Program summary. Imagine this:
Doctor Who (Science fiction/Fantasy)
Sat 5/15 7:00PM - 8:00 PM
The category titles (aired on/category) are redundant when the user can categorize the data just by reading it.

Agree- this would probably look a little better. However, titles are sometimes much longer, and with a narrow SD screen, there may not be room for all of this on one line. Also, I assume the episode name would get its own line below the title.

Originally Posted by David G

* HD/1: again with the colors not matching the overall screen theme. I'm not sure why this info is iconized as opposed to the above, btw. Would it be so terrible to have something like this:
Doctor Who (HD, First Airing, Science fiction/Fantasy)
Sat 5/15 7:00PM - 8:00 PM

No, too long (wouldn't fit well unless the font is very small or show title is very short), and the icons are easier to see at a glance. I agree that the icons could use a refresh.

Originally Posted by David G

* Program grid: we don't need the arrow icons around the date and time. I know there is a 5/14 and a 5/16, and that there are times before 7pm and after 8:30pm. I'd even guess that SageTV might be able to show them to me. Remove the arrows.
* Right hand side scrollbar: again, who needs this? Remove it.

These are for mouse navigation. There is an option already in Version 6 to turn off mouse navigation icons. I don't know if these arrows would disappear or not, but ideally they should go away if the mouse navigation icons are turned off.

Originally Posted by David G

* Little pink and blue dots: no idea what those are - make it easy to understand at a glance, or remove. As it stands, it's just noise.

These are present in v6 as well, and can already be enabled/disabled. They are for 1st run and HD markers. I'm pretty sure they are turned off by default in v6.

Originally Posted by David G

* left and right arrow on the programs: these are actually a useful indicator (program starts earlier or ends later) but they're a little imposing visually and look more like navigation icons. I would replace them with something like 3 little dots (...), semi transparent so they can be seen without drawing attentions to themselves.

These don't really bother me, but I agree that they could be confused with navigation icons. Ellipses marks "..." would be OK. Another possibility might be to change the shape of the background bar.


Overall, I like what I am seeing for the new interface. One item that concerns me is that I don't yet see a way to customize the menu layouts. Nielm's Dynamic Menu import is my most important import and I'm guessing it won't work with Sage v7. SageMC has the dynamic menu sytem built-in. I'm really hoping Sage v7 does too.

Also, I'm dying to see the recording screens. Personally, I never liked the default recording screens from v6 or earlier. I never liked the SageMC recording screens either. For me the Malore Multi-pane recording screens have been the only good choice, so I'm hoping they are not lost...

I guess I'll have to wait 'till tomorrow, but overall I'm impressed with what I've seen so far and can't wait to try it out.

[kingwr]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

... here's more fuel to your fire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbVW5JZFl10

I agree with some of criticism leveled against the new stock UI. It brings over much of the business and geekiness of the Sage6 stock UI. I am sure many SageTV diehards will be happy. However, as this video shows, the capabilities of the new UI are awesome compared to the old UI, and I am sure there will be many clean, classy UIs and adjustments available very quickly.

[medwynd]

This is a badass wedding present

Personally I prefer more information in the UI than less. I can't stand the ui on apple products where you have to keep digging and digging to get to the information you want. I certainly do not want a sparse ui, but I seem to be in the non-vocal minority.

[voorhees]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Who else is calling in sick to work tomorrow?!?!? hehehe.

Doh!...I called in sick yesterday. Darn cold hit me two days too early.

The new version looks great. Can't wait to give it a drive.

[setherd]

so can it play CD's?

[medwynd]

Can you set pin codes to do a rudimentary lockout of the certain menus, like setup?

[David G]

Originally Posted by Tiki

No, too long (wouldn't fit well unless the font is very small or show title is very short), and the icons are easier to see at a glance. I agree that the icons could use a refresh.

That was just an example of layout. The main idea is to get rid of the category titles, emphasize the name of the show, and present metadata in a more consistent fashion. It could be done in a number of ways.

[toricred]

On the list of recordings is there any chance it shows the season and episode like TVE?

[David G]

Originally Posted by kingwr

I agree with some of criticism leveled against the new stock UI. It brings over much of the business and geekiness of the Sage6 stock UI. I am sure many SageTV diehards will be happy. However, as this video shows, the capabilities of the new UI are awesome compared to the old UI, and I am sure there will be many clean, classy UIs and adjustments available very quickly.

Agreed, I am hopeful for this as well. What I keep repeating though, and what people don't seem to get, is that a nice clean UI is needed OUT OF THE BOX. It should certainly be configurable enough that you could add all the bells and whistles you want, and geeks won't mind doing that, but non-geeks who just want a functioning, easy to use product won't spend their time trying to adapt it to their needs.

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by setherd

so can it play CD's?

I think you're channeling geogecko. That was his favorite pet peeve.

[medwynd]

Originally Posted by David G

Agreed, I am hopeful for this as well. What I keep repeating though, and what people don't seem to get, is that a nice clean UI is needed OUT OF THE BOX. It should certainly be configurable enough that you could add all the bells and whistles you want, and geeks won't mind doing that, but non-geeks who just want a functioning, easy to use product won't spend their time trying to adapt it to their needs.

I don't really think it's complex. I just debuted my setup to my fiance, mother and her husband the other day when they were in town. All of them are certainly not technophiles.

All I did was turn it on and plop the controller in their hands and said make a movie play. All of them were able to figure it out within about a minute. Seemed like a good test of a UI.

Also I should mention I was running the default SageMC UI, which the new stock ui heavily resembles. I was not running the v6 stock UI.

As I stated in another post, I personally hate user interfaces that are gutted of information for the sake of "cleanness". Having to click 5 or 6 buttons to get something done may make it clean but certainly not functional. YMMV though.

[KarylFStein]

I'm surprised that there's an upgrade license available without version constraints, (for Windows anyway). From what I can tell, it looks like a *huge* amount of work went into this release behind the new UI. One thing I really like is it sounds as if there's been a real effort to include the community developers in this. Kudos to that. Maybe that can be expanded...SageTV AppStore anyone ? Anyway, looking forward to when it goes "gold". Will it get rid of my paying for content and then jumping through stupid hoops to view it the way I want? No. But the war isn't over, no?