SageTV V7.0.21 Release Candidate 5 is Ready!

[Narflex]

Howdy again all!

Oh yeah...it's (still) the Release Candidate stage. Getting close to being done with V7.0 now...no more time estimates since it's entirely possible this is the last RC. No more features will be added now, it's purely bug fixing going on. So if you have any bugs, please report them!

All of the high-level information on V7 can be found here:
http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=48421

Be sure to read the above post as it contains important information regarding upgrade pricing and new features

As always, report bugs you find here:

http://sagetv.com/bugs.html

Here's the download links for V7.0.21:

SageTV for Windows
http://download.sage.tv/SageTV_V7_0_21Setup.exe

SageTVClient for Windows
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVClient_V7_0_21Setup.exe

SageTVPlaceshifter for Windows
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVPlaces..._0_21Setup.exe

SageTV for Windows Home Server
http://download.sage.tv/SageTV_V7_0_21Setup-WHS.msi

SageTV Media Center for Linux
http://download.sage.tv/linuxbeta/server_7.0.21.tar.gz

SageTV Placeshifter for Linux
http://download.sage.tv/linuxbeta/mi..._7.0.21.tar.gz

SageTV Media Center for Linux - Debian Package Installer
http://download.sage.tv/linuxbeta/sa....0.21_i386.deb

SageTV Placeshifter for Linux - Debian Package Installer
http://download.sage.tv/linuxbeta/sa....0.21_i386.deb

The release notes from version .17-.21 are below.

SageTV V7.0.21 RC5 10/18/2010

Core Updates
1. Fixed regression bug on Windows where selecting a different title for BluRay playback no longer worked properly
2. If SageTV fails to load the configured EPG Import Plugin, then deconfigure the use of that EPG Import Plugin. (this can happen due to plugins that set that property and then become uninstalled)
3. Fixed bug where Time-Based Recordings were not able to be marked Watched or have their Watched information tracked.
4. Fixed bug where setting up automatic conversion of Favorites to be in a folder that does not exist would cause the conversions to be named the same as that directory and then overwrite each other on subsequent transcodes.
5. Use the external class loader when loading media player plugins in case they were part of a plugin install since the last restart
6. Use the external class loader when loading metadata parser plugins in case they were done as part of a plugin install since the last restart.
7. Fixed bug where selecting a file to watch through the filesystem that was not imported to SageTV could end up bringing up LiveTV instead of the UI was set to always show video on the menus.
8. Added Greek to the default list of audio/subtitle languages to choose from (on existing SageTV installs, you need to remove the "media_language_options=" property from the Sage/SageClient.properties file in order for it to have this new language availalbe for selection)
9. Fixed issue where UserCategory filtering didn't break apart comma delimited multi-categories set in the Category or SubCategory fields in the Show object itself
10. Fixed bug with transcoder where MPEG2-PS files with a bad PSM wouldn't have all the streams properly detected
11. Update Demark frq
12. FIX: DVB EPG stop pulling down data. after changing channel, the EPG parser need to reset.
13. Fix:Wrong charset ISO-8859-2 as ISO-8859-1 in EPG data.
14. FIX: Bluray format detection crash, the parser needs more internal memory buffers for streams.

Windows Updates
1. Fixed bug where we didn't reset the HWND used by the video component when we switched to using a different window overall (only caused issues if Overlay or Default Video Renderer was used on Windows)
2. Fixed bug on Windows where switching between QAM and ATSC modes did not work unless the application was restarted. This was also the cause of initial failures with QAM/ATSC tuners sometimes as well.
3. Fixed bug where sometimes the DirectShow video renderer would return the wrong video size for content at first and needed another update to get the proper video size; this would cause aspect ratio/cropping issues in video playback.
4. Fixed issue on Windows Vista/7 where HDMI hotplugging would sometimes cause the UI to appear at an incorrect size.
5. Fixed synchronization issue with background texture loading and Direct3D device destruction where the log could indicate a reference leak where there wasn't one
6. Fixed bug for not properly redoing format detections on downloading MPEG2 files
7. Fixed bug on Windows when using the Default Video Renderer where after hiding the OSD, those parts of the UI would remain black.
8. Fixed bug where Hauppauge Nova-T card would show up as a DVB-S device instead of DVB-T
9. Fix: HVR-2250 ATSC not working on Windows 7.
10. Fix: playing mkv or online video failure (block screen, no audio, no video).
11. StrmDemuxer fails to get a continuous memory block for the sample pool (allocator), which most likely happens on win 7. we improve memory usage efficiency to reduce total sample's memory usage.

Extender Updates
1. Ensure that the display resolution change is processed on an HD media extender before starting playback of a file if we're doing native resolution switching (this allow the deinterlacer to properly detect the output format and only be enabled when needed)
2. Fixed bug where native resolution switching didn't always select the right frame rate for video if NTSC and PAL resolutions were both enabled on the HD media extender.

Placeshifter Updates
1. Fixed bug where the Placeshifter splash screen could show up on Windows along with the server selection dialog if a forced MAC was used on the command line.

SageTV V7.0.20 RC4 10/8/2010

Core Updates
1. Fix issue where certain MPEG files consumed all the CPU during file format detection and never completed file format detection

Windows Updates
1. Fix issue on Windows where the first recording with QAM tuning didn't work properly
2. Fix issue with HDHomeRun where it was using excessive bandwidth

SageTV V7.0.19 RC3 10/7/2010

Core Updates
1. Updated MAC address detection code to include the top 8 bits of the MAC address rather than always assuming they are zero (because they are not always zero)
2. Updated bug fix for transcoding a file and replacing the original file was not preserving auxilliary metadata that was added
3. Fixed bug related to online video playback where we wouldn't always wait until the format was properly detected before starting playback.
4. Fixed bug in how the core determines which recordings are 'safe' from deletion because they were recently watched, it previously would consider any type of watched information, now it only looks at watched TV recordings.
5. Optimization SageTV does not search for external subtitle files when playing back online videos.
6. When selecting the audio/subpicture track to match the default language, don't change the selected track if the currently selected one already matches the language.
7. Fixed bug in format detection code where it didn't treat files that are currently downloading as being still open like it already did for files being actively recorded.
8. Fixed issue with progressive download/playback of Quicktime files that have data tracks that occur after the main movie data
9. Upddate Melboourne/Australia DVB-T frequencies
10. Fix the problem, if Mpeg2 seq extension header is after display extension header, sagetv fails mpeg2 format parsing, so that video stream is dropped, and only audio is recorded.
11. Fix: HDHomeRun signal strength bug.

Windows Updates
1. Fixed bug where we didn't always set the QAM broadcast standard properly if the native code detected the broadcast standard as "ATSC NET".
2. Added workaround for bug where FLV files with H264 video did not playback properly on Windows w/ our internal demux.
3. Fixed bug where the available languages would show up as nothing sometimes when switching between audio tracks with playback on Windows
4. Fixed bug where switching between windows and full-screen mode on Windows 7 with Aero active and video playing would cause the SageTV UI to go black.
5. Fixed issue with playback of some MP3 files on Windows clients where the MPEG audio data did not start right after the end of the ID3 header.
6. Fixed bug where not all BluRay PCM audio played properly
7. Fix: DTS bug that causes m2ts file with DTS sound track not playing.
8. Fix:tvType set wrong (Cable).

Extender Updates
1. Fixed bug where sometimes a media extender would randomly crash due to the asynchronous loading of background images interleaved with batched texture rendering
2. Fixed bug where resolution switching frame rate matching didn't always work properly.

Placeshifter Updates
1. Fixed issue with placeshifter where using the "-mac" command line parameter also required specifying the target server on the command line as well.

STV Updates
1. Updated recommended extender firmware versions - HD200: 20100909 0'; HD300: '20101007 0'.
2. Fixed duration comparison code when getting podcast duration.
3. Skip the 'Tuning Configuration' step during source setup for DVB tuners and display "NA" as the 'Cable/Antenna' setting on Source Details.
4. Fixed issue where disabling access to online videos did not remove access to them from the Main Menu.
5. Fixed Instant Search so that it works on the Online Services navigation menus.
6. Hidden: Malore menu's Search option jumps to last-used TV search.
7. Only call the API function to activate the Windows Always on Top setting at startup if on Windows & not using a remote client.

SageTV V7.0.18 RC2 9/30/2010

Core Updates
1. Added property "forced_mac_address" which can be used to set the MAC address that the server returns for queries which are used for WOL in the HD300. Useful if multiple NICs exist on the server.
2. Fixed bug where modified recording times for ManualRecords were not always properly linked to the temporary airing metadata (wouldn't cause recording issues, just incorrect results in API calls used by plugins)
3. Fixed bug where playing back a server's file on SageTVClient through the file browser when that file was not in the SageTV database caused an error.
4. When using SageTV's conversion feature to transcode a file, preserve any auxillary metadata from the original file in the newly created file. (this won't embed it in the file, but it will ensure it is in the SageTV database and also create the corresponding .properties file for the new file if necessary)
5. Added property "restart_after_standby_resume" which can be set to true on a SageTV server to force the SageTV process to automatically restart itself after resuming from standby. This is meant to be a workaround for the issue some users experience where SageTV can crash upon starting a recording after resuming from standby. The crash itself is in a Microsoft library and is due to an unknown cause which is why this workaround is being provided.
6. If a native format detection fails for an MPEG file that's currently downloading, then force a redo of it just like we do if the file is currently recording.
7. Fixed bug with not properly detecting interlaced video format in DV AVI files.
8. Enable frq file update checking, reload frq file if it's updated.
9. Fix DVB-S crash on PMT parsing. more than one PMT share one pid and two program share one pid.

Windows Updates
1. Enabled support for configuring both the DVB-S and DVB-T inputs on the HVR-4000 on Windows. Previously only one format or the other could be used.
2. Don't insert the Line21 CC decoder filter when playing back BluRay content on Windows as this causes issues on some systems.
3. Fixed bug on Vista/Win7 when Aero is enabled and switching between windows/fullscreen mode caused the whole UI to go black.
4. Give a channel a valid frequency even if we don't find a valid tune entry in frq file, because some tuner on Win 7 has a trouble if we don't make a valid tune request.
5. Added support for BluRay PCM Audio (this does not work for all BluRays yet, but it does for some)
6. Fixed support for Hauppauge HVR-930C
7. Fixes for DVBLogic support

Extender Updates
1. When playing back Matroska files with a DolbyTrueHD audio track on an HD300 that is not configured to perform HD audio output, select the non-HD audio track by default if there is one. Requires a new firmware for the HD300 that is not available yet; without that firmware it will just select the primary audio track like it currently does (or the preferred language track).
2. Fixed bug where native resolution switching would sometimes choose the wrong framerate for the content. For example, it would prefer 1080p24 over 1080p60 for content that was 1080p30.

Plugin System Updates
1. Modified when the ConflictStatusChanged plugin event was called so that it will only be called when the conflicts have actually changed. Not just when the icon for showing conflict status should be changed.
2. Modified when the RecordingScheduleChanged plugin event was called so that it will be called when the recording schedule is re-evaluated (but not necessarily changed), rather than being called at a minimum of every 5 minutes when the main recording management thread does its updates.

Studio/API Updates
1. Updated Utility API call UnloadImage so that it actually fully unloads the image resource rather than only unloading the Java images and clearing the cache file. This is the same technique used by the plugin system when a plugin install updates image files.

STV Updates
1. Fixed too-large inset for title text on OSD.
2. Fixed issue in Music folder browser using Separate mode where focus was not set correctly when browsing to the parent of the current folder.
3. Updated Left on some menus to jump directly to the Main Menu instead of issuing the Home command when it needs to return to the Main Menu.
4. Only shows start time for imported videos, not start time & end time.
5. Updated global Back listener to return to the custom STV when in custom STV mode and when there are no more menus in the menu back history.
6. Added Detailed Setup -> Multimedia option for "SageTV Window is Always On Top". Defaults to disabled and is available on Windows only.

SageTV V7.0.17 RC1 9/23/2010

Core Updates
1. Fixed bug when 'remove padding on back-to-back Favorites' was enabled and a Favorite was up against a ManualRecording, the ManualRecording could cause padding from the Favorite to be removed if there was an overlap even if the ManualRecording was not based on a Favorite.
2. Updated show redundancy check logic so that ShowIDs with the 'DT' prefix would not be considered unique by default. Without this change, certain shows would not have every episode recorded. Users that have EPG data with the 'DT' prefix will likely want to enable the advanced check for repeat airings in Detailed Setup->Customize as a result of this.
3. Disable EPG data scanning on DVB-S inputs by default. It can be re-enabled by setting the property "mmc/disable_dvbs_epg_data_scanning=false"
4. Added support for handling progressive download/playback of MPEG2-TS files (none are included in our standard set of online videos, but custom feeds may include these)
5. Fixed issue where if format detection failed we wouldn't retry it properly in some cases
6. Added property "ui/system_memory_2dimage_cache_scale" which is an integral scale factor applied to the image caches that use system memory on the PC to store decoded images. This defaults to 2. This was done to prevent blowing the image cache when 3D mode was disabled.
7. Added experimental property "fast_network_encoder_switch" which is capture-device specific. This will enable using seamless file transitions with network encoders. This is NOT officially supported and is intended mainly for 3rd party network encoders that wish to support this capability. It should however work with regular SageTV network encoders, however this has not been tested and is not supported.
8. Fixed power management code so that changes to its settings in the UI take effect immediately now
9. Fixed bug where halt detections in recordings could falsely occur if the user has modified the properties settings to use a very short detection window and also had a long post-tuning delay with the capture device.
10. Fixed bug with seamless file transitions where if multiple tuners were changing channels at the same time the transition could end up not being very seamless at all (the transition no longer requires certain synchronization locks, so it can happen without interruption now)
11. Fixed bug where we'd ignore directories during library scanning that started with a period on non-linux platforms. On Linux these are considered hidden directories, and therefore are ignored.
12. Added support for specifying the default audio language used for playback and also the default subtitle language (or no subtitles).
13. Fixed bug where the 'Signal Lost' message wouldn't always clear itself once the signal was regained.
14. Fixed bug where the setting for always starting playlist items from the beginning used a server-based configuration setting, but in the UI the setting was client-specific (the setting is now client-specific).
15. When transitioning between segments in a recorded file, re-run the file verification to ensure that the segment were moving to is valid.
16. Incremented database version (Wiz.bin from 7.0.17 is NOT backwards compatible with prior versions)
17. Fixed bug with transcoding of LATM wrapped AAC audio (listed as a bug with HE-AAC audio)
18. Fixed bug with Matroska format detection where if no 'title' metadata was specified for the whole file we would use the 'title' metadata from the first track as the title for the whole file. Fixed bug in Matroska format detection where it wouldn't properly identify DTS-HD/MA audio tracks (they would still playback as DTS-HD/MA on the media extender though).
19. Updated DVB frequencies for Belgium-telenet.

Windows Updates
1. Fixed bug where the volume in the DirectShow media player could get reset if the player loading exited early due to an error.
2. Fixed bug where using two monitors of different aspect ratios where one had a larger height than the other and then the other had a larger width, and then moving the SageTV Windows between them would cause a black bar to appear on one side of the window depending upon how the screen sizes differed.
3. On Windows Vista/7 use the platform style window by default now instead of our fake WinXP style window borders
4. Fixed bug where using the platform style window title bar would cause transitioning to full screen to not work properly.
5. Added registry setting "HKLM\Software\Frey Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegDeMux\EnableHDAudio" which is zero by default, and will then cause DolbyTrueHD and DTS-HD/MA to be output as AC3 or DTS respectively (the core streams). There is a UI setting to enable HD audio output instead.
6. Fixed crash when playing .dts files
7. Fixed issue on Vista/Win7 where analog recordings could sometimes have a weird echo in them from recording multiple audio tracks at once.
8. Disabled synchronization of capture device teardown between different graphs unless a PVR350 TV-out is in use (that's the reason it's synced). This should fix the issue with SageTV crashing on some systems after resuming from standby and starting a recording.

Extender Updates
1. Fixed failure in extender DVD playback where seeking at certain times related to when a DVD menu would show would cause playback to stop.
2. Fixed bug in media extender playback where selecting a DVB subpicture track individually would not properly enable it, it would only do it properly if toggling on subpictures.
3. Fixed bug with extender DVD playback where the audio would sometimes be lost in the DVD menus

Placeshifter Updates
1. Fixed bug in placeshifter when playing back an audio-only TV file (from a radio channel) would cause the video area to not be cleared properly and latent UI rendering would occur.

Studio/API Updates
1. Added internal definition for java.lang.Class.forName when used through the SageTV API in the Studio. This is done so that it uses our internal class loader. This will resolve issues with STVI plugins that use that call to access JAR files that were just installed and are not part of the standard classpath yet (they would be after a restart of SageTV though).
2. Fixed bug where getting the airing start/stop/duration times for manual recordings in certain STV hooks would give the schedule times instead.
3. Added Configuration API calls GetSubpicAudioLanguageOptions, Set/GetDefaultAudioLanguage, Set/GetDefaultSubpicLanguage which are used for configuring the default audio language and default subpicture language.
4. Added checks in Add/UpdateFavorite API calls so that Favorites are not created that match every single Airing. This would occur if all the values passed in were false/null.
5. Add SeriesInfo API calls GetSeriesInfoProperty(SeriesInfo, Name, Value) and GetSeriesInfoProperty(SeriesInfo, Name) which allow for setting arbitrary name-value properties in SeriesInfo object for plugin cusomization.
6. Added SeriesInfo API call "AddSeriesInfo"
7. Added new API for UserRecords which allow developers to store custom data inside the SageTV database using a 'store' namespace, 'key's to index records and then name-value pairs within those records.

Plugin System Updates
1. Added support for the <ServerOnly> tag specification in plugin manifests. This can be set to true to indicate a plugin should not be allowed to be installed on SageTVClient.

STV Updates
1. Hidden: Can use numbers 1-0 to jump to % position in list for TV Show Editorials menu.
2. Created base translation file for the SageTV7 STV: SageTV7_i18n.properties
3. Hidden: Can send "ViewNumber" to a malore menu via AddStaticContext() in order to specify which view is to be shown. If not used, then the last-used view will be shown.
4. When using Pause to change the NTE mode, accept the currently entered value before changing the mode.
5. Added Detailed Setup -> Video/Audio -> HD Audio Output option for Windows systems. The option controls whether to output DolbyTrueHD or DTS-HD/MA streams when present (enabled) or to output AC3 or DTS streams (disabled/default).
6. Added Detailed Setup -> Customize -> Power Management settings option for "Idle timeout", to control how long SageTV can be idle with no user input or video playback before allowing the operating system's settings for going into standby to take over. Default: 2 minutes
7. Removed Detailed Setup -> Customize -> Power Management settings option for "Status check frequency", since it shouldn't need to be changed.
8. Don't call Fork() before opening the "Preparing to start playback" dialog, otherwise it is possible to attempt multiple playback starts.
9. While loading the STV: either save the Custom STV mode variables via properties if those global values exist, or restore the saved values if the properties exist & the global values do not.
10. Hidden: Fixed "Premieres, Finales, Specials" malore menu to perform its forced duplicate filter after other filters have been applied. Also disabled the "Remove Duplicate Airings" option for this menu since duplicates are always removed.
11. Hidden: Stopped filtering empty items from the malore Program Guide menus, other than "No Data" entries.
12. Updated info in the Setup -> Help -> View TV Indicators and Markers dialog.
13. Updated info in the Setup -> Help -> View Menu Header Information dialog.
14. Updated HD300 recommended firmware version to "20100909 0".
15. Hidden: Changed Detailed Setup -> Customize option for Custom Menus to 'Add links to malore's custom menus on the Main Menu'; controls whether any malore menu items are added to the Main Menu, not just the Custom Menus submenu.
16. Updated MR/Fav/Other filters to match how the other status filters work: Ignore the filter, filter to Include, or filter to exclude.
17. Hidden: Added malore menu option to group by past, present, and future airings. This grouping option is most useful when using the malore menus for Future & Past Airings, i.e.: when the "Custom Additional Airings" option is enabled.
18. Can use Info to jump to the editorial's details on the TV Show Editorials menu.
19. Can use Info to close photo info dialog.
20. Added Detailed Setup -> Multimedia options to set "Default Audio Language" and "Default Subtitle Language".

[Opus4]

The following downloadable STV update is available for v7.0.21:

New STV version: 7.0.21.0, file set 2010102001

1. Added Detailed Setup -> Video/Audio options for VC1 Video Decoder Filter and HD Audio Decoder Filter.
2. When copying a lineup to a separately configurable lineup for a tuner, skip copying the physical channel remaps if the tuners don't all have the same Digital TV Tuner status.
3. Fixed improper wrapping of movie year shown after movie title in some places.
4. In options dialog shown after selecting a music playlist, don't offer option to browse the group.

You can either wait for the system message telling you the update is available or get it at Detailed Setup -> Advanced -> Check for STV Update.

Based on testing earlier in the v7 beta, the downloadable STV updates should work on Windows Vista & 7 even when UAC is enabled, so a manual download & installation of this update should not be needed.

- Andy