STV: malore's STV for SageTV (Oct 15 update)

[malore]

mbrown3, make sure you don't have show_mouse_icons=false in your sage.properties file, you'll want show_mouse_icons=true. You should see RWD, Play and FF buttons above the show length on the right side of the time status bar.

[mbrown3]

OK, I'll try that, thanks! Any idea how it would have been changed (if this is, indeed, the problem)?

[plawlor]

Malore,

Your latest changes are sweet! When I started using Sage, it changed the way I watch TV. Your "Upcoming Movies" screen has changed the way I watch and rent (I mean, no longer rent) movies. With the configurable movie channels option, I now have hundreds of movies to choose from each week. Great work!

I now see how the release of Studio to the general user base will take Sage to a whole new level. It would be nice to be able to mix and match skins, i.e. use Malore's Sage Recordings screen and Upcoming Movies screen together with someone else's Jukebox, etc.

[mbrown3]

Another question...I'm not sure if this applies to this skin or Sage2 in general (not home now to test), but when I right click on a show and "toggle full screen mode," once it switches on/off the full screen, the menu is still up, and I always have to go to "cancel" to then get out of it. Is there a way to have this automatically disappear after I select an item?

[jbuszkie]

This might be a dumb question.. but do these STV files work for the client as well??? Or do we need a different version for the client?

Jim

[malore]

jbuszkie, I responded to your question here, so that others with the same question can find it and others with more firsthand knowledge of the SageTV client will see it.

[malore]

plawlor, glad to here you're happy with the change.

mbrown3, I'd agree that the options menu probably isn't going to be used further after selecting full screen. This is part of the OriginalV2.stv, so you can try to get it changed by submitting a bug report to Frey Tech. I just use the Full button on my Hauppauge remote to switch back and forth from full screen (ctrl-shift-f also works).

[mbrown3]

Thanks, will submit bug report.

[ben_gb]

Hi Malore,

Your menu system is a real improvement!

One suggestion (isn't there always? :-)

Would it be possible to make it so that if you left the Set 'Movie Channels' section blank, it would automatically pick up movies on ALL enabled channels?

At the moment my movie channel list is about 3 lines long and has to be edited manually by fiddling around in sage.properties on all my clients.

I also second the request for being able to switch the movie list between time order or alphabetic order.

Thanks very much for all your work on this!

Regards,
Ben

[malore]

May 20 Update
*Added blue indicator bar to the episode list to show how much of a program has been watched.
*Number of rows used to display items can be set on the options menu.
*If the Movie Channels list is blank, then it will show movies for all channels.
*Added Guide menu (shows guide data with "Paid Programming" and "No Data" airings filtered out)
*Added grouping, sorting, and filtering options to my custom menus (SageTV Recordings, Guide, Upcoming Movies, Viewing History)
*Added single delete command to the options menu.
*Moved Viewing History to Schedule Recordings menu.
*Changed it so that when a show is finished it returns to the previous menu, which helps my SageTV Recordings to remember its place.
*Some other stuff.

Screenshots

Enjoy,
malore

[Snuffy2]

With your new menus, how can I go about just setting one episode (if I have multiple episodes of a show) to watched or unwatched?

[malore]

Snuffy2, the same way you do with the regular menus. Use the watched command (ctrl-w or blue button on hauppauge remote). Or you can go to the Recording Detail page by right arrowing on the episode.

[Snuffy2]

Originally posted by malore
Snuffy2, the same way you do with the regular menus. Use the watched command (ctrl-w or blue button on hauppauge remote). Or you can go to the Recording Detail page by right arrowing on the episode.

Right arrow does just what I wanted. I've always used the info button, which now brings up your menu. BUT the combo of your menu & the right arrow is perfect.

Thanx

[mbrown3]

GREAT stuff, malore! One question though. On the recording screen, when I'm done watching a show and delete/set watched for it, the list of shows on the left bumps down to only one or two shows and their episodes. The rest are missing. I have to menu out and back into Sage Recordings to get the full list. Any idea why this is happening? Thanks, and keep up the great work!

[malore]

The show list scrolls, because it reloads the menu after deleting a show to refesh the episode list and then scrolls back to where you were (part of the tricks I've had to do to get a 2-pane display working). You should be able to just scroll the show list back up.

[mbrown3]

Well, for example, last night I had about 8 shows in the list, with their corresponding episodes on the right. When I deleted one of the episodes of one show, however, the list on the left went down to only 3 shows. Couldn't scroll up or down, because there were only 3 shows there and I had to go out to the menu and back in to the recordings in order to see the full list again.

[bgorrell]

Really like your customizations, malore...

Suggestions:

1. Grouping the guide by channel -- I would much rather see it listed by channel number than call-sign. Some call-signs are very hard to remember or interpret and grouping by number tends to group networks, sports, news, and pay channels nicely.

2. When sorting the guide by date, include the date in addition to the time (or put Mon, Tue, Wed, etc in front of the time)

3. Add right click menu options to all listings to include everything you normally have to press the right-arrow for. I don't like going to a seperate screen to select "Record, Move to Library, Add Favorite, Delete, etc". Sage v1.4 had context sensitive menus and I really miss them since I prefer to use the mouse to the remote.

Overall, your changes make SageTV much better. I think the default interface is SageTV's weakest link, but SageStudio is going to be it's strongest. It's a bit like the game mods community. Can't wait to get my hands on SageStudio. I'd like to redo all the menus entirely. I find the menu structure confusing (especially the grouping of menus under Schedule Recordings).

One final feature I am really missing is export/import of the wiz.bin info. I would hate to lose all the usefull information about my recordings that wiz.bin saves just because I have a system crash or have to add a hard drive and move files around. Will SageStudio allow this level of control? I would like to export info based on filename alone and be able to re-populate info on an import. It seems like a simple database, but what format? If we could figure that out, it would also be possible to write a third party app to manipulate it any way we want. I'd love to be able to browse it in table format, search/replace, delete, rebuild, etc.

[justme]

It seems like a simple database, but what format?

It's not so simple now. If you remember a while back, someone reverse engineered the wiz.bin. If you check that thread you'll see there were changes to the wiz's structure including encryption. So any access to EPG data will have to be thru Studio and that is likely to be whatever Jeff can contractually allow. Hopefully this should be enough. I'm sure he understands how important it is to users to get as much access as possible, and still be fair to Frey and it's contracts.

Personally I'm a big fan of openning up the EPG data to the absolute limit of the contract, but that's only my personal opinion/wish.

[mbrown3]

Originally posted by bgorrell
3. Add right click menu options to all listings to include everything you normally have to press the right-arrow for. I don't like going to a seperate screen to select "Record, Move to Library, Add Favorite, Delete, etc". Sage v1.4 had context sensitive menus and I really miss them since I prefer to use the mouse to the remote.

YES. This would be excellent. Having these options in a right click menu (especially record and watch now) would be excellent, just excellent.

[ben_gb]

Hi,

Another excellent update to this inferface! Well done and thank you.

Would it be possible to add an extra 'grouping' on the Upcoming Movies list, which would list them in order of showing (in otherwords, the movie with the nearest show time coming up gets displayed first. The 'other airings' could still be listed in the right-hand panel...but the actual list would be ordered based on which movies have the soonest showings.

The reason that this would be useful is if you want to find a movie to watch/record now, soon, or later tonight (eg in case there is nothing you want to watch that has already been recorded).

It would also be useful if the time of showing was displayed as well as the date in the right-hand panel (in fact this might be useful in all the different groupings and listing displays, such as under "Guide") - you could possibly drop the year part of the date if you are getting short of space there.

A different way of doing this could be to have the time/date in the left hand panel, and then clicking on this will show you what movies begin at 8:00, 8:15 etc.

Lastly, it could be useful to be able to select other program types in this 'Upcoming' section, in addition to movies (such as news, sports etc), though personally I'm less bothered by this one!

Thanks again.

Ben