2.0 - Problems and Recommendations

[MikeTheFury]

I am upgraded to the released version 2.0 of SageTV and I thought I would share my impressions and seek out answers for some of the problems I am having.

First of all, here is my setup:
HTPC:
1.2 GHz Athlon
512MB DDR RAM
PVR-250
Radeon 7200
Running Win2000

I have a large shared drive elsewhere on a wireless (11g) local network that contains lots of .jpg files and .mp3 files. I get good throughput rates and good pings for the most part, although it does vary. I have this share mapped over as a local drive on the htpc and I try to use this as a media import directory.

My impressions with Sage 1.4:
Sage 1.4 works like a champ on the above system, with the sole exception of the media library stuff. I have had a lot of trouble from the start with media library. First of all, much of my music library was originally AAC encoded under iTunes. I converted these to MP3 in iTunes to save me having to re-rip the CDs (which by the way was a mistake, on my Barton3200+ I can rip about 25 percent faster from a CD than I can convert from AAC). All of the songs I converted with iTunes mp3 caused Sage to crash when I attempted to play them. MP3 files encoded using intervideo xpack do not appear to have the same problem, so I suspect this is an issue with iTunes. This is the only known problem I am having with Sage 1.4

My impressions with Sage 2.0:
I upgraded to Sage 2.0 a couple of days ago and am just now getting around to playing with it. First of all I really like the new backdrops and the new interface is much better than 1.4. I know there are a lot of cranky 1.4 users complaining about the ui in 2.0, but it is a vast improvement IMO. Also the picture library cannot be understated; the ability to import and view other types of media is the largest contributor to me purchasing SageTV over SnapStream (which until Sage 2.0 had a MUCH nicer interface). The whole point of the media center PC is I want instant access to all my MEDIA, not just my TV. I could buy a TiVo for that. So I do applaud you guys for putting the picture stuff into 2.0. I'll be using it more after I get it working better.

I am having three problems so far with version 2.0, and they might be related.

First of all Sage 2.0 seems pretty slow compared with 1.4. Specifically, the remote commands from the hauppauge silver remote seem sluggish. There is some sort of constant HD activity going on even while I am not watching TV, perhaps this is a clue. It seems to be permanently creating picture library thumbnails are a really slow pace, so maybe this is some clue.

Secondly, the picture library is causing me some headaches. I only have maybe 100 pictures on my disk currently as most of them are on CD and I was waiting to see how Sage would handle a small sampling before I bother taking up valuable HD space with them. These are on a network share, but it is a fast network. I routinely get 3+Mbit transfer rate even when my link is at its poorest. The pictures range in size from 400KB to 700KB each and are all JPG files. The pictures are spread into several sub-folders (nice the way Sage respects my sub-folders by the way, kudos). When I click on a sub-folder a view comes up where there are four thumbnails per screen. Initially all the thumbnail slots in a folder are blank, they gradually fill in over time at a rate of 2-3 thumbnails per minute. I put Sage to sleep and woke it back up a couple of seconds later, and all my thumbnails were gone! It had to start over from scratch. Am I doing something wrong here? Do I need to provide write access on the network share or are the thumbnails stored locally in some sage temp directory?

Third, I am having problems with the live guide. Specifically, when I scroll around in the time domain parts or all of the guide go blank. It does not seem to be very predictable, except that in general scrolling into the future causes problems. However there also seems to be individual holes in the guide for some channels when I scroll in the channel domain.

Some Recommendations and minor annoyances:
The visualization while playing MP3's is an eyesore. I would prefer an option to disable these and maybe just see the screensaver with an overlay.

Since the volume buttons double with the right/left navigation buttons, I can't adjust the volume with the silver remote while doing certain things. This is only a problem in the mp3 library section. When I select a song and begin playing it, I am still in the music junkebox section and thus my volume buttons will only navigate around. I would recommend that the music jukebox section be reconsidered, maybe to a point where only up/down/select are requiring to navigate so that right/left can be used for volume.

All in all, good job on version 2.0. It is a definite improvement. If anyone can think of ways to improve my setup or if I am doing things differently, please feel free to give me some feedback. Thanks for your time,