First Glimpse

[wrems]

Wow. It's great, I really love the style and design. Very well thought out! Everything seems to flow nicely, now I need to re-train my navigation habits. I keep hitting the right arrow I haven’t found anything major, nor have I used it for an extended period, or with an extender to see the speed.

These are the first couple of things that I thought I would document as I explored this great addition to Sage! More to come tomorrow as I have time to dig into it better and with an extender.

- When hitting enter on a episode list and it brings up the sub menu for Play, Set Watched, Add Playlist etc... When hitting play here I think it should bring up the next episode to be watched rather than default to the first episode in the series. Broconnes TVB did an excellent job at knowing exactly where one left off in the series. Kind of a resume series feature, rather than starting from the beginning.

- When accessing movies and hitting enter one gets a detailed screen. Play, clear watched, add to playlist etc... There is an option there the last one: Video Media Type. Clicking it does nothing.
- in the same detailed menu as one toggles the Summary/Details views I noticed that the title includes True/False under the Summary view.

- I love the upcoming recording schedule screen very nice and clean and easy to read. Can this same view be applied to recently watched content? Just a simple list, clean and making it easy to get back to partially watched shows and movies...

- An idea... When navigating through the recorded TV content that’s already grouped in folders, I think it would be great to link to the imported/archived content of the same series. Basically, just an entry just like an ordinary episode all the way on the bottom that says “go to archived content for Fringe” or something like that.

Case in point, I have all the past seasons of Fringe archived, I’ve dumped the commercials and shrunk the file for space. I like the separation of the actively or newest recorded episodes staying in the Recorded TV view and the archived ones being separate. I just think a quick little bridge between the two views would be ideal. That way I can keep the current season in the Recorded TV section and move the others to the archived/imported section and still retain the ability to navigate between them as if they were one.

- Family Videos* doesn’t do anything... But I’m sure there is something to configure to make this work.

[wrems]

Not normally a keyboard user... Whats the keyboard equivalent to pressing INFO on the remote. I just queued up Phoenix on my HD200 and wow, I've been missing some really nifty additions. There's a lot to take in and it's beautifully executed!

[bialio]

CTRL-I is mapped to info by default.


btl.

[wrems]

I've been using it on and off today and so has the wife. She loves it. She thinks it's really great so far. That's good news!

I found a couple of anomalies:

- On the Box landing style. The last box on the right. There are 4 views to toggle between. Can the changes happen automatically as one progresses through the numbers rather than always having to hit enter to update the display? More dynamic and less button pushes. Like the navigation style for the top icons TV, Music, Movies, Memories etc...

- The photo slideshow/screensaver seems buggy. When the pictures transition it seems to stack them rather than replace them. This leaves fragments of pictures to the sides of the current picture. As time goes on it gets really fragmented. If you need to see a pic I can upload one.

- The heads up display... Not sure what else to call it. The info one gets by pressing enter on the remote to see the time, title and timebar for the program being watched. It’s great btw, I love the gradient. Although for 4:3 content it looks off. The white gradients off to the sides make it look like something is wrong. Can it detect 4:3 and change the display accordingly?

[wrems]

My comments above for the 4:3 are a bit off after more investigation. I noticed that it works properly for the recorded 4:3 content I have. When I was making these assertions about it looking off it was for some cartoons that were not recorded. I'll get some screen shots to show what I mean. It could be those files too. I'll check with other 4:3 imports that I have...

[wrems]

In the Browse All Titles for Movies I’m getting a strange sort and group. One would think this would be only movies regardless of file type or location on the server shown alphabetically. Right now it seems to be grouping by file type then by name, but it also includes TV too... Movies are all over the place the whole group is not alphabetic, the alphabet seems to start over depending on file type...

[bialio]

That view is currently unsorted. Next release it will have a default Alphabetical sort applied.

BUT you can try a few things and see what happens.

Skip Forward and Skip Forward 2 (however you have those mapped) will give you some options on how you want the current UMB sorted. So try that out.

btl.

[wrems]

Originally Posted by bialio

Skip Forward and Skip Forward 2

Thanks I didn't know about these!

[wrems]

I noticed in the search (find) in those options doesnt execute the media file. It will search it but not play it...

[wrems]

Is it possible with this current beta to filter out the home videos and everything else that is not a movie?

To me, movies are movies regardless if they are BD, DVD, MKV, AVI etc. I think the only real differentiation for movies should be whether they are HD or not. Who cares what container they are in? Instead of having a specific option for Bluray Discs I think it should just be High Definition. I just don't want home movies, exercise videos and the like mucking up my movie collection. Just my .02

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by wrems

Is it possible with this current beta to filter out the home videos and everything else that is not a movie?

To me, movies are movies regardless if they are BD, DVD, MKV, AVI etc. I think the only real differentiation for movies should be whether they are HD or not. Who cares what container they are in? Instead of having a specific option for Bluray Discs I think it should just be High Definition. I just don't want home movies, exercise videos and the like mucking up my movie collection. Just my .02

Yes... and I'll try tonight to complete the VFS sticky. I'm going to try to add a bunch of examples there that show how to do basic tasks like that. Last night I only got through the View, Source, and Group, so I need to tackle the Filter and Sort, and then add in a bunch of sample configuration views. I'll try to add a specific sample for filtering out locations.