General Customizations Comment

[Crowdx42]

Hi all,
a simple comment I would like to make, looking at all the custom stv's to date, with the exception of the alpha media center clone, all the stv's have all kept a lot of the looks of the original Sage interface. Has this been a limitation of the app or is it the UI designers?
Meedio center already has a theme which mirrors Media Center, also they have Tivo clone. Is this sort of customization not possible?
Also the file support of Sage still seems behind Meedio and TVedia, no asf support? No option to use custom players.
Currently I am so unsatisfied with Sage's general UI and file playback, I only use it to watch recorded shows and very little else, DVD playback has never felt like just "insert disk and play".
Now with Meedio soon to release their own tv app, it becomes VERY tempting to abandon Sage completely.

I can help with designing a UI (I have plenty of graphics desgn and web deisgn experience). So if anyone wants help with graphics for their UI I would be more than happy to help.

A final question, does anyone know when Sage studio becomes available, will there be a price tag? Meedio provides their theme designer for free.

Rant over
Patrick

[fidget]

Originally Posted by Crowdx42

Hi all,
a simple comment I would like to make, looking at all the custom stv's to date, with the exception of the alpha media center clone, all the stv's have all kept a lot of the looks of the original Sage interface. Has this been a limitation of the app or is it the UI designers?

My guess is that it is as a result of working from the same baseline (i.e., rather than develop everything from scratch, they started with OriginalV2.stv). This would give them a known working baseline without having to figure out everything on their own.

Human factors work is not easy. I know that if I were to work on an STV it would look like crap, so I would work within an existing framework.

[Crowdx42]

Well I would be more than happy to do a from scratch stv and add some variety to the existing stv's .
Patrick

[abasu2003]

Take a look at the XMZ custom interface UI. I think that trie to do a lot in the way of changing the look and feel of the STV.

Also, if you look at the Teehan Lax thread (and poll thread, these are 2 separate), you can see that one main goal is to change the look and feel of the UI.

From those and the MCE thread, I get the impression that Studio allows you to customize a lot. I think the issue is that the studio guys are focusing on function rather than form at this point. To me, it also seems like more people on the boards are enamored with extra add-ins rather than looks (althought that might just be a vocal minority).

But regardless, I would love more custom STV's that focus on better looks. I'm just not willing to give up the functions of other STV's for it.

[mlbdude]

If you want a full balls to the wall customizable app you need to start using Meedio. If you want a solid strong PVR then you need to use Sage. Simple choice really. Frey is selling you the OrigionalV2.STV as the Sage front end. If you are not satisfied with it you need to move on. All other STV's are not supported and should be considered bonuses at best.

I am a Meedio user, and quite honestly, after a bit it starts to feel like a hacked POS if I start adding in all the plug-ins and use some of the skins. Not something I want to see Sage start to do and would probably piss off the 90% of Sage users that never even visit these forums.

I think it is really bad though that Sage does not support more audio formats. That is one thing I like better about MCE05.

[Crowdx42]

Well I did try MCE 2005 and it was very slick to look at BUT I was not very happy with it's fast forward and rewind not working in all formats (Meedio also has the same issue which is VERY annoying). Also MCE 2005 requirment for a high end video card makes it an expensive swap also.
The main format I miss and I do not know why they do not have support for is .asf , I download some tv shows in this format and then have to resort to another palyer to view them. Is there no way that Sage could just use Windows Media player for such files in the background without even the user knowing?
I tried the XMZ stv and I liked it's looks also.
Personally again I would like to see something that works similar to Meedio in looks, I agree that when Meedio has a ton of plugins installed it can be a bit of a mess ( I don't really use many of the plugins). I think for me it is just that the file player is my main issue right now. One would think that if a codec is installed on a machine then Sage should be capable of playing it.
Again if anyone wants help to make something a little diverse or even copy the looks from a meedio skin, I am more than willing to help
Patrick

[mlbdude]

A big problem with completely new "feel" STV's is that they are not guaranteed to work with new versions of Sage. This is why most of the developers are sticking with the base STV and just adding on to it. It is much easier to re-add all the additions than to redo an entire STV.

I am curious what this means from the beta page

"Plugin support for On-Screen Display, Inputs and MediaPlayer (Developer information available)".

I wonder how the MediaPlayer plug-in works?

[Crowdx42]

Yes I have wondered about the meda player also. I suppose the big issue really is having to use multiple players to view different codecs. As pointed out earlier, even the DVD support is not good in Sage, something I really have loved in other competing apps is that when one goes into DVD mode, the remote control functions change, i.e. hitting menu goes to the DVD menu and not the player menu.
Sage is the No. 1 app for tv to date (will be interesting to see how Meedio looks when it is released) but the video importer is just clunky
Patrick

[sleonard]

Originally Posted by mlbdude

I am curious what this means from the beta page

"Plugin support for On-Screen Display, Inputs and MediaPlayer (Developer information available)".

I wonder how the MediaPlayer plug-in works?

I am hoping that it means that TheaterTek or Blight could make a SageTV version of their players that will integrate seamlessly with the Sage UI.

Scott