Sage 7.0 Wishlist

[rmac321]

How about a Config (Safe?) Mode for experimenting tinkering and diagnosing?

In this mode all settings changes would be made to a separate, temp set of properties files. While in this mode a "config mode" could be displayed (like the trial mode does) so the user would know they are not making permanent changes.

When you are done tinkering, you would choose to either save the changes (write them to your main files) or abandon the changes and return to your original setup.

This would also help in support. Support could ask users to make changes without worrying about making things worse, plus it would create a set of before and after properties files.

Based on the number of people who experiment on a separate server to make sure they don't disturb their working system, I suspect this would be a popular feature.

[rmac321]

1) When in the "Detailed Setup" via an extender or client, it would be nice if the setup options were segregated based on whether the changes are to the server or the extender/placeshifter/client. For those of us that are newer to SageTV, it is not always obvious whether the change we are making is to the server or is local. It would be nice if we knew whether our change was going to be global or local.

2) More info for some setup choices. It would be nice if the window at the bottom gave a little more info so a person could make a little more informed decision for some choices. Even if the info was merely a good suggestion for a search term for the forum or a reference to where to look in the manual.

3) It would also help if the info revealed what the default setting is or the default entry had something to indicate it was the default for those that have tinkered and want to undo their mistakes.

[LucidGoldfish]

Originally Posted by jldodd

My vote would be for hulu.com support. From further reading in other threads in this forum, that would also require flash support. SO:

1) Support for Flash
2) hulu.com support

Using the flash player for hulu would inherently include the commercials and would likely not violate the TOS.

I second this. Hulu would be a big, big thing for me.

Integrated web browser. Yes i can set up a browser to be launched from sage, but having a program designed for living room use. i.e. large font, large address bar etc., and adhears to sage's overscan settings would be great. You know, for chumps like us that don't have those fandangled 1 to 1 pixel mapping tv's.

Better music visuals. or support of wmp visual plugins.

Blue Ray support of course.

Cd ripping capabilities, and being able to play a music cd directly.

I don't expect being able to rip DVD support, that would be asking for a huge lawsuit, so in my opinion don't ask. Sage could provide direct support and integration of some third party apps that you would still have to buy from someone else, such as AnyDVD.

Lastly, being able to have client support across all the OSes. Such as having the server be Linux or Windows, and being able to have clients be Mac's or Linux or a mixture of all of the above. I didn't realize this was even a problem, until someone mentioned it in the forum. But this should be a no brainer.

[sandor]

it is probably somewhere in these 19 pages but...

a way to rebuild your wiz.bin file and manually add recordings back to it...

[bthurber]

* When pressing mute, the option to automatically turn on closed captioning (from Windows Media player 7 - maybe others)
* While watching one show, up/down arrows do a picture in picture view of what is on other channels. Ok changes to that channel. (from AT&T U-Verse). This would obviously require two or more tuners to support properly.
* +1 for hulu.com support

[PeteCress]

Assume three HD200's: Kitchen, Living Room, Rec Room.

Right now, each box seems to remember it's own break point when somebody's watching a recording and stops it.

I would propose a new Setup option: something like "Same Settings For All Media Extenders".

If that setting is set to True, when I stop the show I'm watching in the rec room, go up to the kitchen, and view it; the HD200 picks it up where I left off in the rec room.

Ditto the font size, number-of-column, and other settings for recordings and program schedule.

[bastafidli]

To PeteCress: If they implement support for multiple users, then they would remember where each user stopped and that user could pick up the show from anywhere.

[comet48]

1. Make sageMC the default interface. The current default is an abortion.
2. Support for all wma codecs.
3. Full support for DTS.

[jkohn]

I'm sure these have already been mentioned, but I'll throw in my votes for the following two:

1) Music visualizations. You can't be a serious "media player" without some real visualizations. Milkdrop has been open source for a while now, just port it.

2) Make the #)$(* photo screensaver play photos in random order instead of always using the same order.

[jhal]

My preference for photo screen saver enhancement would firstly be:
1. to have option to specify either status quo - plow through all pictures - or have a single folder specifically used for screen saver stuff.
2. second the option for some flexibility on display order random/filename/ etc.

[OldPCGUY]

1. Native Support for CC on OTA Digital Playback in Sage and HD200. Does FCC rule apply to Sage TV or HD200? Manually using CC extractor or writing a resident python script is not a good solution.
2. DVD Info for DVDs in Media Library
3. Media Conversion Support (ie Mpeg2 to Mpeg4) for OTA. Would be great if this was done as default as recorded.
4

[sdsean]

Things you'd like to see in SageTV Client.
Things can be things that you just wish someone would right a better plugin for or wish Sage would include in an upcoming release.

Please give a brief description if you can. . . Note my list is not in
priority order of any kind.

Please comment, I'm curiours, add your own or comment on ones I've already listed. . .

Sorry if I hijacked any thread similar (most of the ones i found were rather old, waay long, or incomplete).

1.) Direct Burn To DVD (ala Beyond TV)
-- No need for description. . .

2.) Transcode to DivX and other formats
-- I would really like a UI so that I can select from more transcoding options and tweak the bitrates and such.

3.) Record/Playing FM Radio
-- Why have a standard Def tuner with FM radio if you can only listen. . .seems silly to me. Granted there is no "radio guide", but at least you
could have manual scheduling. Also would be nice if the radio player
could read the OTA Info data that is usually broadcast (like I have in my car to tell me station and what's playing).

4.) Download / Save Online content
-- Might be tricky with this one for legal issues, but it would be awesome if I could download and archive YouTube, Hulu, Pandora, LastFM, rhapsody, and other content. Can already do this now with things like Replay Media/Music. And then of course you could transcode it based on option 2 above.

5.) Better UI / Setup for Emulators.
Snapstream had a product called BeyondMedia (which is now discontinued. . .grr I am so frustrated with them. . .), that had a plugin for which you could do a very good job of launching/managing both PC games and Emu games. Would be so nice in Sage

6.) Allow specifying a tuner in "Advanced Record" section of UI for series or single TV recordings. It would of course have to check and make sure there are no conflicts and that channel occurs in that source, but it would
be nice to manage priorities on a per show basis.

7.) DVD/Blue Ray/CD Ripping. You'd probably need a partnership here with Slysoft or some company. . .but doing this directly in Sage would be great.

8.) Better Music Visulizations. I can't seem to get sage to work with winamps visuliazations even though it says it can, but making this work solid as well as adding the album art screen saver thingy from the AppleTV would be sweet. Would also be great if selecting/adding new music to your current playlist / queue was done via overlaying said visulizations. . .

9.) Picture in Picture. . . or at least dual in guide, God I want this so bad, if you have multiple tuners, I wish I could see a preview in the guide of what is on the channel as well as what i'm playing (source conflicts just show disabled or something). Think AT&T u-verse. . .

10.) RSS reader. . . I think it would be great if I never had to leave the sage UI so that I could read news. Be great if I could subscribe some how from within as well. . .

* merged *

[Steve20A]

Customizable Guides per tuner
Easier (more intuitive) channel remapping process

[PeteCress]

When I've got a 20-30 shows recorded, it seems like I have only two choices: scroll the list one-by-one, or bring up the search dialog and spell out a keyword.

Both take too long for somebody who just wants to get to the program names that start with, say, "W" - and becomes a daily annoyance if they habitually watch, say, "WorldView" (recorded last night) over breakfast.

I would propose either a PageUp/PageDown option or some variation on the search dialog that allows specification of the first letters of the list entries.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by PeteCress

When I've got a 20-30 shows recorded, it seems like I have only two choices: scroll the list one-by-one, or bring up the search dialog and spell out a keyword.

Both take too long for somebody who just wants to get to the program names that start with, say, "W" - and becomes a daily annoyance if they habitually watch, say, "WorldView" (recorded last night) over breakfast.

I would propose either a PageUp/PageDown option or some variation on the search dialog that allows specification of the first letters of the list entries.

Channel Up/Channel Down does pgup/pgdn

[martini]

Come on. This feature has been requested my many people over a long time now. It can't be that difficult! Please, please, please can you provide a feature in SageTV software so that we can tune in to audio only DVB-S or DVB-T broadcasts. The audio quality of these streams is so much better than the internet audio streams and it doesn't make sense chewing up internet bandwidth when these broadcast streams are available direct by S or T broadcast. Can you at least provide some indication whether SageTV have any intention of making this feature available and/or when it might be available. Thanks.

[Julianus]

SageTV does not have fast forward. What it has is skip ahead. That is not the same.

SageMC and some other add-ons are trying to fake it by skipping in small increments that looks like fast forward.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Julianus

SageTV does not have fast forward. What it has is skip ahead. That is not the same.

SageMC and some other add-ons are trying to fake it by skipping in small increments that looks like fast forward.

If you want to get technical that's all any digital fast forward amounts to. But, SageTV does have what you say. It's called Smooth FF/REW. You could map your controls to that rather than the normal FF/REW which skips a specified amount.

[DaveW42]

I would love to have the ability to easily create TV show playlists on my computer (e.g., using an interface like winamp or itunes), and then import those playlists back into SageTV. Sometimes I want to setup a few shows for the kids to watch. It takes too many steps and too much time to use the HD200 remote control to create a playlist, name it, navigate to each show, and add each one to the playlist one by one.

Thanks!
Dave

[Texas-Hansen]

Would like to see the HD200 have the ability to use a USB connected keyboard to do variety of things that using a keyboard would make much easier, i.e. editing a movie's name, etc.