Update on V2.0.13 Release

[Cayars]

Originally posted by Narflex
Howdy all.

Things are going fabulous.

I wanted to give you all an update since I haven't put out a build in about 2 weeks. I probably won't get one out tomorrow, but definitely next week.

I'm making tremendous progress and didn't want to slow myself down by making a public build. I've closed nearly all of the non-UI related bugs so far. Pretty nifty.

There's some significant performance improvements, as well as some long-time requested usability enhancements.

And don't worry about it taking long for me to fix the UI bugs. They go REALLY fast because I use the Studio to fix all of them. I don't even need to restart the SageTV application to fix half the bugs; I can do it while it's running. I love my real-time development tool...it makes me want to.....

Curious, is the webserver going to be in 2.0..13 or is this considered a UI?

We would all like to have your real-time development tool. Speaking of the Studio. I could have missed a post somewhere but I don't recall ever reading if this is going to be part of the standard 2.0 release or sold as a seperate product. There doesn't seem to be a lot of information specifically about Studio (or screenshots). Could someone in the know elaborate on this?

Thanks,
Carlo

[RRSwan3]

It's my understanding that Studio is going to be part of the 2.0 standard release.

[Brett]

It was *suppose* to be released when it went beta. But then again Sage 2.0 was suppose to go beta several months ago (as early as September), so I don't expect much.

I really like his comment though its kind of funny, oh yeah I really love my "realtime" development kit, that allows me to do everything under the sun, yet I refuse to share the slightest details about it, where it is, what it looks like, and a good reason to why its not available...

SlimD

[stanger89]

If it's as powerful as it sounds, do you really expect them to release it before the beta is stable? That would be asking for trouble, look at how much stuff has been found in the beta. I can only imagine the damage we'll do when we finaly get our hands on studio.

I don't pretend to know what Frey's plans are, but I'd imagine we'll see it as soon as the beta stabilizes.

[justme]

SlimD's views are well known. He's posted essentailly the same thing 5 times on this board. Please don't start a debate with him as all discusions have gone no where. Having said that stanger89's comments are right on target. Now let's all of us ,including me, move on to the real discusion.

[nielm]

SlimD: I don't know why I am bothering to reply (since the majority of your 18 posts to date have been complaining about studio), but I get the impression that Studio is in private Beta at the moment -- like Sage2 was before the public beta... Otherwise how could mlbdude have created the new layouts for the Recorded shows screens that appeared in 2.0.12?
And as for what they were supposed to do... They are a private company, not a charity -- they can do what they like with their products (including selling Studio to OEM partners only...)

[ikarus79m]

Just to get filled in, what is studio? I read about it everywhere, but i have no clue what it is :-)

[justme]

Basically it will allow a user to redesign the look/layout of the Sage UI while the application is still running. From the various posts/hints that have been dropped about it around the board it should be a very fun/powerfull tool. It goes well beyond a mere application to build SageTV skins. A good example of it's power is that Jeff builds(see first post of this thread) the Sage2 UI using the Studio. That should give you some idea of what it can do.

This is a very simple explanation but it gives you some idea. Just do some searching and you'll find lots of info directly from Jeff and Dan. Look at this link for some of what you can find in a quick search. At least check Narflex's posts on the first page.

[Opus4]

You know... I think Studio exists only in Jeff's head. Thus, what he _thinks_ the SageTV interface should look like becomes reality. Talk about a "real-time development tool". This is certainly a great feat of development work! The only problem I see here is that they may be stuck regarding how to make such a tool available to others. Look at it this way: it is difficult getting things to work on all those varieties of PC configurations out there, what do you think it must be like trying to have this product work with all those _brain_ variations!? I know... some may say that mlbdude seems to be rumored to have access to Studio in a private beta, but perhaps Jeff and mlbdude think alike & therefore it was easier to get it working on a "2nd site", so to speak.

Disclaimer: anyone who thinks I'm serious must have more brain configuration problems than I do at the moment. (I'm still constantly rebooting due to less sleep last night.) I just couldn't resist having a little fun while we wait for the new version.

As for the FF issue of speeding up playback vs. skipping forward... I like to simply skip forward. The only problem is that I am beginning to feel left out of pop culture. Every time my sister asks me if I've seen some funny new commercial, I have to say: "No, I'm not too aware of many ads any more." Maybe one of these days I'll watch the commercials & skip through the show...

- Andy, returning to the Studio. (That's _photography_ studio, not SageTV Studio!)

[White94Cobra]

To everyone that complains you have to watch the commercials when using smooth ff... at 60x ff 1 minute goes by in 1 second. You can barely catch a glimps of commercial. You can get to the end of a 1 hour show with 3 button presses in about 60 seconds. To do that now with 30 second skip it requires 120 button presses, a sore finger, reduced remote batttery life, and lots of time. When trying to find a spot in a show it's much easier to use a smooth ff/rw than skipping XX seconds at a time.

Sure you can use 2.5 or 5 minute skips, but I can't see how anyone can have any degree of control with such large skips. You have to occassionaly end up watching a commercial for as long as your smallest skip. For me 30 second skip gets me back to the exact moment a show is starting about 50% of the time. The rest of the time I have to jump back or forward in smaller increments to find the beginning of the show. It must just me me I guess.

[lovingHDTV]

White94Cobra,
You mentioned the first reason I've read that I feel justifies the use of smooth ffwd/rew.

It is hard to find that exact spot in the tv show with skips where smooth ffwd would work great.

thanks,

[Opus4]

Just so you know: I wasn't trying to say the smooth FF was pointless & why would you want it... I was simply voicing my preference. I'm pretty good at using the 2.5 minute skip plus a couple 10 secs forward or back to get where I want to be. Could I use a smooth ff/rew at times? Sure, especially when I want to go back just a few seconds to see something again, but it doesn't really bother me that it isn't there. I guess this is probably one of those things where I would get used to which ever way it worked.

BTW: _slow_ playback is very easy... simply hold down the pause button & it looks like it moves forward 1 frame at a time. Slow rewind might be interesting too, just to throw another wrench into things!

- Andy

Edit: To follow up on my previous comment about missing commercials: I just got off the phone w/my sister & she mentioned yet another commercial I've never seen... and I hadn't led her into that by saying I was just commenting on not seeing commercials... I thought it was a funny coincidence.

[justme]

It's one of those things some like and some don't(or at least don't use). We have a Tivo and my wifes always uses the Tivo's smooth FF to go thru commercials while I use the 30 skip forward and occasionally the 7second skip back. What happens depends on who has the remote. It drives me nuts when she wastes time(IMO) and I drive her crazy when she can't see the commercials. Still the nice thing about he Tivo is that it can do both, so I can see no esthetic reason why sage can't do both. The lack of remote buttons is an issue for those using standard hauppauge remotes but that's easily resolved with options and remapping to reflect your personal preference.

Personally I'll be happy if Jeff just fixes the TimeScroll mode*. Then with my MX500 I'll have the ability to jump forward in 30 second(ff1), 2.5 minute(ff2) and 12 minutes(timescroll) increments. I currently have my back jumps setup as 7 seconds(rw1) , 30 seconds(rw2) and of course 12 minutes(timescroll) increments. This works well for me with my remote but I know my wife would love to see smooth FF at least. Time will tell.

While were on the subject of long time requested features, I'd love to see CC support in Sage. I mean when both WinTV2000 and Microsoft's MCE** can do it with the exact same hardware so should Sage. I wonder which of these two is more desired if users had to choose. I personally feel that CC is vital since this is a disability issue but, I suspect that smooth FF/RW would win in a poll.

Still these are small things in an overall really great app.

*My setup always defaults to 2.5 minute skips in timescroll, no matter what any of the skip (FF1,FF2,RW1,RW2,Timscroll) settings sre set for in the properties file. For others timescroll jumps seem to be tied to their FF1/RW1 settings. One or two bugs here? I've reported the first since that's the one I see. Hopefully those seeing the second variation did the same.

**Personally unconfirmed but I have no reason to doubt the users post.

[Deadbolt]

.....I would like CC also, plus picture in picture (2 recorded windows, 1 recorded - 1 live window, and 2 live windows...plus being able to flip them easily)

deadbolt

[fidget]

Originally posted by Deadbolt
... plus picture in picture (2 recorded windows, 1 recorded - 1 live window, and 2 live windows...plus being able to flip them easily)...

Unfortunately, I can see that one being very difficult to implement. Because SageTV uses commercial MPEG decoders they are limited to the abilities of said decoders. Commercial decoders are meant for DVD playback and not live TV, so I wouldn't expect them to allow one MPEG stream to be embedded in a window within another.

That said, I know that MythTV will allow this capability but they have the advantage of using Open Source MPEG decoders under Linux. They can also play DivX on the video output of the PVR-350 for a similar reason (i.e., they do not need to rely on Hauppauge fixing their drivers). I believe that MythTV renders the DivX image then pumps it over to the PVR-350 as if it were an overlay.

[stanger89]

It should be possible to overlay one small window on a larger one with VMR9 but you'd run into problems since I'm sure only one of them could use DXVA at a time.

[Matt]

Originally posted by Narflex
... I've closed nearly all of the non-UI related bugs so far. Pretty nifty.

Please don't forget the PAL problem w/ PVR 350 TV-Out (the picture is compressed at the top of the screen)

Looking forward to the new release

-Matt

[White94Cobra]

I still think a good solution would be to have the functonality of multispeed ff/rw and if you want it you can map keys to that function and if you don't then you can map keys to the skip function. Those of us with lots of buttons to map can do both

As I said in a previous post, it would also be nice to have the navigation keys functional in live tv. For example I could have smooth ff/rw on my ff/rw buttons (pressing multiple times for variable speeds), skip1/back1 on my "next chapter" buttons, and skip2/back2 on the left/right navigation keys. It would also be very helpful to be able to have the skip amounts adjustable in Sage setup or as an option by favorite.

Besides... with a smooth ff/rw that would be my wife's last complaint as to why she hates SageTV.

[gplasky]

Did she really say hate?

Gerry

[mlbdude]

Yeah, if she hates it that one item will not remedy the problem .

I would like to see this item added at some time. I have it available in BTV but I admit I don't use it. I am faster with the skip. But I would guess my wife would like it too. More features are always better .