Phoenix Screen Shot Sneak Peak

[bialio]

Every UI needs a home menu right?

That's actually somewhat debatable, however we of Phoenix decided that to NOT have one would be too much of a paradigm shift for most folks. So we will likely have 2 or 3 different ones. This is my favorite of the bunch. If you have ever used Boxee you will notice some similarities right off the bat.....



It's fairly self explanatory. What I am most liking about this, if I do say so myself, is the 'Featured' area - where our complex and beading edge AI tries to guess what you want to watch.

btl.

[wrems]

I must say that is one great lookin' screen. Keep up the great work! Can't wait.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by bialio

Every UI needs a home menu right?

That topic recently came up in our household when we realized (after a couple years) that 99% of the time we turn on SageTV, we go right into the TV Recordings screen. I was hoping you were going to say that there was no home menu... until you said...

What I am most liking about this, if I do say so myself, is the 'Featured' area - where our complex and beading edge AI tries to guess what you want to watch.

At which point I quite literally said aloud (sorry for being crass, but it'd lose the impact otherwise), "That's f***ing cool!"

Beyond that, I'm definitely liking the home screen. Beautiful work, guys!

[darcilicious]

As a big fan of Boxee, needless to say, I like it! Can't wait... can't wait... is it Christmas yet?

Edit: Hopefully the three columns are somewhat configurable? Personally, I'd rather see a list of recently recorded that what's going to be recorded.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Edit: Hopefully the three columns are somewhat configurable? Personally, I'd rather see a list of recently recorded that what's going to be recorded.

Ever since I switched to TVE, I haven't seen a need to know what was already recorded. I have this nice list of alphabetized shows with banners, so I don't care what's recent, just, overall, what I have to watch. Not that there's anything wrong with anyone else wanting it, but I found the upcoming recordings much more useful. That said, I'd guess it's customizable.

@bialio: For recordings which are close to their due times, does it show a sort of countdown? I.e. In SageMC, it would show "in 1 hr 23 mins". I generally use that to gauge whether or not I can stop the SageTV service, reboot the server, or take it down for maintenance.

[bialio]

The third column has many different 'views' available - in the shot above there are 3 configured, and #2 is active (which is upcoming recordings).

#1 is Recent Recordings and #3 is currently recording in the current implementation. Users will be able to add and remove what is available for that. Also, the numbers on the remote are shortcuts to make that view visible.

btl.

[jm9843]

Originally Posted by bialio

The third column has many different 'views' available - in the shot above there are 3 configured, and #2 is active (which is upcoming recordings).

#1 is Recent Recordings and #3 is currently recording in the current implementation. Users will be able to add and remove what is available for that. Also, the numbers on the remote are shortcuts to make that view visible.

btl.

Nice. Will the team make a view that is "recently imported videos" that shows the last handful of videos that were imported into to the media library? While not as interesting to me, you could do the same for music/pictures as well. I was just thinking about the need for such a feature and am not aware of anything that does it currently.

[wrems]

I really like the numbered views on the right.

Any chance a view could be added that shows the most recent media played? A really nice and easy way to get back into a movie that you started previously kind of thing. I find myself starting several different media and not finishing one due to interruptions. It would be great to have that watched list available from a home screen like this.

Thoughts?

[pjpjpjpj]

It would be fantastic to have a selection (dare I say, "a wide selection"?) of things that you could choose to be in each of those three slots. That way we could all configure it the way we want it. For example, I would love to have "Recordings" and "Scheduled Recordings" in the two slots (center and right). The left slot would be the "sub headers" for whatever topic I was focused on at the top (as the screenshot shows). I like the AI "highlight" idea, but I probably wouldn't really need it, and certainly not in lieu of having recordings and scheduled/upcoming recordings both easily accessible.

Obviously 50 different posters here will have 50 different "wants" for those slots, that's why I think it would be great to have each slot configurable from a list of options.

Nonetheless, it looks awesome and I'm excited.

[bialio]

The far left slot will always be the menu items available for whatever has focus - TV, Movies, etc.

We'll keep your other suggestions in mind.

btl.

[mbowling]

This looks really nice, but I'm a bit concerned about how small the 'Featured' text might be on a smaller TV. We only have a 37 inch TV because that is the biggest that will fit in our entertainment center. My wife really likes the entertainment center, so a larger TV is not an option.

An option to replace the 'Featured' column with one of the right column views, such as 'Recent Recordings', would be helpful. Actually... I think I would prefer to see the 'Recent Recordings' in one column and 'Upcoming Recordings' in the other column. Keep up the good work!

[pjpjpjpj]

Awesome, bialio.

I guess I'm sorta thinking about the way I can customize my cellphone's main menu. There is a list of about 20 different functions (camera, video, media player, calculator, etc.) that you can choose to be a shortcut for the upper right, upper left, and each of the 4-way directional keys. You could, if you wanted, make all six buttons be the same exact shortcut (though they could have added a gray-out function if one item was already used... they didn't). So with this main menu, I was thinking that the center and right slots would have an options menu that you could pull up and select what you wanted to show in that slot.

Hope that makes sense.

[tonysathre]

Would be really nice if when you select the Movies menu item, the 3 panes would show the Recently Added, Recently Watched, and um...something else. Are those panes configurable? Is the Main Menu configurable?

[bialio]

Everything is more or less configurable - although some of the items will require getting your feet wet with XML or even Studio if you are real serious about changing them.

Left column will always be the menu items that go with the item selected at top. Middle column for now will always be featured - although what is featured will be somewhat configurable. For instance, if you are in Movie menu it shows the most recently imported movie, not a TV show......

The right side is what I intend to be most configurable - you will be able to select how many different views there are there, and what those views show, and what number they are assigned to......

[emotionnotion]

This is looking great gents and coupled with Sage My Movies is the final knockout blow for SageTV 7.

The big question is when do you go for a release candidate?

[ehfortin]

Hi,

I just saw that your description seems to indicate that you have a HDTV connected to your server that is running on an Atom D330. Is that correct? Are you actually using this to play HD content? I was under the impression that WHS was pretty much a headless system. If that's what you are doing, I assume you have a NVidia ION motherboard? How the whole thing run? Any stuttering? And what about getting SGTV famous circling ball while navigating in the menus?

Originally Posted by emotionnotion

Server: Tranquil T7 Intel Atom D330, 2GB RAM, Windows Home Server, Sage TV 7 Current Beta, 1 HDHomerun tuning 2 OTA channels, MyMovies, Akai 42" HDTV Plasma

I also noticed you were mentionning that you had XBox 360. Do you use them to play content from SageTV? If so, can you tell me how you are doing this?

You seems to have an interesting setup

Thank you.

ehfortin

[emotionnotion]

Hi ehfortin,

you are right it IS a headless system. I do not playback anything on the WHS rather all through the HD200 extenders and the other devices as needed.

At present, my TV recordings and Movie rips are on a shared NAS drive.

I have a uPnP server installed also on my WHS for streaming to PS3 and XBOX for example.

I tend to watch AVI's and MPG2 recordings on the PS3 and XBOX 360 only at present using uPnP to the shared NAS drive.

SageTV is only used for the recordings not the playback on the non-Sage devices. My setup shows I (like PluckyHD) am also a Windows media center convert

[MeInMaui]

Hi Guys,

Here are a few more shots to highlight some visual improvements to the universal media browser (UMB) and the Phoenix menu system.

I'm in the process of unifying the fonts to make everything easier to read and later easier to customize.



More info on the menu system to come...

In a nutshell, the Phoenix menu system is designed to let you get information and manage your system from any screen. That means if you want to switch to another menu, you don't have to take a detour through your landing screen. The pop-up global main menu is always available by pressing the Home button. If you want to jump to the landing screen, just hit Home again.



We have also incorporated a global Options menu. Again this menu is available anywhere by hitting the Options key. Upon opening, it provides a list of context sensitive items that are defined by the current menu screen. There are also other options that are always available for managing the system.



Among these options is the configuration system. You will not have to leave the current screen to change settings. This is all done through the pop-up menu system.



There is also a system information screen that is always available via the Info key. It provides a quick way to view/access all of the recent activity on the system. I will probably add a Recently Watched item as well.

[MeInMaui]

And one more...



This is the Action menu that is available in the UMB by pressing the skip fwd key. It provides the means to modify the current view and to search (find) the content of the current list for items that contain a particular keyword. I find this useful for my kids' shows where they may have nearly 100 episodes and they want to watch the one with _fill in the blank_. This should make finding that one episode a bit easier.

We'll continue to provide more info as we go.

Aloha,
Mike

[emotionnotion]

Looks great to me. Increases the WAF and will help me find things for the kids from the 100s of episodes they have.

Can't it.

What integration are you planning with MyMovies as this is the other major experience for me on the platform at present?