Missing Functionality That is important to YOU

[JonTom]

Originally Posted by bialio

When y'all say 'faster music' - what does that mean exactly? Which part is slow?

I have a view set up that orders the albums by date. I forget how I did that, and maybe there's a better way, but for my admittedly large music collection, it takes a long time to open the music UI (about 20 seconds of spinning wheel).

Getting out of the visualization screen to the track/album list is also spotty. I'm not sure that that part is slow, per se, but rather maybe sometimes the command isn't listened to. Sometimes I get out immediately, other times I have to push the key many times and wait until something happens, at least once I have given up and exited right out to the main menu, and then reloaded the Music UI (with 20 second wait).

OoM - We use the screensaver for the same thing too. A way to pause the current picture would be great, and I like your suggestions too.

[Evil_Attorney]

Is it possible for the photo screen saver to show images in a higher resolution on the HD300 or is this a firmware limitation (like the UI resolution).

[Fuzzy]

The images are run at the UI resolution because they are rendered by the UI part of the sigma chip. The only way around that would be to synthesize a video stream from them on the server and pass that to the sigma video decoder... possible, but not easy.

[JonTom]

Originally Posted by JonTom

I have a view set up that orders the albums by date. I forget how I did that, and maybe there's a better way, but for my admittedly large music collection, it takes a long time to open the music UI (about 20 seconds of spinning wheel).

FWIW This is what I made up.

		<view name="JW_recentalbums" label="Recently Added Albums" visible="true">
			<tag value="music"/>
			<view-source name="phoenix.view.source.music"/>			
			<presentation level="1">
				<group by="album"/>
				<sort by="recentactivity">
					<option name="sort-order" value="desc"/>
				</sort>
			</presentation>
			<presentation level="2">
				<sort by="track"/>
			</presentation>
		</view>

But it seems like the default group by albums (without the sort) view is only a little faster.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by JonTom

FWIW This is what I made up.

		<view name="JW_recentalbums" label="Recently Added Albums" visible="true">
			<tag value="music"/>
			<view-source name="phoenix.view.source.music"/>			
			<presentation level="1">
				<group by="album"/>
				<sort by="recentactivity">
					<option name="sort-order" value="desc"/>
				</sort>
			</presentation>
			<presentation level="2">
				<sort by="track"/>
			</presentation>
		</view>

But it seems like the default group by albums (without the sort) view is only a little faster.

I think eventually I'm going to need to optimize the vfs creation. For something like music where you have 1000s of files, I can see this taking a long time.

[JonTom]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I think eventually I'm going to need to optimize the vfs creation. For something like music where you have 1000s of files, I can see this taking a long time.

Sounds like a great idea to me If I can help, let me know.

[bialio]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

Count me in as still using Phoenix too on my HD300s. Most of my requests are minor, except #1.

1. Phoenix sometimes causes problems when two recordings are recording and you try to watch live TV (on a 2 tuner system). For me, it goes to a black screen and acts like it is recording, but isn't. Once I hit stop and return to the guide, I then see the dialog box asking if I want to cancel a recording.

This is fixed now in P2.

2. I know about where to look at the system messages in Phoenix, but I don't think there is a way to delete/clear the notifications without going back to the original Sage UI. That would be helpful.

This is possible from the Info menu in the original phoenix - there's a button to delete all, or just reset the level. It's there in P2 also.

3. Maybe a few more skin/color/weather pictures options for some variety? I like to switch things up sometimes.

Weather backgrounds are definitely addressed for this item in P2. There are an astonishing 1137 weather backgrounds in the theme! We might actually have to make some of these be a separate download...

4. When watching a Blu-Ray and I need to turn on/off subtitles or switch audio streams, the menus for this are somewhat buried. It would be nice if they were on the first tier when pressing the option button.

The new option menu in P2 does address the buried nature of stuff.

5. DVD/Blu-Ray thumbnail navigation? I know Sage doesn't support this for movies, only recorded TV, so I suspect it isn't easily doable, but it would be nice.

This would be cool, but I don't see it happening. I did fix some bugs in thumbnail navigation to make the current location of the thumbnail match the actual current playback location more accurately.

[bialio]

I'd like to be able to tag (toggle) a series as a "favourite" so that I can have a menu to show favourites (useful for when I'm on a Mad Men marathon, or similar)

If you don't use Sage's built in 'Archive' functionality you could use that for this - archive whatever show you are watching, then pull up the Archived TV view. We talked about user tags back in the day but never got around to implementing them.

I still can't delete recordings unless I catch the dialog at the end of playback - once that dialog is gone I can't delete a recording from within Phoenix.

I've never seen this - I've always been able to delete stuff.

[bialio]

- Would love the ability to slow down the transition times

A little known secret is that the screen saver uses the properties of the default ui's Photo Slideshow in it's setup. So if you goto the default UI, Browse Photos, Options - it gives you the ability to set the duration of each slide, how it's zoom/pan/faded etc, and a few other things. Then once you are back in Phoenix the screensaver will reflect those changes.

- Would love if, like the music program, it could read the a couple of exif tags and scroll them across the screen. I know the default client allows you to surface them when you go to a details page when looking at a photo.

This is something I'm looking at adding in P2, as well as access through the phoenix UI to the settings mentioned above.

[JonTom]

Originally Posted by bialio

If you don't use Sage's built in 'Archive' functionality you could use that for this - archive whatever show you are watching, then pull up the Archived TV view. We talked about user tags back in the day but never got around to implementing them.

Archive might be a decent hack, I'll look into that. Tagging would be great though, as you could build views around them - not needing to maintain a list of shows in the view itself to be able to filter out my shows from my wife's from my son's. Is there a way to do some sort of "include" so that I could just maintain a txt file or csv or something, and have the view read that list?

I've never seen this - I've always been able to delete stuff.

This really drives me nuts. How would I go about logging so I can see what is causing the refusal to delete?

[brewston]

+1 for using phoenix everyday

I'd love video playlist support too

Thanks

[Evil_Attorney]

Is it possible to have a home screen widget that changes every few seconds or is that another Sage limitation? I'm thinking that it would be nice to have a single home screen widget that changes every 5 seconds or so between, for example, weather, upcoming recordings, recent records, new movies, etc. I've always liked having that info prominently displayed on the home screen, but it can get a little crowded having it all on there at once.

Another similar idea that came to mind is a screen saver that cycles through recent/upcoming recordings, weather and/or recently added movies. It could cycle through fanart with episode/movie descriptions and weather fanart with current/forecast weather info.

[bialio]

Screen saver options -

[bialio]

Decided we needed a search in Phoenix 2. This is a search for 'Brad Pitt' on future airings.

[OneOfMany]

Dang that is looking great! I love the clean looks of the menus and the font choice for Phoenix. It is very clean and modern looking.

Whole family is excited to try v2, and after I explained to them last night all the hard work you guys have done to improve their Sage experience even more, they said to to thank yous.

Grant

[bialio]

If you've been approached about private beta for P2 - it's on! Check your private messages.

Once we iron out any initial issues we'll get the public beta going. 2 weeks or so hopefully.
btl.

[Evil_Attorney]

Originally Posted by bialio

If you've been approached about private beta for P2 - it's on! Check your private messages.

Once we iron out any initial issues we'll get the public beta going. 2 weeks or so hopefully.
btl.

Can't wait for the public beta to try this! Thanks for all the hard work.

[OneOfMany]

We really like the option of showing the info for the pictures while they are in the screen saver mode. As a general rule, our screen is always on, so they cycle all the time. One thing that would be great would be to allow the display of a couple of the exif fields such as title and/or subject. Since I use metadata tags as opposed to simply renaming my files, this would really enhance the experience.

Thx again for your hard work on P2.

Grant

[bialio]

Originally Posted by OneOfMany

We really like the option of showing the info for the pictures while they are in the screen saver mode. As a general rule, our screen is always on, so they cycle all the time. One thing that would be great would be to allow the display of a couple of the exif fields such as title and/or subject. Since I use metadata tags as opposed to simply renaming my files, this would really enhance the experience.

Thx again for your hard work on P2.

Grant

EXIF data is available from the sage core, but not in a granular way. We might need to see if stuckless can add EXIF support to phoenix to make getting at that kind of data easier.

[OneOfMany]

Ahh.. So by not "granular" I assume you mean you are reading the properties that are displayed in the basic "file explorer" as opposed to the exif data? If so I can see that this would be a little more difficult. Thx for responding.

Grant