Cayars: Unofficial Feature Request Thread

[rsagetv99]

Many people have mentioned that the main Cayars thread is hard to follow because there are so many posts. Hopefully we can use this thread for "Feature Requests" only, and maybe keep the bug reports in the main thread (or start another one for that too). To get us started, I have compiled a list of all of my open feature requests (I had forgotten about some). Obviously these are just requests and I understand that not all will be implemented.

• Would it be possible to have some default zoom/stretch options in the OSD options menu while playing a video? Somthing like:
  130%V x 130%H
  130%V x 0%H
  120%V x 0%H
  140%V x 0%H
  
  Looking for a way to quickly adjust the overscan settings to match a show format, and the Aspect Ratio settings are not enough. See the following post: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/...read.php?t=9755
  
  
• Ability to have comskip process files that have been compressed using FFMPEG, or the ability to use the comskip data from when the show was com-detected prior to being compressed.
  
  
• Could you make it where when you have the mini-guide up, typing in a channel number changes the channel in the mini-guide instead of changing the current channel being viewed?
  
  
• Ability to have separate default recording qualities for live TV and for recordings. This change is probalbly a little more involved, but it would be nice if all LiveTV was recorded at Excellent quality, and the default quality for scheduled shows was able to be changed.
  
  This does pose a problem when you try to record a show from the show buffer, but the way TIVO handles this is, when you choose to record a buffered show it asks if you want to record from the beginning at Excellent quality, or record starting now with the default recording quality - or you could go to recording options and pick a different recording quality.
  
  
• Can we have an option of turning off transparent menus on the "LiveTV Guide"? I have a hard time seeing the "program type" colors due to the transparency. I don't want to turn it off for any other menu's just that one.
  
  
• Also in the LiveTV guide, can you change the color (or give a choice of colors) for the highlighted program, the light blue tends to blend in with all of the other blues. Maybe make it orange or something.
  
  
• For the watched bar color selection a way to see what the changes will look like against your background without having to go back and forth from Detailed Setup to your Recordings screen - what a pain in the a**. No wonder no one has changed the color
  
  
• It would be a nice feature if you could automatically compress shows without having to select it for each show. What I am thinking is maybe put a control option in the "Favorites" screen that you could set once and then forget about it. I have a few favorites that I always compress, so if this option was available it would make things a little easier.
  
  
• Maybe another Favorite option could be Commercial Skip High/Low/Disabled, if you have some shows that you would rather have processed before other shows, or maybe some shows that shouldn't be processed at all. (I know you can disable CS by channel, but by show could be more accurate).
  
  
• Also, maybe you could have an option to point to a different comercialskip.ini file for certain Favorites - like maybe some settings work better for Football/sports since the commercials tend to be more random and different lengths than for most programs.
  
  Having the options at the favorite makes it a little easier to get exactly what you want
  
  
• Carlo, here's a quick (I think) feature request. For the ignored channels in the External=>Comskip settings can you add the option to list a block of channels? I have a lot of Movie channels that I want to exclude and the channel numbers happen to be back to back, so can you add the option to exclude like 200-210, 215-222, 308, 370. Right now you have to type in each channel separated by commas.
  
  Also, if I remember it righ I think the Movie Channel listing in Detailed setup is the same.
  
  
• what about IMDB lookups that can also download DVD descriptions, and art so that the info shows up in your imported video screens. This would be a REALLY nice feature...

[JUC]

wow, good list. One more to add. Ability to show information and photos of your offline DVD library using DVDprofiler and the ability for it to prompt you to 'insert disk # X'

[Cazador]

Good list. I would request the ability to do have padding per channel. For example SCI-FI is always 1 minute faster than time, and USA is 1 minute slower than default.

Thanks

[follower]

Save how much time an Imported Video has been watched so that when you watch it again it remembers where left off. I already spoke with Cayars about this. It may be an issue for the sage core.

[kny3twalker]

huh pay per view for satellite users

[BerrantRyke]

Great list...

But, I still want my fish tank screensaver....

[kny3twalker]

being able to choose my own screensaver for sagetv would be awesome
I would love to use my fish tank one as well

[nerys]

Features I Would almost kill for :-)

1 Higher Resolutions I have my Sage at 800x600 for now and would love some OSD expecially the Live Guide to take advantage of this to give me MORE hours and channels to browse on one screen

Let me default VIEWING live to mpeg2 but ALWAYS default recordings of ANY kind (favorites and manual) use my specified recording quality (for me vcd)

Make LIVE tv always use a specified tuner and make recordings always use specified tuners unless it needs more. for example getting an mce500 would like recording to never use my pvr250 unless of course it needs it to resolve a conflict and and make LIVE TV always use the pvr250 etc..

Allow additional information to be added to the FILE NAME of the actual mpg recorded example instead of dropping the space put them back or if that is not good add _ to make up for the spaces

also I really need at least the date and preferably the date and TIME as part of the file name like hauppauge does.

also AUTO padding

example a universal 2 minute padding on both end BUT with it smart enough to REMOVE the padding if it will resolve a conflict

so if there is no conflict and or there is enough tuners to handle the load PAD otherwise do not pad.

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

Note: continuing conversation about mpeg1 and EPG grid size was split and moved here: Major Issues need help please, where the topics were being discussed already. - Opus4

[jlindborg]

I'm hoping this is something that's reasonably easy to do - I have my system already configured to pop the delete program dialog at the end of a show - however I'm one of those folks plauged with the random %100 CPU spikes at the end of a show with the PVR 350s - what I'm hoping is that I can get you to make the show stop playing and pop that same dialog, but do it with about 10 seconds left (i.e. don't play it right to the very end where the 350 freaks and pegs the CPU from time to time).

Since Sage has apparently taken the view that it's a hardware problem they can't do anything about, this is the only solution I can think of that will work around this... it'd be excellent if this were an option.

thanks

[White94Cobra]

Originally Posted by nerys

also AUTO padding

example a universal 2 minute padding on both end BUT with it smart enough to REMOVE the padding if it will resolve a conflict

so if there is no conflict and or there is enough tuners to handle the load PAD otherwise do not pad.

Chris Taylor
http://www.zodiacreview.com/

Soft padding would be great! I modified my Tivo to do this and it works wonderfully. I soft pad everything by 1 minute early and 5 minutes late. If it causes a conflict it uses the other tuner if it is available. If not then it drops the padding to record the conflicting show.

[RedR]

I know this was mentioned in another thread:
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...867&highlight=

But I have to ask formally here ;P
Caller ID please, supporting a client/host setup. Ex. My modem is in one of the Sage client machines, and it needs to broadcast to the others that are running Sage/the plugin.

Thanks,
RedR

[silkshadow]

I would add to request a setting where I can make the info bars never show up unless I hit the "toggle info" button.

[gplasky]

Hate to do this here but:

1 Paypal donation

2 PMs.

No action.

Help please. Looking to use the test versions.

Gerry

[camTexas]

Maybe I'm missing something but we still use our REPLAY system most of the time (working on WAF). One of the nice things about the Replay is when you are watching time shifted TV or a recorded show and you hit the skip forward button a little FF icon shows up in the bottom right, skip backward and a little RR button shows up in the bottom left of the screen. When skipping forward and you get back to LIVE TV a little "LIVE" icon shows up in the bottom right. Makes it nice not to keep hitting the skip button and not realize you're the dumb one not the Sage system. Again just working WAF items here.

[perfessor101]

Hello,
A feature that I would find useful is the ability to disable a favorite recording during the 'regular season' of television programing, and then enabling it during reruns to catch all the secondary shows I watch. Currently I'm doing this with 'Manual' Deletion and 'Keep at Most' : 1 and then during the summer season changing this to 3 to keep those shows to a resonable amount of HD space.

Thanks for your time,

Bobby

[Tundra-]

As this is my first post, I'd like to start by shelling out kudos to
Cayars for an excellent kitchen-sink STV which allows me to use just
about every feature I could care about -and also- remove any feature
I don't particularly care for (I hate clutter ). Kudos also to
Jere for his excellent work on Comskip -- one can never go back once
exposed to this most excellent little program. Much thanks also to
the people who laid the groundwork for their work (malore, nielm,
mythtv, etc)

Now that thats said, on to the meat of my post.
I propose two new features to improve the usability of commercial
skipping within the STV.

The first has to do with how the manual commercial skip stv command
functions. Currently, I prefer to manually skip commercials via a
remote button press rather than autoskip. I realized that this is
actually somewhat awkward when I first had to explain it to the wife.

"Now remember, always bring up INFO first -- you can't just hit the
skip button, cause you don't know if the commercials were actually
detected, and you don't want to end up skipping half the show and
going to the end of the NEXT set of commercials."

I'm suggesting that the STV should be smart enough to know whether we
are in -proximity- of any commercials, and ONLY if so, do the skip.
This way, it is no longer necessary to bring up INFO, and we can go
about haphazardly mashing skip all we want. A very simple way to
implement this feature would be to add a simple variable for the max
skip time amount. If pressing the skip button would result in a skip of
greater than 7 minutes, for example, the skip is simply not done.
(Perhaps code the STV to turn off the feature entirely if the variable
is set to 0).
Now I realize, that this isn't a really huge deal...but hey, why not
spoil ourselves. Plus, the feature becomes even more useful when
combined with my next suggestion.

My next suggestion has to do with the output txt file of the comskip
application. When comskip decides on the final commercial blocks, it often
errs too much on the side of caution and ends up tagging some blocks a
commercial or two too short. Although a few simple presses of the FF/RW
buttons quickly gets me back to the show, I can't help but think

"comskip -knew- all of the locations of blackscreen blocks when it did its
processing...why doesn't it just leave that information in the output file
so that the STV has access to it? That way, I don't have to FF/RW/wait to
find the show again."

I am suggesting that instead of only putting the final large commercial
blocks in the output file, comskip should also list the locations
of any blackscreen blocks that occur outside of the main commercial blocks.
That would allow us to use the same manual skip button on the remote
to skip directly to the end of any commercials that comskip didn't
actually tag. Combine this feature with the previously mentioned
feature, and we should be able to blindly and haphazardly mash the skip
button until we get back to show...even if comskip missed several
(or even all) of the commercials in that set.
Obviously, the videoredo output file should not be altered in this way.
Also, autoskip should simply ignore any of these tiny 'commercial blocks'.

These changes seem as if they would be extremely easy to implement...
assuming people think they are a good idea.

Make sense? Any thoughts/comments?

Tundra-

[Glycerine]

Well, I've been trying out cayars. Still trying to figure out some tweaks, but overall i like it much better than the default.

Now this may be covered under the dynamic menus tweak, I dunno, haven't gotten to play with that yet, but one thing i think would help Sage's music playing ability, is to list your music as you have it set up in folders. Much as the video library does. I happen to like the way i have mine set up in genre/artist/cd. And even though i spent some time making the tags correct, i find sage doesn't always pick up on them, correctly or at all. Seems like this may be a simple fix, but if there's another way, please let me know

[jgsouthard]

Feature Request: Have commercial autoskip ignore the last commercial break

Love Cayars STV, love commercial skip.

But one comskip quirk really irks me. I record a lot of U.S. TV series for later viewing. Many/most of these programs put either a closing sequence or a "scenes from next week" tag in the middle of the last commercial break at the end of the program. The ending tag is almost never coding correctly as program material.

If I turn on autoskip, what invariably happens is that the show hits the last commercial break, then autoskips to the end of the recording and pops up the delete dialog box, thus skipping over the ending tag for the show. From that point, you can't rewind back -- you have to exit the program, replay from the beginning, and manually FF to the end of the program to see what you missed.

This has been so irritating that I generally just leave autoskip disabled, even though I'd really like to use it.

My request is that I'd like autoskip to ignore the last commercial break, or maybe ignore any break within the last 3-5 minutes of the recording. That way, commercials would autoskip during the show but the program would never autoskip over ending tags to the end of the recording. If I know that the program is completely over, I can just hit Stop at that point so I don't really care that the commercial isn't skipped.

I can't envision why this (i.e. not autoskipping the last break) shouldn't be the default autoskip behavior, but if anyone objected it could be a selectable option to autoskip.

[mbrown3]

I've requested this tons of times before in the "customizations" forums, hoping that someone would catch the idea and do it in an STV, but so far no one has. Even the OPTION would be great, and I would be willing to make a little extra donation to someone who could make this work. So far no one has done it, and it's driving me crazy. But since Cayars has been great so far about implementing new ideas, figured I'd give it a shot.

I'd really like the ability for right click to bring up an item-specific context menu, particularly in the EPG and recordings screens. If in the guide view, for example, I'd really like to be able to just right click a show, and go to "watch" (if in progress), "record", "set as watched", "add to favorites", etc. In the recordings view, I'd like to be able to go to "watch", "delete..." (with all permutations of like, watched, etc.), "archive", etc.

I'm not sure if this is a Sage "core" issue or not, but thus far no one has indicated as such. If not, hopefully someone with studio can implement this. And, since I use Cayars' STV exclusively, hopefully that someone is Cayars!

[Cayars]

mbrown3,

I hate to tell you but I won't be doing this. I've looked into it and can't remember off the top of my head why I didn't want to do it but I do remember there being some issue that would get in the way from being able to do it.

Now that I type this and can't remember the "why not" of it, I'm going to add it my list and check it out again.