Suggesting features for the next version of SageTV

[simonen]

QAM Support!

I am not sure how active of a role the developers are making in this area, but it sure would be an incredible feature. There is some testing on the OnAir GT and HDHomeRun, but it seems to be users mostly trying to get this to work.

[blade]

Originally Posted by simonen

QAM Support!

I am not sure how active of a role the developers are making in this area, but it sure would be an incredible feature. There is some testing on the OnAir GT and HDHomeRun, but it seems to be users mostly trying to get this to work.

If you read up on the subject you'll see that Sage does support the OnAir GT. It was even posted in one of the beta threads. As for the HDHomeRun the company that makes the product is working on Sage support. So neither are user led efforts.

Also there's not much Sage can do unless the card manufacturers make it possible for Sage to access the QAM functions of their cards. Currently almost every card only does QAM with the software that comes with the cards.

[timm5]

- Better channel setup! From a fresh O/S and SageTV install one has to run Freqshifter to populate WDM registry values, those channel numbers have to correlate with DemiDeus' XMLtv lineup.properties data, which then has to pull the EPG data from the .xml XMLtv / XMLtvGUI scrape(s).
- Once the Analogue channels are in the SageTV "Channel Setup", there is no real way to delete them. Even renaming wiz.bin/bak and restarting has mixed results... very strange all together... needs to be re-thought...

- USB-UIRT can only send 0 thru 9 to the STB. Why not Channel + and Channel -?

- I suppose this list could go on and on, but overall the above two are fundamental "back to basics" IMO

- overall, very happy with SageTV, now that I "know the ropes" a bit.

[mike_15]

Originally Posted by briands

I'd rather fix the need for the spinning logo... V6 seems very sluggish

I my case v6 is as fast as I remember v4 being. And for me the fix is simple, more horsepower. I know everything I have my system doing is taxing my processor. unfortunately by the time I can afford to upgrade, sage has added more features that are going to use more power, it all seems to be a wash.

[cmaffia]

I am still happy in 5.04 land.. I noticed that the first public 6.0 beta was sluggish too ... and when I posted this finding I got a flood of "not for me" reponses. Did anyone else feel that they needed to double their CPU speed once they tried 6.0 or is it just a select few?

Originally Posted by mike_15

I my case v6 is as fast as I remember v4 being. And for me the fix is simple, more horsepower. I know everything I have my system doing is taxing my processor. unfortunately by the time I can afford to upgrade, sage has added more features that are going to use more power, it all seems to be a wash.

[blade]

Originally Posted by cmaffia

I am still happy in 5.04 land.. I noticed that the first public 6.0 beta was sluggish too ... and when I posted this finding I got a flood of "not for me" reponses. Did anyone else feel that they needed to double their CPU speed once they tried 6.0 or is it just a select few?

I would assume it is just a select few, since you got a lot of "not for me" responses. I was probably one of them.

I did notice someone post the other day that v6 was very sluggish and they had a problem with the spinning icon. I believe their problem ended up being related to the disk usage bar. They turned it off in unsupported extras and everything sped up.

I think in the first beta release there may have also been a problem with the malore or mlbdude menus that caused some problems with pegging out cpu usage, but I forget.

Also there were some problems with the sagetvtranscoder.exe that pegged out cpu usage even when it shouldn't have been in use.

In general though v6 has been about the same as v5 was for me when it comes to navigating the menus.

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by cmaffia

I am still happy in 5.04 land.. I noticed that the first public 6.0 beta was sluggish too ... and when I posted this finding I got a flood of "not for me" reponses. Did anyone else feel that they needed to double their CPU speed once they tried 6.0 or is it just a select few?

Not really sluggish, but I upgraded, left town, came back to a POed family because the TV had been down for 2 days. Still on 5.0.4...

b

[marchold]

It would be really nice to be able to set one MedaMVP to play the same stream as another MVP or the main Sage Server. This way you can listen to the same song on every MVP at the same time. It could also be nice for a small TV in the kitchen that would play the same stream as the living room TV. I guess you can sort of do it with a web radio plugin but it would be nice to have somehing on the menu that would allow you to select another player to syncronize with.

[waynedunham]

I would love to see the ability to change the fonts on more screens, i.e. recordings screen.

You can easily change the font sizes on the EPG screen via the options, but on the recordings screen there is no such option. You have to shut down Sage and manually edit the properties file, restart Sage to see if the size is right..... lather, rinse, repeat until you get something that works.

My specific problem is that my TV in the bedroom using an MVP to access Sage the text on the recordings screen is unreadable from across the room. No, a bigger TV isn't realistic right now!

I recently installed Sage V6 Beta and started using the MVP through it. Previously I was running a client version and using Matt's MVPClient. I had to modify the fonts manually for that also.
In looking at the new V6 properties file there's a LOT more in there as far as font options go so I'm not sure which ones to modify for sure.

It would just be nice to be able to modify them on all the possible screens and see the changes instantly like you can with the EPG.

[rickgillyon]

If you enable the "hidden extras" you can customise lots of things, including font size, from within the Recordings screen.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

If you enable the "hidden extras" you can customise lots of things, including font size, from within the Recordings screen.

Ok, wanna' tell me how? I've had the hidden extras enabled for a long time (5309) and don't see any options for font size for the recordings menu. I do see those options for the EPG when you call up the options from there, but they have no effect on any other screens from what I can see.

In the recordings menu all I see is Video Menu options (Display Video on menus and Video Menu Style), Sort by: , Group by:, and Display Filter:. And I see no font options anywhere in the unsupported extras area of detailed setup.

I'm running the latest non-RC beta of V6, but have never seen anything like you imply on any earlier version either. As I said, I had to go into the properties file and find the proper font/size lines for the recordings menu and edit them manually.

[rickgillyon]

Go to Setup, Customize (I think). Scroll to the bottom, in the Unsupported section, set Recordings Style to Malore. Then your right click on Recordings will have more options, one being Malore, which then allows you to change Font size.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Go to Setup, Customize (I think). Scroll to the bottom, in the Unsupported section, set Recordings Style to Malore. Then your right click on Recordings will have more options, one being Malore, which then allows you to change Font size.

Two problems with that.

1) only works with the Malore menu's which I don't like. You tell it to sort by newest and it only sorts within groups by newest, the groups are still alphabetical. I'd prefer it to be like the default where the newest are at the top and all in the like shows are in folders.
I've never liked the Malore recordings menu. Many love it, and to each their own. That's the great thing about Sage, so many UI options.

2) The font in the Malore menus maxes at 18 points which is only marginally better than the default font. That probably is dependent on the font itself since different fonts can appear much different in size at the "same" point size.

So sadly that doesn't help me at all.

[pawn]

An item on my wish list:

A way to move recordings to the imported video folder -OR- add the same type of features (namely, adding cover art) to archived recordings. Right now, to add cover art to a movie I've recorded with Sage, I have to move it to another folder (this can be cumbersome when your storage space is spread all over your network), then create a folder, then download the art. I want to simply click a button and the recording is set aside, maybe even in it's own folder ready for cover art to be downloaded.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

You tell it to sort by newest and it only sorts within groups by newest, the groups are still alphabetical.

If you want by just date, tell it not to group. Unfortunately you end up with a wasted left-hand column, but all the programs are in the right-hand column by date. This is how I have my Scheduled Recordings set up.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

If you want by just date, tell it not to group. Unfortunately you end up with a wasted left-hand column, but all the programs are in the right-hand column by date. This is how I have my Scheduled Recordings set up.

I have that problem on the Roku looking at my recordings via a 3rd party app. With several full seasons of some shows scrolling through the recordings is a real pain.

Basically I guess I don't care for the Malore recordings list, or more specifically the lack of being able to sort/list in a similar fashion to the default.

I think I'll start a new thread about my issue.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I don't care for the Malore recordings list, or more specifically the lack of being able to sort/list in a similar fashion to the default.

Well, the way i specified above it does sort/list in a similar fashion to the default.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

Well, the way i specified above it does sort/list in a similar fashion to the default.

I can't get it to. I want all episodes of 'x' show in it's own folder/list WITH date sorting of the list on the left. I.E. sort by date WITH folders.

Group by Title is imperative! I have several shows with multiple episodes that I haven't watched yet (up to say 10 episodes) so I have to use group by Title. However I want the "group by title" to be sorted by date.

No matter what options I try keeping Group by Title the list on the left is sorted alphabetically.

In the SageTV default list of recordings using Group by Title and Sort by date the list is sorted by date. I.e. Nova with 8 episodes is at the top of my list right now since that "group" contains the newest recording.

[jeh]

There are certain instances in which I do not want SageTV to care if I've watched a show. Suppose I've recorded and watched some movie... or a first-run ep of a TV series. It's not worth saving; I delete it... it turns up in the TV schedule again and I want to watch it again.

Well, according to SageTV, I'd better watch it live or use manual Record. SageTV won't record it from a "Favorite," unless I remembered to clear the "watched" flag before I deleted it.

This isn't how I want it to work. This is not me being "in control."

Doesn't anybody but me EVER want to watch a show again after deleting it?

The ability to clear the watched flag after watching is NOT sufficient. I don't want to have to remember to do that. I also see no way to do that for a show I've deleted (unless I go spelunking in Sage's saved data).

In my opinion, "honor the watched flag" should by default be OFF. Then, you could provide an option to switch it on for particular shows or favorites or whatever, but unless I do that, it should be off.

However to raise the least issues for existing users the current behavior should be the default. Provide an option to "ignore watched flag unless turned on for specific Favorites" in the Setup. There should still be an option to "ignore" or "honor watched flag" in the Favorites, the only difference would be the default behavior.

[jeh]

There are certain instances in which I do not want SageTV to care if I've previously recorded a show... even if the previous recording is still on the hard drive.

For example, maybe I want to record ALL cablecasts of ALL episodes of some show. (Never mind why... just take it as read that I do. One reason is that some cable channels have amazingly whimsical ideas about what time it is; you have to grab several different 'casts to guarantee getting the show end to end.)

SageTV will not do this.

This is not me being "in control" either.

The current behavior is fine as a default, but "allow duplicate recordings" should be an option for Favorites.