Sage6 GUI flaws in abundance

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by stevech

Forum search told me that the properties for an MVP is in the "clients" folder. I have one, looks like MVP's MAC address.

I changed the only instance of
sagetv_recordings/num_rows=5
to =4

rebooted MVP. Did not stop/start sage service (should I?)

Still have 5 rows.

Maybe I can change the font for the recordings menu to be larger via the properties? If so, I don't know which property to edit (there are lots of font size properties).

Your changes won't take unless the service is shut down first.

ALoha,
Mike

[CollinR]

Yup, sorry about that. You must stop the service, edit the properties and then restart it.

Originally Posted by stevech

Maybe I can change the font for the recordings menu to be larger via the properties? If so, I don't know which property to edit (there are lots of font size properties).

I looked at it backwards, was there really anywhere that couldn't handle a slightly larger font. In my case that was fewer and easier to omit changes to. For the most part I increased all of them.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

Your changes won't take unless the service is shut down first.

ALoha,
Mike

ah, gotcha!

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

Your changes won't take unless the service is shut down first.

ALoha,
Mike

That's odd; I changed it while working with Placeshifter while the service was still running, and it worked fine. Perhaps the MVP is diffferent.

Dunno

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by sainswor99

That's odd; I changed it while working with Placeshifter while the service was still running, and it worked fine. Perhaps the MVP is diffferent.

Dunno

You changed the property file, and it took the changes ? That's odd... But if you changed the values in the UI itself, then of course it should be applied right away

Dirk

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by flachbar

You changed the property file, and it took the changes ? That's odd... But if you changed the values in the UI itself, then of course it should be applied right away

Dirk

Yeah, I was little surprised myself; editing the property file for Placeshifter (which was not running, just to be clear) worked fine while the Service was running.

Not sure why; I do know that in the past, I've had no success making property changes to an MVP file while the service was running.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by sainswor99

That's odd; I changed it while working with Placeshifter while the service was still running, and it worked fine. Perhaps the MVP is diffferent.

Dunno

Reboot and take a look at it. I've never had success changing anything in the MVP properties file unless the service was off.


gerry

[sainswor99]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Reboot and take a look at it. I've never had success changing anything in the MVP properties file unless the service was off.


gerry

????

I didn't change the MVP properties file; I changed Placeshifter while the service was running (and Placeshifter was stopped). It worked. Why would I need to reboot? I watched the time stamp on both the properties file and the backup file change.

[ben_95sl1]

I have to agree that the gui is worse for me with 6.2.10 (I use on a 27" 800x600 sdtv, an mvp feeding a 20" SDTV, a client feeding a 19" monitor and some of the items are quite difficult to make out). BUT since most of the fonts are editable, the only major issues are with the packing of the different views on the top of the music section all crammed into the screen; and also the small icons on the left have shrunk too much. Is this readily editable?

Although some fonts are editable, I'm still not able to get any satisfactory number of columns and rows and font size to work very well with my music files (this has been a problem for a lot longer then ver 6 for me). Meanwhile, my friends with xboxes seem to have a lot more songs listed yet still readable. I think there's often too much info provided in sage. It's also just plain difficult dealing/scrolling with 20000+ songs using a p3 600 384mb of ram client.

Thanks for any help!
Ben

[stevech]

Originally Posted by ben_95sl1

I have to agree that the gui is worse for me with 6.2.10 (I use on a 27" 800x600 sdtv, an mvp feeding a 20" SDTV, a client feeding a 19" monitor and some of the items are quite difficult to make out). BUT since most of the fonts are editable, the only major issues are with the packing of the different views on the top of the music section all crammed into the screen; and also the small icons on the left have shrunk too much. Is this readily editable?

Although some fonts are editable, I'm still not able to get any satisfactory number of columns and rows and font size to work very well with my music files (this has been a problem for a lot longer then ver 6 for me). Meanwhile, my friends with xboxes seem to have a lot more songs listed yet still readable. I think there's often too much info provided in sage. It's also just plain difficult dealing/scrolling with 20000+ songs using a p3 600 384mb of ram client.

Thanks for any help!
Ben

Hey! Someone that agrees!

Yes, the screens are too cluttered complicating the font size. And in general, NTSC S-Video, as from the MVP, requires "fatter" fonts than Sage uses. Fonts' body must be 6 pixels, or more. And at least 22 pt. Chroma crawl and smearing result if not (smearing is caused by information in the luminance channel that exceeds the 3.58MHz bandwidth available in color NTSC. A monochrome NTSC transmission, with the color burst off, is up to 6MHz. Note how fat the fonts are in commercial TV broadcast graphics.

the small raster size of the MVP is an issue; I wish it were 800 x 600 or some such. But the UI must design to what the MVP is.

But moreover, Sage needs to revisit the layout. For example, the recordings menu in 6.2 wastes 50% of the font-space per recording folder to say "Recordings: 5", and the folder title is has to fit in half the available space. There's a dark blue folder icon - you could put the "5" there; the icon is almost invisible anyway due to blue-on-blue.

But at least 6.2 eliminated the skinny black font on bright silver (off-white?) background for most (but not all) menus and displays. I'll keep experimenting to get the MVP to have larger font for the all-important recordings menus. We don't care for the thumbnails rendition (personal opinion) because we have 300+ recordings at the moment, and 30 or more folders. The recordings menu page uses 1/3 or 1/2 of the screen for the episodes list and the video window (which we don't use) - this space would be much better used for more and larger rows of recordings/folders.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by ben_95sl1

I have to agree that the gui is worse for me with 6.2.10 (I use on a 27" 800x600 sdtv, an mvp feeding a 20" SDTV, a client feeding a 19" monitor and some of the items are quite difficult to make out). BUT since most of the fonts are editable, the only major issues are with the packing of the different views on the top of the music section all crammed into the screen; and also the small icons on the left have shrunk too much. Is this readily editable?

Although some fonts are editable, I'm still not able to get any satisfactory number of columns and rows and font size to work very well with my music files (this has been a problem for a lot longer then ver 6 for me). Meanwhile, my friends with xboxes seem to have a lot more songs listed yet still readable. I think there's often too much info provided in sage. It's also just plain difficult dealing/scrolling with 20000+ songs using a p3 600 384mb of ram client.

Thanks for any help!
Ben

Xboxes?!?! 20000+ songs. Editable fonts?!? Have you guys looked at this thread? We are all such nerds!

Only in the 21st century could we get chicks!

[Taddeusz]

When I was using my SageTV server as also as a client and had it hooked directly to the TV via S-Video I was running it at 1024x768. I briefly tried it at 800x600 but came to the conclusion that the video looked better at the higher resolution on my SDTV. I realize the effective resolution of NTSC TV is 720x480 but it just overall looked sharper at 1024x768 even on the TV.

The MVP has always looked fantastic. I've personally never had a problem with the font size. Although the small font that gets shown when the title is too long is annoying but still readable on my 32" TV.

I've never noticed any smearing as you call it. Granted, I'm no video expert. It sounds as if you have more experience in this area than I. If you can please point to some examples of this.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by sainswor99

????

I didn't change the MVP properties file; I changed Placeshifter while the service was running (and Placeshifter was stopped). It worked. Why would I need to reboot? I watched the time stamp on both the properties file and the backup file change.

The original poster was talking MVP. Placeshifter or MVP, the principle is the same. Reason why I said reboot is I had done the same and made a change in the file and really didn't notice for sure it hadn't been changed until after a reboot. That's all. If you changed it and it stuck great.

Gerry

[Alfiegerner]

Originally Posted by jominor

Xboxes?!?! 20000+ songs. Editable fonts?!? Have you guys looked at this thread? We are all such nerds!

Only in the 21st century could we get chicks!

Probably my favourite ever Sage post.

Apologies for going OT ...

Steve, out of interest, as you seem to find the stock UI unsatisfying, have you tried SageMC? If so, do you have more complaints about that?

[stevech]

Originally Posted by Alfiegerner

Probably my favourite ever Sage post.

Apologies for going OT ...

Steve, out of interest, as you seem to find the stock UI unsatisfying, have you tried SageMC? If so, do you have more complaints about that?

Many of my too-numerous gripes have to do with the ease of use for the MVP's small real estate (raster size is small).

MCE: No, I haven't tried it. I should and will.

EDIT: How about a link to SageMC - I rummaged around and I don't get the big picture.

[Taddeusz]

What I take from this thread is that you can't please everyone.

If you don't make suggestions during the beta phase of the product then there's no way for them to know what you think about the changes they're making. Certainly you have your opinion about how things have changed but you haven't been part of the process, for better or worse.

Seriously though, if you have some constructive critizism certainly submit it through the official tech support rather than through the user forums, which don't generally get frequented by the developers.

[dflachbart]

Originally Posted by stevech

EDIT: How about a link to SageMC - I rummaged around and I don't get the big picture.

The download can be found here, and the forum thread is here. A new version will be out in a week or two...

Dirk

[Hector]

Originally Posted by stevech

The personal pronoun doesn't go to ME, but to the family members. How 'bout if YOU come over here and deal with the complaints about v6/MVP versus V4?

Maybe you could let one of them log on, it would probably be a lot easier.

They'll take change, as long as you don't make it less convenient. Human Factors 101: Don't remove what people use frequently and are accustomed to. Add the changes on the tangent.

The problem is not human factoring of the UI. The problem is between the chair and the keyboard.

[billvan]

Originally Posted by stevech

thanks for the point by point response


As to the DELETE not being in the top of the menu - if you do mistakenly click it, Yet Another Menu comes up for "are you sure?".

Fewest button pushes. Always.

In "Setup/Detailed Setup/Customize" there is the following option:

"Ask to delete recording at end of playback?".

The choices are "Never", "Always", or "For Non Auto-Delete Recordings only".

If this is set to "Always" you will be promted to delete the show after watching it. Maybe that is what you are looking for.

Hope this helps.

Bill

[DFranch]

Originally Posted by stevech

MCE: No, I haven't tried it. I should and will.

I switched from Sage to MCE for about 1.5 years, and now I have switched back to Sage. With MCE I hope you like every feature right out of the box, because if you don't, there's nobody to complain to about it, and probably no way to change it. Also, they rarely make any kind of enhancements to it, and the only way to get it is to install a new version of windows. There is the occasional plug in, but nothing to write home about. There is one thing about MCE though, it works and it rarely crashed. I have two complaints which were enough for me to switch back. I could rant for a few pages saying what they are, but I'll spare you.