SageTV talk on GreenButton

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by nick_l

but, unfortunately, that is the problem with the Sage architecture, an STV isn't really a skin but "basically" a mini program that runs on top of sage. then, when you have plug ins, they have to be written for each stv, then imported into that stv, etc. Editing or changing anything requires using Studio (ugh)! In my opinion (for whatever its worth), it's an antiquated, confusing mess.

....

This is, I believe, in part the purpose of adding Themes in 6.0. However, I haven't seen much (any?) use of them.

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by kingwr

One thing I can't stand about the default SageTV interface is all those tool icons on the side. I mean, without a mouse, on a TV screen with a remote, who uses those? It just reflects the kind of thinking that went into the interface.

To me that's been the biggest difference between the stock interface and SageMC. I'll agree that MC is prettier and I do like that fact, but it seems much easier to navigate with a remote.

It is however more difficult from a keyboard and mouse since I never remember the keyboard commands and SageMC doesn't offer on screen buttons for everything like the default interface does.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by Djc208

MC is prettier and I do like that fact, but it seems much easier to navigate with a remote.

It is however more difficult from a keyboard and mouse since I never remember the keyboard commands and SageMC doesn't offer on screen buttons for everything like the default interface does.

Actually SageMC was designed specifically for a 10-foot interface to be used with a remote control. You can easily use a mouse with the SageMC toolbar plugin or even touchscreen to control it however.

[xred]

Originally Posted by stanger89

OK, here's your first lump, but take it as a serious question. I look at all that, and all I see is "useless" fluff. By "useless" I mean it doesn't serve a purpose, doesn't add functionality. It might look cool, but it does it really improve the experience? I know I always disable the core animation system in Sage because I find the animations get in the way.

And most importantly, does the lack of it really stop people from using it?

Ding Ding Ding! You've nailed the problem exactly. The UI "slickness" is 100% fluff. Note that its not the same as usability which is a separate factor. I do think the usability could use improvement, but its a separate issue from the "No candy coating = unappealing" issue that bothers many users. The goal IS to add fluff to the UI. I agree that the fluff should be optional and the user should be able to disable it, especially since it will most likely cost some kind of performance penalty.

As far as usability goes, I think Sage would benefit immensely from adopting some variant of the standard MCE / Sage MC UI to act as a bridge to users graduating out of the MCE experience. Use the standard main menu format of TV /Music / Video / Photo accessible directly from the main menu. Off the top of my it head it would be something like:

TV:
- Live TV / EPG
- Recorded TV
- TV Schedule

Music:
- Music Library (media player for files)
- Play disc in CD / DVD Drive
- Online Radio.
- FM Radio.

Video:
- Video Library (anything in your media folder, including ripped DVDs)
- Play Disc in CD / DVD Drive.
- Online Video (Google, YouTube etc.)

Photo:
- Photo Library
- Play Disc in CD/DVD Drive.
- Online Photo (FlickR, Snapfish etc.)

If Sage wanted to keep the left / right navigation scheme then I would also like to see something like the Xbox 360's blade menu system where top level menu names slide out to the left / right as you navigate as opposed to Vista MCE's T menu style. Blade menus add "swish" and give you a visual hint as to where you are.

[ghostlobster]

As a recent MC --> SageTV convert, I just thought I'd toss my 2 cents in here. Personally, after looking at the MS MC interface since 2004, I found the default SageTV interface to be slightly frightening. My UI Test Department (aka Mrs. Lobster) laughed out loud when she first saw it and finally recovered just enough to say 3 small words to me: "No effing way!" Once I slapped SageMC on there, things certainly got better. Yeah, she misses the slick simple interface of MS MC, but she has adjusted nicely and is OK with making this tradeoff for greater functionality. For us, the big sellers were:
1 - HD-PVR support. Far and away the holy grail of home theater computing.
2 - Client support. For me, this was nearly as big as HD-PVR. We were waiting for SoftSled for 2 years in MSland before we were informed that it was not gonna happen. Now, with Sage, we have what I call "SoftSage" out of the box, and the functionality is perfect!
3 - Standard recording format. Having my shows in .mpg, .avi and .ts formats is another big one. Not having to deal with .dvr-ms or the upcoming .wtv <cough cough> formats is nearly worth the investment.

The 2 things that I get reminded about regularly, however, are:
1 - MyMovies. She loved MyMovies in MC. Yes, I know, the Videos panel within SageTV shows the box covers (and they are even correct nearly 60% of the time!) but Brian's MyMovies application did so much more. The support for multi-disk sets, the full movie descriptions, and just the slickness of the applicaiton created a very cool user environment.
2 - One click DVD Creation. Within VistaMC, you just select Create DVD and it goes about its business. When it's done, it kicks out the DVD and smiles at you. With SageTV, I installed SageMC Video Tools 3.0, and still can't get it to work. Granted, I'm sure it's a DUE (dumb user error), but the simplicity of MC at times is missed.
Overall, however, the function outweighs the form in this case. Although, if there is no compelling reason to drive you to SageTV, I would not recommend that a current MS MC user make the switch. If they want full digital TV support without buying a CableCARD PC, and an open architecture including client support, then there is no reason not to switch.

Although, I don't know if anyone else saw this, but the TV Pack for Vista MC will now provide....(dramatic pause)... 16x9 thumbnails! I don't see how anyone can compete with that cutting edge implementation of current technology. All is lost...doom is near!

[Brent]

Originally Posted by ghostlobster

what I call "SoftSage"

I really like that term - much catchier than SageTV Client. We better call Sage to tell them to trademark it quick

1 - MyMovies. She loved MyMovies in MC. Yes, I know, the Videos panel within SageTV shows the box covers (and they are even correct nearly 60% of the time!) but Brian's MyMovies application did so much more. The support for multi-disk sets, the full movie descriptions, and just the slickness of the applicaiton created a very cool user environment.

You can most of what your talking about in SageMC now - I think its time for a blog post that walks us through setting up SageMC's movie organization feature. It's definitely NOT as good as MyMovies, but it's not too bad & does let you do some of what you're wanting. I'll do that post next week for sure...

2 - One click DVD Creation. Within VistaMC, you just select Create DVD and it goes about its business. When it's done, it kicks out the DVD and smiles at you. With SageTV, I installed SageMC Video Tools 3.0, and still can't get it to work.

EvilPenguin is working on the new version of Video Tools - and it's going to help with what your wanting. I have faith in EP as he's a genius in my book.

Lets face it everyone. SageTV is the best HTPC front-end for functionality and features by far over the competition. Its weakness goes to the looks, the ease of setup, the ease of use (in some rare cases) and its somewhat low profile in the web. Together with the great guys at SageTV, we - the community can help eliminate these weaknesses by documenting the areas of need, coding plugins to add features and UI improvements, helping newcomers (and oldtimers) with problems and teaching on these forums and spreading the word about SageTV. Thats why I like threads like this one. I think it keeps SageTV from becoming complacent and helps us think about what really would improve things overall.

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by ghostlobster

Although, I don't know if anyone else saw this, but the TV Pack for Vista MC will now provide....(dramatic pause)... 16x9 thumbnails! :

16x9 thumbnails. Can you explain? (if it's a joke I don't get it cuz I'm SLOOOOW)

[Ryokurin]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

16x9 thumbnails. Can you explain? (if it's a joke I don't get it cuz I'm SLOOOOW)

VMC will give you a thumbnail of the recording in a list, similar to Sage. However, it didn't on 16x9 material. Now it does. Little things like that just makes me feel that VMC was rushed a little in the end. It still is stable and usable, but really wasn't a big step up from MC2005.

[QueOnda]

Originally Posted by Ryokurin

VMC will give you a thumbnail of the recording in a list, similar to Sage. However, it didn't on 16x9 material. Now it does. Little things like that just makes me feel that VMC was rushed a little in the end. It still is stable and usable, but really wasn't a big step up from MC2005.

OMFG!

hahaha (dramatic pause) I get it!

Things are funny when you understand LOL

[mbowe]

I think this thread is very valuable and I really appreciate the embracing of potential new users by this community. The willingness to hear whats being said and the desire to thrive is fantastic, it's a huge plus to the Sage platform. I thought I'd give a couple more comments on motivation behind picking a HT, and/or Media Server, solution. I was a fairy early HTPC user, eventually settled on BeyondTV and myHTPC/Meedio for a number of years, UI was one of the biggest drivers for me at the time. I actually bought and paid for a couple copies of Sage back then to help fund the effort, even though I didn't intend on using it. I felt it had the best architecture and approach to addressing the compicated needs of a complex distributed home theater, and wanted to help ensure they eventually got around to reworking the UI by putting some money into it. As we all know, that is a process still underway.

Chapter 2, I travel quite a bit, which meant my family would be home alone with a sometimes finicky HTPC in the living room. The constant balence managing form factor, cooling, stability, upgrades, etc. with the HTPC became problematic. Thus, the quest began for an extender as an alternative approach. I had an XBox 360, built up a solid system that I could now treat as more of a hands off server, give up a little flexibility and function and leave the family with a fairly stable TV and okay music solution. I was sure streaming DVD/movies, stronger music management, reliable TV guide with subchannel support, etc. would come along shortly. After 3 years, effectively zero progress has been made in VMC other then a few valient effort by a small number of plug-in developers. After years of ambiguity and erratic expectations setting, we're all now suppoed to wait for, and rebuy, Windows 7 to cure our ills. But, they still won't tell us what we should expect that curing to consist of. At least we now know that VMC is as is for the known future.

Chapter 3, I've learned much over the years, namely, I don't want a PC in my living room. I want a CE device, that turns on, exposes cool options of entertainment (TV, movies (DVD, Netflix, eventually BD/HDDVD), well maintained music, weather,etc) in a compelling UI and needs no massive maintainance or training to use. I have the ability to force some of the various options to do meet the technical requirements, but all require some handholding. I'd prefer to do fun stuff like watch movies in high resolution rather then spends days transcoding or having to train the family to start these types of movies this way, and other types of movies that way.

Anyways, I guess the moral of the story, after reading my short novel, the distributed architecture of Sage, and the relatively new additon of an HD extender to the mix is about as close to nirvana as we can get today. So, before I cave and go with an OTA settop box and books from the library, I'm gonna give it one more shot. I'm dropping the pipe dream that is VMC, new Sage equipment is enroute and I'm installing a new server this weekend.

More importantely for this thread, as compelling as my journeys through Home Theater are, is that in additoin to UI, extenders are important, I grew into that after a few years with an HTPC. They rre most effective at easily extending to multiple rooms, and keep the server tasks relegated to a server type system. I hope the extender use case can be kept in mind as this great community works to evolve things like the UI. The HD extender, the desire to improve the User experience by this community and the architiecture of the Sage platform are bringing me to Sage.

Thanks All, this thread played a big roll btw.

[ghostlobster]

Originally Posted by QueOnda

OMFG!

hahaha (dramatic pause) I get it!

Things are funny when you understand LOL

Whew...I seriously was worried that my reference was too obscure.
And yes, I'm serious about that, not sarcastic.

[pjpjpjpj]

ghostlobster - I just want to know how you found a "Mrs. Lobster" who actually cares about A/V stuff. Seems like it's a 98% male industry.

"Mrs. pjpjpjpj" just wants basic functionality and nothing more. She doesn't even get upset like I do when the extender locks up and has to be rebooted. She gets mad when I install a new plug-in and it causes problems, and she gets mad when I spend too much time "playing" on the (server) in the basement when "it's just fine now" ("I don't know why you keep messing with it, we really don't need these new add-ons").

She's so far from having any interest in "slickness" of UI that if I went and changed to a new, slick, 7.0 interface, she'd give me a "why did you have to go and change it, it worked fine!".

I know, I know, it's all about personal tastes....

[kingwr]

Well, it appears my 21 days are up. I only got to run SageTV like 3 times in those 3 weeks. Never say SageTV Studio, never got to play with the customization of the SageMC menus, and never got to install custom skins. I had hoped it would be an easy decision to switch, but I just didn't get there in the limited amount of time.

Someone mentioned that the 21 days may reset in the released version of 6.4. If so, I will give a continued look. But for now, I think I will stay with the status quo of MCE 2005.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by ghostlobster

1 - MyMovies. She loved MyMovies in MC. Yes, I know, the Videos panel within SageTV shows the box covers (and they are even correct nearly 60% of the time!) but Brian's MyMovies application did so much more. The support for multi-disk sets, the full movie descriptions, and just the slickness of the applicaiton created a very cool user environment.

Care to post, say the top 5 things that are "missing" vs MyMovies?

[IanJohnson]

Maybe some of these things are possible, but I am still in the process of setting up sage and considering the switch from MCE. I actually bought Sage anyway because the 21 day trial isn't enough time, when working around family demands, etc.

Anyway a big one for me is multi disc. I want one cover to represent all discs that came in the case, not have a separate cover image for the bonus disc. My Movies can handle box sets, though it is really no different from putting multiple titles in a folder. The only problem with doing this in SageMC is that I then get a litte folder icon, rather than a full size cover image.

I also want a separate application for DVDs. I see my DVD collection as being its own entity, like Music and Pictures. For me Videos is home movies, music videos, trailers, clips I've found on the web, my own work (I am an editor). I don't want this stuff mixed with my DVDs. I can put all of my DVDs in a folder within videos, but that puts it a level deeper. I want DVDs to link from the top menu along with TV Music and Pictures. Also all the DVD organization options like genre, release date, actor, etc don't apply to non-movie videos. You wouldn't have all those extra menu options hanging around the Pictures interface.

Also I haven't had to add any newly ripped movies into SageMC yet, so I'm not sure what the process is like. Does it happen automatically based on the folder name? The My Movies collection manager is pretty nice, and it links up to a great database which includes back cover images. It's 2ft, rather than 10ft, but then I never rip on the HTPC ayway since it is usually being used for TV. I would love to be able to use My Movies and its manager as a backend for DVDs in Sage.


Ian

[kingwr]

I agree with Ian on the My Movies. This biggest think about My Movies for me is that it seperates my ripped DVDs from My Videos (home videos) and properly displays the cover art (MCE 2005 My Video thumbnails are square, so cover art is cut off). I also like the database manager. I have not played with the Vista MC version yet.

[ghostlobster]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Care to post, say the top 5 things that are "missing" vs MyMovies?

Ian's summary is pretty close to my list as well:
1 - Full multi-disc collection support. I liked selecting The Fellowship of the Ring extended edition, and being presented with the true box cover, movie description, actos, director info, etc, and then having the list of discs there rather than a list of folders.
2 - My Movies is a selection off the main menu and it was its own item. Not Videos, which contains home movie and online videos. I select My Movies, and I'm brought to my DVD collection. No additional layers.
3 - The setup and management application in MyMovies is pretty awesome. I run it from a remote PC and it populates the other PCs with all the data, and correctly organizes everything however I want it. Genre, ratings, whatever. Rifght now, in SageTV, when I select Videos, I'm still presented with the first layer called "Unassigned". I then have to select the "Unassigned" folder and grab the movie I want. Yes, I know, I'm sure that there's something I could do to assign each movie to something specific, but I really don't feel like going into each movie, assigning it to something and then going on to the next one.
4 - The presentation in My Movies is just plain pretty. You are presented with the actual movie cover (in SageTV, I get some very interesting movie box covers!) and can select the back cover for viewing, the full movie description, internet trailers for that movie (if available) etc. Granted, things like that provide nothing from a functionality standpoint, but from a wow-factor and a coolness f standpoint, it works nicely.
5 - Unsure...Off the top of my head, I think those 4 cover it for me.

[ghostlobster]

Oh no, Mrs. Lobster does not really care about A/V stuff...but she dos care about her viewing environment. She wants it to be simple, intuitive, pretty and stable. If it's lacking in any of those catagories, I hear about it.

And yes, I get the constant mantra from her "Will you stop tinkering! It's working fine, don't mess it up again!"

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

ghostlobster - I just want to know how you found a "Mrs. Lobster" who actually cares about A/V stuff. Seems like it's a 98% male industry.

"Mrs. pjpjpjpj" just wants basic functionality and nothing more. She doesn't even get upset like I do when the extender locks up and has to be rebooted. She gets mad when I install a new plug-in and it causes problems, and she gets mad when I spend too much time "playing" on the (server) in the basement when "it's just fine now" ("I don't know why you keep messing with it, we really don't need these new add-ons").

She's so far from having any interest in "slickness" of UI that if I went and changed to a new, slick, 7.0 interface, she'd give me a "why did you have to go and change it, it worked fine!".

I know, I know, it's all about personal tastes....

[Brent]

Admittedly these solutions aren't ideal as they aren't all nicely integrated in like MyMovies, but just wanted to point out that there is a way to handle a few of your needs mentioned above:

• Mass importing of movies metadata & covers into SageTV can be handled with Batch IMDB Importer (free, but a separate program at the moment) or with DVD Profiler (not free). I use DVD Profiler since I can better control the database & more easly choose the covers.
• Multi-Disc support can be done with the Multi-Disc DVD Profiler Importer

These things eventually need to be integrated into a plugin or right within SageTV or SageMC itself, but for now there is a way to do it at least.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by kingwr

I agree with Ian on the My Movies. This biggest think about My Movies for me is that it seperates my ripped DVDs from My Videos (home videos) and properly displays the cover art (MCE 2005 My Video thumbnails are square, so cover art is cut off). I also like the database manager. I have not played with the Vista MC version yet.

FWIW, the stock STV separates DVDs from the rest of your videos by default

Originally Posted by ghostlobster

Ian's summary is pretty close to my list as well:
1 - Full multi-disc collection support. I liked selecting The Fellowship of the Ring extended edition, and being presented with the true box cover, movie description, actos, director info, etc, and then having the list of discs there rather than a list of folders.

Hm, box sets aren't too hard to handle, not exactly how one would distinguish between a "multi-disc" set and a "box" set, in order to handle them differently (FYI, just thinking out loud mainly).

2 - My Movies is a selection off the main menu and it was its own item. Not Videos, which contains home movie and online videos. I select My Movies, and I'm brought to my DVD collection. No additional layers.

As I noted above, the stock STV lists DVDs separately from videos. Though is uses the folder structure of the DVD to identify it as such.

3 - The setup and management application in MyMovies is pretty awesome. I run it from a remote PC and it populates the other PCs with all the data, and correctly organizes everything however I want it. Genre, ratings, whatever. Rifght now, in SageTV, when I select Videos, I'm still presented with the first layer called "Unassigned". I then have to select the "Unassigned" folder and grab the movie I want. Yes, I know, I'm sure that there's something I could do to assign each movie to something specific, but I really don't feel like going into each movie, assigning it to something and then going on to the next one.
4 - The presentation in My Movies is just plain pretty. You are presented with the actual movie cover (in SageTV, I get some very interesting movie box covers!) and can select the back cover for viewing, the full movie description, internet trailers for that movie (if available) etc. Granted, things like that provide nothing from a functionality standpoint, but from a wow-factor and a coolness f standpoint, it works nicely.

Did back cover really disappear from SageMC? I thought that was in there? Everything else you list (I think) should be in SageMC if you've imported metadata from somewhere (like DVD Profiler).

5 - Unsure...Off the top of my head, I think those 4 cover it for me.

I think that's a helpful list, there's so many aspects to MyMovies that it's really hard to figure out what really makes it stand out.