V7 UI Impressions

[blade]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Certainly we'll need to have civil discussions about complaints and suggestions.

Civil being the key word. One of my biggest complaints about online communication such as forums is that people tend to be a lot ruder than they are in the real world. I don't understand why people think just because they're communicating online common courtesy and manners don't apply.

Since the original poster referred to the UI as a new coat of paint I'll use that analogy. If I hire a company to paint my house and I'm not happy with the job they did I'm not going to start the conversation about my displeasure by telling them I'm not impressed by the job, they don't know how to paint, they won't hire someone who does, and the poor job they did on my house won't gain them any new customers. That's the equivalent of what was said in the first 3 sentences of the original post. Honestly what kind of response would that get anyone in the real world?

I'm sure there will be people who'll argue that everyone has a right to express their opinion. Maybe they'll say they've paid for the product so they have a right to complain, etc... I agree and they have that same right in the real world as well; however, I imagine most wouldn't go about it in the same manner they do online. At least I hope they'd have the manners to attempt a civil resolution first.

While I referenced the original post I didn't intend for my post to be directly solely at the original poster. There have been several threads/posts by various people not just in this forum, but others I frequent, that have gotten to me a bit. I just needed to vent a little and this thread and it's already negative vibe seemed like a good place. I know it will never happen, but it would be nice if conversations could be more civil and less aggressive/accusatory.

BTW I think Brent's post about how to provide feedback about the new UI was great.

[wado1971]

Originally Posted by Rico66

...I think it would be interesting to hear, what people who like or dislike the new UI used previously, specifically SageMC users. I don't doubt that anyhow who used the default will not like the new one. This is a no contest (unless you're into 20th century technology).

I'm a previous default user who changed to MC about 7 different times for a total of approx 6 months with the MC UI (kept going back to the default).
I think the v6 default had a very usable minimalist feel which I came to appreciate (with DM and various stvi's). But I kept trying MC for the amazing MC only plugins.

I think sagetv did a great job balancing it's two user interfaces and not overdoing one over the other.

Ok - I'm going to hide behind a bunker after this comment..... I actually think it would do this community a disservice to breath new life into MC. Let the talented folks let go of that UI and move into bigger and better STV endeavors (Ortus/Phoenix) .... and better yet, develop stvi's which work across all future STV's.

Edit: ps-whoever changed the topic title - THANK YOU!

[Narflex]

I've retitled this post to more accurately be 'V7 UI Impressions' since it covers a lot of points of view.

And the preferred way to give feedback that you want to ensure we actually read is via a bug report. We don't read all the posts on the forums because we'd have no time for work if we did that.

Also, starting a thread that focuses on a specific change (or an overall themed change) can work well also. And then sending a link to that thread via a bug report. Most importantly, discussions need to be civil and the opinions of everyone should be respected. Users that are respectful, are the ones we tend to listen to the most since they are generally the most level-headed in their thinking (being respectful doesn't mean you need to be a fan boy who likes everything we do, without criticism and suggestions we wouldn't be where we are today)

Things like the Delete suggestion are interesting; but there's many years of feedback that we have to weight a change like that against. Things like 'deletion queues' that don't actually remove files until the diskspace are needed would be great (and there actually is an internal deletion queue system which is used on Linux by default to deal with the long deletion times in ext2/3 filesystems)....but unfortunately too many users would complain about files not getting removed when they ask to delete them (there were lots of complaints in the past about files being left around from channel surfing that weren't removed until the diskspace was needed; so we had to add something to be much more proactive about deleting them). If we were a closed system like Tivo; then the users would never know....but on a PC where the filesystem is open, it's a whole other ballgame. So that's why such a change is not a simple one.

That's why the Studio exists; so changes can be made to turn the UI into something that is just what an individual wants. Because there's no way to please everyone with the default UI....but now with the massive simplification of plugin installation, users are able to install community provided tweaks much easier which brings us one step closer to trying to please everyone even though it may involve installing a couple plugins to accomplish it.

Thanks again for all the feedback guys; we really do appreciate it.

[Rico66]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

I'll start a thread in the SageMC forum for issues under V7. Please post any problems there so I can find them easily when I'm ready to make the fixes. Thanks.

Aloha,
Mike

Thanks Mike. I'll be running MC for the next couple of days to try this ...

[49studebaker]

In my opinion, it would be nice if there was a way to visually design the menus. For example, if I want to remove "Music" from the Main Menu, I could enter visual design mode, right click on the menu item, and then click delete. I know it is possible to accomplish this task with Studio but to the best of my knowledge it is not as easy.

Another example, let’s say I would rather have the TV signal indicator on the OSD instead of the volume indicator. I could enter visual design mode, right click on the volume indicator, and then click delete. I would then select "Add Item" button and then select TV signal indicator from the list of items. The TV signal indicator would appear on the screen and then I could use the arrow keys to position it on the OSD.

[SprDtyF350]

My impression so far is that I love it.. Is it perfect? I don't know. But for me it is the best thing out there, and I have tried probably all of them.
Having used Sage since the 1.4 days means something must be right about it. Sometimes it seems folks forget that it is just TV. Get too serious. You do not get to have any say in how any of the others work, and I have always found Sage to be responsive to anything I have ever asked about.
I like simple and straight forward. I want Sage to be reliable. Having played with computers since the late 70's when nothing about them was reliable Sage still impresses me with just how well it does what it is supposed to do..

It gets better every version. And I see plenty of new behind the scenes improvements. I had no issues with the old interface and with a change of theme background to something not quite so busy I would love this interface also.

You can't get a better program to watch TV with. It won't ever please everyone. But it is pretty darn good and my family and I would be lost without it...

Thanks Sage...

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by 3dOptics

In my opinion, it would be nice if there was a way to visually design the menus. For example, if I want to remove "Music" from the Main Menu, I could enter visual design mode, right click on the menu item, and then click delete. I know it is possible to accomplish this task with Studio but to the best of my knowledge it is not as easy.

It's pretty close to that.

Another example, let’s say I would rather have the TV signal indicator on the OSD instead of the volume indicator. I could enter visual design mode, right click on the volume indicator, and then click delete. I would then select "Add Item" button and then select TV signal indicator from the list of items. The TV signal indicator would appear on the screen and then I could use the arrow keys to position it on the OSD.

There seems to be a decent degree of misunderstanding about what studio is. Studio is not a "programming" environment, it's not like Eclipse or Visualstudio.

To boil it down and greatly oversimplify it. Studio presents a tree (like a standard filesystem tree) of all the items in the GUI.

At the most basic level, you can do exactly what you describe. Highlight the Music button "widget", and delete it. You can move it around buy simple commands to reorder the menus. You can create new buttons by just clicking on "New Button" and then dragging a menu into/under it and you've now got a new Button/menu.

The only thing really missing is a predefined set of "superwidgets" like your signal quality example, but that's OK because if it exists somewhere, you can copy it.

[tonysathre]

A drag and drop type of interface design would be really nice. Much like SquareSpace.com for building websites. I know it's possible because AMIS had elements that were 'drag and drop' but only certain parts of the interface supported it. The rest of the elements were static. Something like this would solve a lot of issues that people have with the interface because they could essentially design it themselves to fit their liking.

[WellThen]

Originally Posted by mr_lore

I agree, the fact that they got 3yr old+ hardware to not only maintain speed but INCREASE the performance and looks in my opinion is amazing. If you dont like the click count it takes to do whatever your doing get off your ass and make a skin with the new tools/xbmc support.

Just wondering if anyone knows - the performance improvement mentioned here - is it just for the extenders, or is there any improvement for the PC clients? I ask because I have a notebook in my family room that will play back 720p and 1080i video with an early revision of Sage 6, but if I try to update it, even to a later rev of Sage 6, HD becomes unwatchable. And I don't want to lose the extra configurability of having a PC client, by going to one of the extenders.

Oh, and I guess my other question is - can I run a v6 client if I upgrade the server to Sage 7?

[samgreco]

Interestingly, I just saw this on my HTPC Client. And it has more than enough juice to play HD stuff. In fact it was always flawless on V6. I thought it was just a fluke and figured I would just record something else to check it.

I think we need to file bug reports.

[jalaram]

Originally Posted by WellThen

Oh, and I guess my other question is - can I run a v6 client if I upgrade the server to Sage 7?

Wow, I can answer something for once.

From the announcement thread:

SageTVClient V6 is NOT able to connect to a V7 server, and a v7 client cannot connect to a v6 server.

[WellThen]

Originally Posted by jalaram

Wow, I can answer something for once.

jalaram - thanks for passing that along. So it's all or nothing, and I'd probably just have a try it to see if the V7 client works on my old Dell 5150 Notebook.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by osburnfamily

I don't necessarily consider using MediaCenterStudio to rearrange the icons as a hack. It was written to do what MS SDK allows for in modifying MediaCenter... much the same way that I expect the Sage Studio does?

I'm guessing Microsoft does consider MediaCenterStudio a Hack. Or at least something they don't mind messing up with an update
TheDigitalLifestyle

There has been no official word from Microsoft that I am aware of regarding this issue. But customizing Media Center menus is a “hack” so I wouldn’t expect one any time soon if at all.

I don't argue that customizing menu items is something that is nice to have - but I would argue that MS didn't build it in as a better way than with SageTV's Studio. SageTV's Studio at least provides an official way to do such customizations - those that are simple menu adjustments as well as complete UI's.

Back on topic: Has a thread been started to discuss the Video/Movies UI suggested changes? I have a bunch for that category

[SWKerr]

I decided to give it some time before casting a verdict on the UI. Generally anything unfamiliar would leave you feeling a little lost and therefore somewhat disappointed. After about a week I have some thoughts.

First I am a SageMC user with TV Explorer and MovieWall. I am also running the Web and Metadata plugins. All great tools.

At this point I am running in test mode with the server on my main desktop attached to the HDHR. I still have 2 HD-PVRs that are on the main production box and may move one over for testing this weekend. I also have two client machines running Sage7 as well. These are in the kitchen and bathroom so I have really just watched the news and listened to some music at this point. I have also done some extensive playing on my desktop.

The Verdict: I think its great. I would change some things but I would guess that everyone here would and that we would never be able to agree on what those things should be. The GUI is just smoother and easier to navigate than the old version.

Will I upgrade? I have already dropped cash, so yes. The upgrade timing of the prod box is still to be decided. I have had to reevaluate what plugins I can't live without. I will probably walk away from some functionality for the pretty GUI assuming the DVR functions are stable. (Has been stable for one week with the HDHR)

Things I would Like: ( I am sure developers will do these at some point)
1. Dynamic Menus: Please! Please! Please!
2. Long list Navigation. I have very long Movie, Music and Recordings listings. In SageMC I can get a quick menu of the Alphabet and skip directly to that part of the listing. It can take a long time to Navigate the Music Library especially. This is the right arrow in SageMC so this would not work well with the new Naviagion setup but a keyboard shortcut that I would assign to a button on the remote would be great.
3. Imported TV shows that show up in TV Menu and not Videos. In TV Explorer imported videos flagged as TV in the metadata show up with all the other TV series recordings. Title view under Videos is almost useless for me since I have a lot of imported multi episode TV series rips. (This is the main reason I use TV Explorer.)
4. Navigate directly from Artist to Songs. I have no use for Albums 98% of the time.

I reloaded a PC with a clean Win7 load and added Sage7, ffdshow, Silverlight and the Flash beta. This is a ATI 3450 video card on a 780G motherboard and everything worked perfectly without any significant tweaking. The Playon plugin worked perfectly for Netflix and Hulu and all my MPEG2 and h.264 recording and movies played back flawlessly. This bodes well for newbie setups and adoption.

I also think the new plugin manager is a major improvement as well. Still think the term STVi is confusing for a beginner but a major ease of use enhancement regardless.

[Mark SS]

In short, excellent work SageTV. The new UI capabilities are great, responsiveness is much improved, some useful new features. That said, there are lots of quick wins that would improve the usability of the default UI.

TV / Guide
Filter by category would be handy. Some way to group sets of channels then filter by those groups also.

Option to "fiddle" Logo/Name/Number layout. Would be much tidier if it could show logo where present but use that placeholder for text where there is no logo. We've got some pretty long channel names here and it looks messy having a name in a variety of reduced sizes when there is an empty slot next to it where the logo would be.

EDIT: Forgot the one thing thats always REALLY annoyed me!
I have the guide display as 2 columns of 60 minutes. Wouldn't it make sense for the time value to be shown at the hour marker, rather than in the middle of that hours block? I've basically got 20:00 appearing in the header at the 20:30 point in the guide data.

EDIT: I watch the news but I don't want news programmes to be Intelligent Suggestions. I don't want to mark everything that's news as don't like, so could we have a "Never record programme x on channel x" mechanism please?

Videos
Addition of ISO and blu-ray playback is great, although mine aren't being picked up yet (bug submitted).

Disappointed with display options in this area. Folder view is the only viable option if you have content beyond ripped DVDs. Titles seems a little pointless in its current form. Grouping options might help so episodes of series are shown as a series, rather than episodes. Doesn't seem to plug into metadata at all?

Wall type display in DVDs is a great improvement.

Music
Doesn't appear to be many changes here. Wall type display would be great, combined with filtering by Artist/Genres/Years etc. Is there anyway to start the photo slideshow screensaver when playing music? That would be a welcome addition.

Photos
Brilliant. I used to grumble whenever I saw friends apple tv kit showing an animated photo screensaver while playing music, now we've got it. Simple things please simple minds I guess

Plugin Manager
Good work!

DVB Radio
Another very handy addition for me (listening to football coverage when abroad). Couple of issues I've noticed which bug reports have been submitted for.

General
Seems pretty stable. Have had a couple of UI crashes but nothing major.

[rmac321]

Originally Posted by David G

How many times have you ever clicked 'Delete' by accident?

I've done it a couple times. Partly because of the placement on the HD200 remote. I've hit delete (or record) several times when intending to skip fwd. Because it was an intended skip forward, it could have easily been an accidental multi-press. My solution was to disable the delete (and record) button.

This brings up the next thought - David G says he uses an extender but doesn't like the default button selections. It is pretty simple to remap the buttons and functions on the HD200. I haven't upgraded to V7 yet, but I presume that remote re-mapping is still available. For Instance, you could make whatever buttons you like do your chapter forward and reverse. No need to demand that Sage change when the ability to customize is already in your hands.

I suspect David G's intentions are good, so I hope he takes this not as sarcastic, but as a gentle nudge. I hope he takes the time to learn Studio and sits down and designs a UI the way he thinks it should be done and posts it for all to use. Those that are in agreement with him can use his design. Those of us that like more info and less drilling through menus can take a look and see if there is any merit to his ideas.

[PeteCress]

Here's my initial impression of 7.

Admittedly shallow in light of other's observations about the functionality.

But UI is important too.... and, for my money, 7 is a comedown visually.

Maybe that sounds too strong... bc the diff between it being irritating/dysfunctional and being pretty slick is mainly just a matter of getting rid of those photographs and showing the submenu flyouts right away as the user walks the home screen's list.

Maybe the answer lies in "Themes". i.e. There might be a theme that does away with those photos that I find so annoying.

The Good:

- Navigation via LeftArrow/RightArrow is very convenient on a PC.

- Response seems tb significantly improved. Snappy, even - but I think that's because of the ability to navigate the menu heirarchy via arrow keys.

- They didn't move the furniture around (as Microsoft seems to do gratuitously with every new release of Windows)


The Bad:

Atom-Powered Netbook (mine is an Asus 901)

In spite of navigation seeming tb snappier on a "normal" PC, navigation bogs down badly on my Atom-powered netbook connected via WiFi-N. No such booging down under v6 using the same device/connection. Gotta wonder if pushing all those bitmaps has something to do with it.



Home | TV | Recordings | All Recordings (choose a group of recordings)

I chose a group named "Charlie Rose", which had 28 recordings in it.

v6 used to show information about each recording on the line of the recording. The date of the show, for instance. viz: http://tinyurl.com/28bdm27

V7 just shows the name of the show - the same name.... over-and-over-and-over-and-over again; giving information about only the currently-selected recording in a separate area of the screen. viz: http://tinyurl.com/27kf29a

This is a major reduction in functionality from 6.



Home | Online displays:

Weather
YouTube Videos
Channels.com
More Online Services

But selecting More Online Services results in a screen that has "Weather", "YouTube", and "Channels.com" entries.

Why the additional level in the hiearchy? Seems like "Weather...YouTube Videos...Channels.com....More Online Services" are arbitrary/redundant.

Should just show the contents of "More Online Services" right away insteas of making the user drill down.


Home | Videos | DVD/BD

There seems tb a lot of unused screen space.

- Titles are truncated to what? 15-20 characters?
Seems tb a comedown from v6.

- On right side of screen a rather large area is taken over
by "DVD", Date/Duration". Aside for wasting half the screen
it does not tell the duration - just the date (presumably the
CreationDate of the DVD folder?... Does anybody really care
about this information enough to trash up a high-level screen with
it instead of putting it in a popup or just in smaller type in less area?


Home | Videos |DVD/BD

Walk the list.

Selection indicated by DVD icon jumping out at you/getting larger instead of just highlighting the current row like all the other Windows applications I'm familiar with do - including other screens in SageTV

Visually distracting, adds no functionality.

It should just highlight the row same as other SageTV lists do.



Home

Walk the list ("TV", "Videos", and so-forth).

Instead of revealing the submenu for each list item, it shows a photograph. e.g. A couple of drumsticks on a drum head for "Music". The brightness/colors overwhelm the meaningful menu information and contribute nothing.

This adds no functionality and is distracting to the user.

Instead of the picture, it should show the sub-menu choices. This would also further enhance the already-improved "Snap" of the UI.



Install v7

At least some V6 settings are lost. e.g. The keyboard "Back" key had been associated with the SageTV "Back" command in my installation.
After installing v7, that association had to be re-created.

The v7 install should preserver v6 settings whenever possible.



Home | Setup | SageTV Plugins | Installed Plugins

Select a plugin on the list (I selected "PlayOn for SageTV: Netlflix/Hulu Queue Importer").

Click on the selection.

Observe "Options for the "PlayOn for SageTV : Netflix/Hulu Queue Importer' Plugin:" dialog.

Click "View Plugin Details"

Instead of showing the details right away, it flashes the useless photograph (the one with the Ethernet patch cords) that accompaniess the setup menu.

This adds nothing and is distracting.

The only rationale for those photographs that I can think of is some sort of placemarker to indicate where in the main menu list we are. But flashing the screen with a bunch of colors/images just to do that is hard on the user's eyeballs. Some text at the top of the screen would be more than enough.


* merged with existing old topic *

[Polypro]

I like it...and never thought I would coming from a perfectly tweaked v6. It needs channel logos on the recording screen (near all the icons) and the live preview window (if active, in a window) looks stretched...but I never realized how "old" v6 looked until v7. Thumbs up.

P

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by PeteCress

Return To V6

Upon re-installing version 6, I found that Wiz.bin had been corrupted. That was good for a hour or so of panic/head-scratching, but I finally realized what was up and restored it from last night's backup. Dunno who did it... but that's not a good sign to me.

According to the release notes, the version 7.18 wiz.bin is not backwardly compatible. This means that when you install Sage 7.18 or newer, it updates wiz.bin. If you later un-install and try to go back to an earlier version, they will no longer be able to use that copy of wiz.bin.

It is important to make a backup of your wiz.bin before upgrading to a newer version of Sage (I recommend backing up your whole SageTV folder before upgrading Sage or installing new hardware).

By the way, you can still use the old Sage TV v6 style interface with Sage 7 if you prefer that one. That STV file was called SageTV3.xml, and can usually be found at be found at "C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\STVs\SageTV3\SageTV3.xml".

Most of the old v6 imports will still work with this STV under Sage7 (but you will lose some of the new version 7 functions like the plugin manger).

Also, there are some themes available for the new Sage7 STV through the Plugin Manager. There's not a lot yet, but you might want to check them out before you give up on version 7.

[Brent]

When I read about those that have affection for the "old" V6 UI's I wonder if they realize they can simply import those UI's in V7 instead of downgrading.

I see the old V6 Standard UI as something like Windows 3.1
V6 standard is a step up - certainly not perfect, but getting there. But I don't understand the reinstalling V6 because of the UI. That's just a head scratcher for me.