Longtime beyondTV user

[adajun10]

Hi,
I've been a beyondtv user for a long time and I'm trying out sageTV. BeyondTV has had too many issues with QAM lately. I like SageTV, but my wife - who I gave veto power to said no way. there are just too many menu options. For instance if we want to delete a show, we have to click multiple times and say why we want to delete it.

I'm impressed with all the customizations and forum help, so I told her there must be a way to unclutter the menus. Is there a way to streamline it - or better yet, a way to make the menus work like beyondTV.

thanks

adam

[tmiranda]

Hello Adam, and welcome to the SageTV forums. You'll find a lot of people here who used to use BeyondTV. Although the transition can be frustrating at times I think you will find Sage much more capable and extensible than BTV.

There used to be a customization that made Sage look like BTV, but I do not think that has been ported to Sage7.

Having to press several buttons to delete a show was also one of my pet peeves, that's why I created the "Select and Batch Delete" Plugin. It allows you to "select" several recordings or several groups of recordings and then delete them all in one big "batch". You can find that in the "UI Mod" section of the Plugin manager.

My best advice would be to learn how to do things the Sage way rather than trying to do things the same way as you used to in BTV. It's a bit like learning to use Linux, if you try to do things the same way as you did in Windows you will become frustrated.

You'll find many helpful people here so ask questions as they come up.

[jphipps]

I was a BeyondTV user years ago, but switched to sage because I wanted the hardware extenders instead of having PC's at every TV. That is the good and bad side of sage, it is very customizable... There is a lot of plugins that can customize the behavior. When I switched, I found the SageMC was one of the best interfaces and pretty clean to use. There is also a few new interfaces that are coming out from Phoenix and Ortus ( I am part of Ortus, so I am probably a little partial.. ).

Thanks,
Jeff

[eric3a]

Welcome to the other side.
Like you I came from BeyondTV and found the SageTV interface way too complex and difficult to use.
To date, I still don't use it.

Currently I am running SageMC (latest version 6.6) on top of SageTV 7. You have to manually point SageTV to the SageMC stv file the first time around, but from then on you can customize SageMC like you want.
I made mine look and behave close to BTV, with some logical improvements that work for my house.
You can find all the info you need on SageMC here:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=41

SageTV is confusing at first but if you dig in for a while, the end result is a custom interface that works like you like it and is very stable.
Have a look at this thread:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ht=folder+view


Then for the WAF, you can use the BeyondSageTV theme for SageMC...
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...ght=sageMc+btv

I hope this helps
Eric
There is also a ready made

[nethead]

Left BeyondTV in Sept'09 after 8years and have never looked back. BeyondTV is stuck back in '07 and has been killed by the company. Best to move on from the dead product.

You are coming to SageTV at a good time, the Plug-in system being built-in to SageTV made it a more user friendly system. Yes, there can be a lot to configure at the outstart, but after that it just runs and runs. (using 3 HDhomerun devices, 6inputs)

As far as deleting, I only see one popup and select delete.

You'll want to get comskip installed, that was a difference, not to have auto commercial skip built-in.

Oh, found the Malore Menus useful also.

GoodLuck on your move to SageTV

[davephan]

You might check out the Serenity theme, the color scheme and screen menus are better than the default. You can program a keypad for delete. I also find the batch delete is very handy. You can take over deleting the programs. Every day or two I delete about 30 - 50 programs with the batch delete plugin.

Dave

[ranger]

I converted from BTV a little over a year ago and am really glad I did. SageTV does a whole lot more, so yes there is more to learn. It will take a while to adapt, but I really suggest sticking with it and learning to use it.

SageTV is very customizable with just the default install. Take some time and go through the manual and the menu options. Ask questions in the forum if you need to know how to change something. There is always someone that will help.

There are also some really great plugins and modifications. These will help a lot.

[Fonceur]

If you have an Android or iOS device, in principle you could use TaSageTV or TiSageTV (not released yet) to have a simpler interface for your wife...

[nethead]

Oh, and don't forget the SageTV HD Extenders, no need for extra PCs as with BeyondTV.

[adajun10]

thanks for all the good info. On your advice, I bought an extnder and sagetv server. now I'm trying to install sagemc on the server. I was able to add sagemc as a plugin which was easy - except how do I start using it? I was reading that I need to go to setup, detailed setup, advanced, set full ui package and then navigate to an xml or stv file. i'm not sure where the sagemc xml file is?

thanks

adam

[adajun10]

I went up 2 directories and found sagemc_menu.xml but that locked it up. oops. I found instructions for installing sagemc, but they were outdated and didn't mention installing as a plugin.

[QueOnda]

I haven't used sagemc until the v6 days.

But restart you computer (sagetv server) to see if maybe it needs to.

Then check if there is an option to configure in the plugin screen (now that you installed it).

Then try from main menu, setup, detailed setup, advanced, select the user interface theme or set full ui package again (after you restarted above).

You can try those until someone really knows how to do it.

[eric3a]

You're almost there...
I'm not at my machine but I seem to recall the xml you want to import is called SageMC_16x9 (or something very close to that!), found in the SageTV3 folder (up from the one your'e in in SageTV 7).

Have a look at this thread also:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53442

You may want to make sure you have a large enough Java Heap. The only time I get weird results with SageTV is when my Java Heap is too low. I'm using 1GB for the time being.

Good luck
Eric

[adajun10]

thanks, that worked. You've got one happy customer now - sagemc is a lot more intuitive! I noticed that they stopped development on it and now phoenix is the new thing. Anybody tried that yet?

[nethead]

Be sure to check out: SageTV Ultimate Guide at geektonic, lots of good information

[wayner]

Originally Posted by adajun10

thanks, that worked. You've got one happy customer now - sagemc is a lot more intuitive! I noticed that they stopped development on it and now phoenix is the new thing. Anybody tried that yet?

I switched to Sage7 months ago but I continue to use the SageMC interface on my five HD-200 extenders - I think it is a lot more intuitive and less cluttered. I tried switching but my wife didn't like the Sage7 UI, but I use the Sage7 UI with the Diamond UI plugin on my PCs. I believe that some of the main guys who worked on SageMC in recent years are working on Phoenix.

There should be a Phoenix beta out very shortly and there is another new UI called Ortus that is also about to start beta. Ortus also looks very sweet -check this out http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53730

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/atta...2&d=1296229877

[eric3a]

thanks, that worked. You've got one happy customer now - sagemc is a lot more intuitive! I noticed that they stopped development on it and now phoenix is the new thing. Anybody tried that yet?

Great!
Yes SageMC is a lot more intuitive, and you can tailor the menus to fit your needs easier also.
Many of us are eagerly waiting for Phoenix to rise from the ashes of SageMC.
And as Wayner pointed out, Ortus appears to be a potential replacement also.

In any case, a lot more choices and options than BTV has, so no regrets on making the move.

Eric