BETA TESTING: Getting Started with Phoenix

[bialio]

Phoenix Beta is HERE!

Scope :

Phoenix is a replacement for the SageTV's default UI / STV. It does not add new menus to the default UI.

Phoenix provides functionality in the TV and Movie portions of the SageTV experience. Music, Online Videos, and Pictures can easily be accessed from Phoenix, however these are links into the default UI. Note that when you follow a link from Phoenix that leads you to the default UI, you can always get back to Phoenix by the 'Home' command.

Caveats :

1. Parental Controls - are not guaranteed to work at all in the current incarnation of Phoenix. It might be possible to bypass them if they do work, so if you have a situation where you really need them you might want to wait.
2. This really is a beta - quite a few of the P.I. (Phoenix Initiative) as well as a slew of private beta testers have been using Phoenix full time on our production systems with out incident. But every setup is unique, and we can't guarantee that Phoenix won't trigger a hidden self destruct sequence in your Server. Use at your own risk!
3. Placeshifter works fine on local networks, but if it's not a local network you need to be running one of the SageTV 7.1 Beta loads on your server and placeshifter for Phoenix to work. This is because of a bug in Sage with the way fonts are handled.

Definitions :

Universal Media Browser (UMB)
The UMB is what you will use to view your media.
There are a few variants of the UMB:

1. Single List - Items and Folders are presented in a single vertical list (Left side of the screen), with information on the highlighted item shown to the right. This is the default.
2. Banner Flow -Similar to Single List, however visually optimized to display banners in the list.
3. Grid Flow - Items and Folders are presented in a grid - this is a 'Wall' type view.

A few other browsers are available, however they are more specialized than the UMB. "Movie Flow" is very similar to banner flow, however since Movies don't have banners, it is visually optimized to display the fanart that movies DO have. "Cover Flow" is the classic horizontal list that you've seen.

Views and VFS
When the UMB is launched, it loads a View. Views are a collection of media items. Examples of views that come predefined in Phoenix are 'TV Shows', 'Archived TV Shows', 'Bluray Discs', etc.

Future versions of phoenix will allow modifying, creating, and tweaking views directly from the UI.

VFS stands for 'virtual file system', and is how views are implemented. You won't have to know much about VFS as a user of Phoenix, but if you see that mentioned you know at least what it stands for. More info can be found in the Batch Metadata Tools forum / documentation.

Landing Zone
The Landing Zone is the screen you will first see when Phoenix loads. There are 4 landing zone variants:

1. Cross
2. Horizontal (default)
3. Vertical
4. Box

These are pretty self explanatory, and you will find that you like one more than others and just use that. Note that the same menu items are available through all of these Landing Zones- the menu items are just presented and navigated through differently. One of the options available in the Landing Zone is 'Customize Landing Zone' - where you can change the order of items, hide, rename, etc.

Global Menu
When you are anywhere in Phoenix, the 'Home' Sage command opens up the Global Menu. This is menu offers short cuts to frequently used screens - eventually the items in this list will be customizable through the UI. If you wish to get your hands dirty with some very simple XML code you can customize this now. Also note that pressing 'Home' again while the Global Menu is open will take you back to your selected Landing Zone. Note that you CAN menu (so that the first Home command takes you to the landing zone).

Instant Status Menu
When you are anywhere in Phoenix, the 'Info' Sage command opens up the Status Menu. This menu offers a glimpse of things that are currently going on in your Sage system. Current recordings, recent and upcoming recordings, as well as System Messages are a few of the things you will find in this menu.

Global Option Menu
When you are anywhere in Phoenix, the 'Options' Sage command opens up the Global Option Menu. This menu has 4 groups of functionality, although only a single group is expanded at any time:

1. Context Sensitive - this group is expanded by default, and shows the options that the current menu has made available.
2. Options & Configuration - contains links to user preferences - skins selection and other user settings.
3. DVR Settings - this group contains links to everything related to the SageTV recording engine. Managing favorites, recording schedule, etc.
4. Sage Settings - this group contains links to Sage Detailed Settings, Sage Video Sources, and Sage Plugins menu's from the Default UI.
5. Admin Tools - this group contains advanced options for configuration. This will be hide-able eventually.

[bialio]

Bump.