Why is KODI so much better than SageTV at ________ ?

[jptheripper]

I keep looking at Kodi, b/c i struggle with a few items in Sage.

1. I have 2200 movies on my server. The wall flow in sage, even on the hd300, is painfully slow. And sort by year is backwards and I cant change it. On the hd100, its unuseable
2. I have 10000+ tv episodes. I want to see them by title (in a wall) then by season (in a wall) then an episode list. This seems impossible, and even if it was, way to slow
3. hd100s cant decode dts. The hd100s are hooked to tvs in bedrooms, so no receivers. Just annoying to go to watch something, no audio, have to convert.

Basically i want an hd400 with better performance and dts decode (if needed). And a real wall flow option built in. And i would be happy for a decade.

Kodi - seems it would be better at the wallflows. But my primary use is still tv viewing, live and recorded. And until that is better, it is not an option.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

I keep looking at Kodi, b/c i struggle with a few items in Sage.

1. I have 2200 movies on my server. The wall flow in sage, even on the hd300, is painfully slow. And sort by year is backwards and I cant change it. On the hd100, its unuseable
2. I have 10000+ tv episodes. I want to see them by title (in a wall) then by season (in a wall) then an episode list. This seems impossible, and even if it was, way to slow
3. hd100s cant decode dts. The hd100s are hooked to tvs in bedrooms, so no receivers. Just annoying to go to watch something, no audio, have to convert.

Basically i want an hd400 with better performance and dts decode (if needed). And a real wall flow option built in. And i would be happy for a decade.

Kodi - seems it would be better at the wallflows. But my primary use is still tv viewing, live and recorded. And until that is better, it is not an option.

I get the sense that you don't want a functional server, you just want a server that shows well for your friends Wall flows show nicely, but they are not very functional. I'd take a list of shows, unwatched, ordered by most recently recorded, grouped by series (without season), over a wall flow any day

And this is where I tend to lean towards to sagetv vs kodi or plex. Kodi and Plex show very well, but, I find using them painful because I can never get the "groups" and "sorts" that I want for a functional media center.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I get the sense that you don't want a functional server, you just want a server that shows well for your friends Wall flows show nicely, but they are not very functional. I'd take a list of shows, unwatched, ordered by most recently recorded, grouped by series (without season), over a wall flow any day

And this is where I tend to lean towards to sagetv vs kodi or plex. Kodi and Plex show very well, but, I find using them painful because I can never get the "groups" and "sorts" that I want for a functional media center.

This is why I, unlike a lot of folks here, like having my recordings and my ripped/purchased media separate.

I have a similar use case to you for my recordings. I usually want to watch the stuff that's just been recorded. I prefer that grouped by series, but most recent first. Of course this stuff is also transitory for me, I watch it and it gets deleted, so there's almost never a whole season/series, so having a really nice, fancy view of it is not that exciting.

However for the stuff I've ripped, the use case is a bit different. For that date is really meaningless, and I don't go through stuff "randomly", I've usually got a series or two I'm working my way through. So for this shows alphabetically works well, and since I've invested a good amount of money (purchase and storage) and time (ripping), and since it will be around for a long time, it's very nice to have a shiny interface to display that.

Now personally I don't like cover views, I find them frustrating, too many ways to navigate, but a list with backgrounds/fanart is great.

[jptheripper]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I get the sense that you don't want a functional server, you just want a server that shows well for your friends Wall flows show nicely, but they are not very functional. I'd take a list of shows, unwatched, ordered by most recently recorded, grouped by series (without season), over a wall flow any day

And this is where I tend to lean towards to sagetv vs kodi or plex. Kodi and Plex show very well, but, I find using them painful because I can never get the "groups" and "sorts" that I want for a functional media center.

Sorry, but this couldnt be farther from the truth.

The main users of the wall flow are the wife, and a 7 and 9 year old. Lists are OUT. And to be honest, i dont care if watched or unwatched, or when it was recorded. Season (and order of release) is probably the single most important thing, second only to the cover. I want to see, not read. I would turn the text off if i could.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

Sorry, but this couldnt be farther from the truth.

The main users of the wall flow are the wife, and a 7 and 9 year old. Lists are OUT. And to be honest, i dont care if watched or unwatched, or when it was recorded. Season (and order of release) is probably the single most important thing, second only to the cover. I want to see, not read. I would turn the text off if i could.

I have changed also ... I needed text on my guide .... but since I started beta testing the HDHRDVR one of my favorites screens is what's on now. see attached. This renders channel numbers unimportant.

Also the recordings screen simple but effective top row sorted newest recorded.... 2nd Row TV Shows Sorted Alpha. 3rd row Movies 4rth row sports. No tunneling three or four screens to see what you want.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

Sorry, but this couldnt be farther from the truth.

The main users of the wall flow are the wife, and a 7 and 9 year old. Lists are OUT. And to be honest, i dont care if watched or unwatched, or when it was recorded. Season (and order of release) is probably the single most important thing, second only to the cover. I want to see, not read. I would turn the text off if i could.

Originally Posted by nyplayer

I have changed also ... I needed text on my guide .... but since I started beta testing the HDHRDVR one of my favorites screens is what's on now. see attached. This renders channel numbers unimportant.

Also the recordings screen simple but effective top row sorted newest recorded.... 2nd Row TV Shows Sorted Alpha. 3rd row Movies 4rth row sports. No tunneling three or four screens to see what you want.

And this is why variety is a good things... to some people the best metric of what to watch is what has the catchiest poster... to others, it's an informative selection of what is available to watch that you haven't already seen. Neither is right is right or wrong

To be honest, I like the "netflix" style of showing information, which I don't consider a "wall". These views are "lists" of "rows" (which I understand is now OUT) that contain headings for "informative" information like, "Shows", "Moves", or even "Unwatched Shows", etc. In fact, I've asked Jusjoken to create such a flow in Gemstone, since I think it's a great way to show information.

[RayGannon]

I had dropped Sage many years ago because I couldn't get all the things I wanted to watch on the same platform and I was having more and more problems maintaining the Windows server. There was a long string of attempted replacements with varying degrees of success.

I bought an Nvidia ShieldTV for the living room last year and finally had all the streaming, movie library, and OTA playback on one box. The OTA, recorded with MythTV and played with Kodi, was fairly horrible but it did work most of the time.

With the release of the SageTV android client I pulled the MythTV server hard drive and set up a SageTV linux server. I was reminded what a fantastic package Sage is for OTA recording. Nothing I had tried in the previous 5 years came close.

I have been using XBMC/KODI/SPMC for several years now and find I like it less and less. The user interface seems cluttered because they try to do so much. Now that I don't need kodi for OTA recording/playback I'm happier with PLEX for watching Bluray and DVD rips.

I guess I'm in the minority (or maybe the only one ?) for thinking that SageTV is absolutely spectacular at OTA recording and playback and that's all I need from Sage.

With the plug-in nature of android each app can be a one trick pony.

I can definitely appreciate the opposing viewpoint of people heavily invested in Sage media extenders. But that hardware won't last forever and there's unlikely to be new extenders produced.

[jusjoken]

Originally Posted by stuckless

To be honest, I like the "netflix" style of showing information, which I don't consider a "wall". These views are "lists" of "rows" (which I understand is now OUT) that contain headings for "informative" information like, "Shows", "Moves", or even "Unwatched Shows", etc. In fact, I've asked Jusjoken to create such a flow in Gemstone, since I think it's a great way to show information.

And its well underway ....JOrton is helping with graphics as well as working on some theme changes for Gemstone2.

I am glad stuckless started this thread.... we really need to understand the gaps...so the few developers jump in on the right things and then hopefully encourage new users and new developers.

SageTV is open source and the interface is very customizable so all gaps should be closable if we can encourage more developers to jump in.

Great feedback so far....keep it coming!

k

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

I have changed also ... I needed text on my guide .... but since I started beta testing the HDHRDVR one of my favorites screens is what's on now. see attached. This renders channel numbers unimportant.

Also the recordings screen simple but effective top row sorted newest recorded.... 2nd Row TV Shows Sorted Alpha. 3rd row Movies 4rth row sports. No tunneling three or four screens to see what you want.

I used to think this was a really cool way to browse media until I realized it was really slowing my browsing down compared to a list. The problem I have is the grid and the lack on consistency in fonts. My mother-in-law has Dish and browsing their recordings is actually painfully inefficient because it's displayed like this. It took so much more time than it should have just to find a specific show. This is of course not mentioning that you will eventually find that one show that no one seems to care about and there isn't a poster.

[Bagal]

The consensus seems to be that some people like lists and some people like graphical walls, which is probably why Gemstone has been so popular, because it gives you choices.

I would also say this is one of Kodi's strengths (not necessarily lists vs walls) as there's lots of customisations in terms of skins, plugins and so on.
Sage has plenty of plugins but the number of full blown UIs has always been minimal, partly because the barrier to entry for a novice to create a skin is quite high.
I know you can create basic themes for Sage but I think if we could extend that system somehow so that you could skin an existing UI with some basic txt/xml files you get a lot more skins from the community.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jusjoken

And its well underway ....JOrton is helping with graphics as well as working on some theme changes for Gemstone2.

I am glad stuckless started this thread.... we really need to understand the gaps...so the few developers jump in on the right things and then hopefully encourage new users and new developers.

SageTV is open source and the interface is very customizable so all gaps should be closable if we can encourage more developers to jump in.

Great feedback so far....keep it coming!

k

FWIW, for me, there are really two gaps in Sage, the first, and maybe bigger one is, there's no middle ground. Stock SageTV is great for DVR duties (I wouldn't really want to change it's general layout), but very basic/bare bones for ripped media.

On the flip side Gemstone is way, way more than I need. As a programmer/engineer, Gemstone is wonderful. But for what I actually want to do, it's just way too much. What I mean is some usability is lost to keep things flexible. Basically the thing that keeps sending me back to Kodi/Stock SageTV is that all the menus are connected, it's way to easy to reset the "state" of a menu.

Basically what I'm saying is, I don't need 100 flows, I'm just looking for a list with fanart and information. The stock Sage menus are generally fine with me, organizationally, they could just use some sprucing up.

The second thing is the theme. That's really probably my favorite part about Kodi, MarcosQui's Ace/Aeon skins. Something of similar style for Sage (just cleaned up, modernized graphics) would do wonders.

[samgreco]

I have just setup Kodi again for the first time in a couple of years. This time I setup and SQL database, etc. I have NextPVR setup as a backend to test Kodi's TV abilities.

Here is what I like:
Kodi is incredibly flexible.
Add-ons forever. Including a decent Playon browser.
A fair choice in skins. Although not as many as I would have expected. But most of them are very customizable.
It plays everything I have thrown at it.
There is a lot of support in the Home Automation world for Kodi.

The TV stuff on the front end isn't bad. Could be better, but not bad.

The backend however is not great. NextPVR leaves a lot to be desired. Tried Argus TV, but the Kodi plugin hasn't been updated in a long time and is lacking features, like being able to schedule recurring recordings (think favorites). WMC is basically dead, so I hate to go that way. And the last time I tried it, it didn't go well.

If I could get Sage as a PVR backend for Kodi, I think I would be quite happy.

[dgeezer]

I know this is a Sage TV forum, but I was just wondering where you find Npvr lacking as a backend for Kodi. I have been using this for the last year or so with OTA and it works great. We never miss any recordings and with Schedules Direct, I get filenames that, for the most part, scan directly into Kodi's library.

However, I would love to be able to abandon having to run Npvr on a windows pc. The only 2 windows exclusive programs I run are Quickbooks and Npvr. I have sagetv set up on a linux server and keep experimenting with the android miniclient.

[samgreco]

For me, Npvr feels kludgy managing favorites when compared to Sage. Having said that, it feels like it will be workable. I've just setup what favorites I could to mirror my Sage setup. We'll see how it goes as things progress.

Although, depending on where Phoenix 3 and Gemstone 2 go, I may just get a couple of good android boxes and stay with Sage. Not sure.

But part of this exercise is also because my automation stuff needs to be reworked and Kodi is all over the place in the HA world. So integrating might be a good thing.

[DarkWolf77]

I haven't used Kodi since it first adopted that name, but I can say that the one thing SageTV does and does better than most any other service I've used is seeking - it's super fast, & responsive. Plex drives me nuts sometimes, especially since they changed the fast forward/rewind to a timer only. Want more frustration? Try searching for comskip+plex, and you'll find threads of people asking for it and Plex developers saying it's basically impossible... whereas SageTV has done it flawlessly for years. I'll definitely check it out Kodi to see where it is now, though I remember it being a pain to set up.

[dgeezer]

DarkWolf77 i agree completely. SageTV on the HD300 is vastly superior when it comes to FF, REwind and watching recordings in progress. The last one is an exercise in frustration in Kodi. I do think that Kodi is better than Plex in this regard but still lags behind SageTV. In progress recordings is what keeps me thinking about bringing SageTV back to our house.

[samgreco]

Oh. I haven't even tried in progress recordings yet. And that happens a lot around here.

[SWKerr]

Originally Posted by dgeezer

DarkWolf77 i agree completely. SageTV on the HD300 is vastly superior when it comes to FF, REwind and watching recordings in progress. The last one is an exercise in frustration in Kodi. I do think that Kodi is better than Plex in this regard but still lags behind SageTV. In progress recordings is what keeps me thinking about bringing SageTV back to our house.

They have mostly addressed this but it does require editing an xml file to get it working they way I want. You also have to edit the comskip.ini or it cuts the commercials completely with no ability to skip back if the marks are not perfect. All in all it works pretty will now except for the like of marks on the time line. Sage is better but Kodi is not fine with the correct adjustments.

[SWKerr]

I am probably going to go to Kodi with the HDHR DVR as a back end. I have tried the Kodi DVR integration with NextPVR in the past and it really just kinda sucks. I ended up using the custom NextPVR app in its place.

I really just want the Recorded TV shows to show up in the Kodi Library where I can watch them. SageTV does not format the Library in a way that makes it a workable Kodi solution.

For the few times that I want to schedule or watch Live TV I can use the HDHR DVR app or the NextPVR apps. Neither are as good as SageTV but for as often as I would use them they work just fine.

[SWKerr]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

I have changed also ... I needed text on my guide .... but since I started beta testing the HDHRDVR one of my favorites screens is what's on now. see attached. This renders channel numbers unimportant.

Also the recordings screen simple but effective top row sorted newest recorded.... 2nd Row TV Shows Sorted Alpha. 3rd row Movies 4rth row sports. No tunneling three or four screens to see what you want.

I really would prefer a guide like in SageTV and and NextPVR but it works for as often as I need it. Just takes longer to find something than is necessary. It is much better since I figured out how to remove all the channels I do not want.

I am using this now with MCEBuddy to process the comskip and compress and organize the files. It is working really well for all my OTA recording. Almost everything but the local news shows up in Kodi with Comskip so I really don't need the HDHR app to watch TV very often.

And everything plays perfectly across the FireTV box and stick. (Interface on the stick is slow...but plays fine.)