Phoenix Lite Feedback and Questions

[bialio]

Lets talk about Phoenix Lite (PLite). It's included in the Phoenix 3, and is the FUTURE of the Phoenix UI. Almost all development cycles are going towards this 'lighter' version of Phoenix 3.

Couple of notes:
1) You have to load a different STV file to get PLite. It's in the same directory as Phoenix 3.xml. It's called PhoenixLite.xml.

2) I find the best way to run this on the Android MiniClient is to disable these settings in the Android. These behaviors are baked into PLite.

• Long Press Select for OSD
• Use Stateful Remote

3) If you are using a harmony remote and a simple Android remote like me (I've got 4 kids - remotes go missing all the time so I have multiples of them in each room!) - program the Harmony select button long press to be Sage Options. If your harmony model supports long presses. This makes using either remote very similar.

Here are some screen shots.

Home screen


There is a new universal option menu that has all the stuff that you need for whatever screen you are on.

[bialio]

One last screenshot - the Video OSD has the various controls you need to scoot around in the playback now also:

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by bialio

One last screenshot - the Video OSD has the various controls you need to scoot around in the playback now also:

That looks really good... So a couple of questions...

It sounds like you are implementing the features of the stateful remote (which is good)... but I have quick question around this screen.

Does it mean that when that when I press select it will do pause/play, and show the osd on pause... and then I have to use the naviagation control to skip forward back?

Would it be possible to have similar behaviour as the stateful remove (as an option)... ie, when a video is playing, right left becomes skip fwd/back and long press right/left is skip commercial?

[KarylFStein]

I can't get the side options to show up and no navigation buttons in the playback. Is this version in the plugin repository?

[bialio]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

I can't get the side options to show up and no navigation buttons in the playback. Is this version in the plugin repository?

Nope. It's uploaded to GitHub but not in the plugin repository yet.

[bialio]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Does it mean that when that when I press select it will do pause/play, and show the osd on pause... and then I have to use the naviagation control to skip forward back?

Would it be possible to have similar behaviour as the stateful remove (as an option)... ie, when a video is playing, right left becomes skip fwd/back and long press right/left is skip commercial?

The way it works right now is that when the BIG button is highlighted, Right and Left skip fwd/back unless there are commercials. If there are commercials Right and Left do the comskip thing.

The only gotcha right now is that it's as easy to skip around if you have commercials. And, actually determining a long press vs short in the STV code is non-trivial. It kind of works, but is hit or miss in my experience.

So that's one reason I put the 5 little nav buttons in - on those occasions where I've got commercials but need to back up a bit, I can use those.

What I'd really like (and have if I go download the source ) is a way to provide a custom Sage command to the long presses of any of the android buttons. Maybe we should have a way for each UI (Phoenix, Gemstone, etc) to provide a key map on how they want the buttons to work. Then the user just has to make sure their android settings match the UI they are going to use....

btl.

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by bialio

Nope. It's uploaded to GitHub but not in the plugin repository yet.

Will you be uploading a plugin or would you like testing from GitHub? I downloaded stuckless/sagetv-phoenix-ui and ran gradlew.bat (I just have a Windows machine set up for building), but it didn't seem to build anything--just download some gradle files.

[bialio]

stuckless will package it up tonight or tomorrow morning so it'll end up in the repository.

You could manually test it out by just copying down the files in the Phoenix3 folder into your install location. But I'd just wait unless you are really dying to try it out

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

Will you be uploading a plugin or would you like testing from GitHub? I downloaded stuckless/sagetv-phoenix-ui and ran gradlew.bat (I just have a Windows machine set up for building), but it didn't seem to build anything--just download some gradle files.

As per the README.md
https://github.com/stuckless/sagetv-...aster/Phoenix3

# ant dist-plugins

will build the plugins

You can then drop the .zip and plugin xml (from the target folder) into the SageTVPluginsDev.d/ DIRECTORY and sagetv will allow you to update/install it from the plugin manager.

[bialio]

Oh, forgot to mention that the video thumbs are back in PLite.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by bialio

Oh, forgot to mention that the video thumbs are back in PLite.

Would be really cool if you'd consider this for P3.

[bialio]

I think it'd be easier to add a real EPG to PLite. Other than that they are pretty much the same.

[stanger89]

Looks great. Though I've got some silly questions

Originally Posted by bialio

2) I find the best way to run this on the Android MiniClient is to disable these settings in the Android. These behaviors are baked into PLite.

• Long Press Select for OSD
• Use Stateful Remote

What if we're not using Android? Will the normal Sage command (IR) work?

Also, all the screenshots are of wall/grid views, are there list views available?

[bialio]

All the normal Sage IR commands still work, although since there isn't an EPG "Guide" doesn't do anything.

Here's the list views :

[wayner]

Originally Posted by bialio

Lets talk about Phoenix Lite (PLite). It's included in the Phoenix 3, and is the FUTURE of the Phoenix UI. Almost all development cycles are going towards this 'lighter' version of Phoenix 3.

What's the difference between the Lite and Heavy versions and when you say all of the dev cycles are going to the lighter version, is that just in the short term or is that the case permanently?

I currently run Gemstone on extenders, mainly HD200s, what is the performance like on them?

[bialio]

I don't have any HD200's left. However this is the leanest and fastest UI I've ever experienced on Sage. I expect it'll perform really good on the 200. On the 300 and android machines I have it flies.

// start technical talk
The main difference is that PLite really is just 2 screens - a video playback screen, and a media browser. There isn't a traditional 'Home' screen. Or to put it another way, the Home screen and the Media Browser are combined into a single screen. This made the logic on moving between modes (browsing and video playback) very simple and straight forward. Plus the memory hit is less (my heap is very well behaved now, with 3 mini clients the max it gets up to is about 500)

To contrast, P3 has a Home screen, a media browser screen, an EPG screen, and a video playback screen. So that's 4 screens, so transitions between all of these screens required more logic and was more likely to misbehave.

I personally don't see any benefit in the heavier version over the light version. Neither of them implement any of the stuff the default UI does - so favorite management, source configuration, etc, all goes back to the default STV. I don't suspect that I'll put anymore cycles into P3. PLite is the future.
// end technical talk

The only thing that I'm having to get used to in PLite is the lack of the EPG. I'm slowly but surely creating views / filters / sorters to fill that gap. I'm working on a 'This week in prime-time view' right now. On another thread I already posted the 'Today's sports' view.

[wayner]

That kind of makes sense. I have about 8-9 extenders in the house and the system is used by the family, babysitters, etc. But 99% of the time they just playback movies or recorded TV (my wife occasionally uses the system to watch YouTube videos). I am the only one who futzes around with the other stuff and I could do that from a PS session to the server or through the web UI, especially since you no longer have to buy PS licenses.

Even recording setup is rarely done in front of the TV and we never watch live TV, at least not through Sage, so that isn't an issue either.

I will look at giving this a try but I am suspect that I will want to stay with Gemstone, although I may customize it a fair bit.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by bialio

The only thing that I'm having to get used to in PLite is the lack of the EPG. I'm slowly but surely creating views / filters / sorters to fill that gap. I'm working on a 'This week in prime-time view' right now. On another thread I already posted the 'Today's sports' view.

Stupid question part Duex....

How do you get to live TV? I was about to say I never use LiveTV, but that's not accurate. I use Live TV regularly, but only for one specific use, the news. I flip on the local news in the morning as I get ready for work (mainly to check the weather, and have some background sound while I prep).

I'm guessing I'd have to create some sort of filter/view?

[bialio]

There's a built in view (in phoenix-core) that the default menu in PLite has an entry for called 'Live TV' - it is a view of everything that is currently airing. So your local news would be there.

I personally go in and sort this view by channel number (this capability was just added to the core, will be uploaded to P3/PLite tonight). The sort and presentation (grid/list) in PLite is sticky, so whenever you come back to that view it's sorted and presented in the same way.

btl.

[bialio]

The latest version (107) of Phoenix3 / PhoenixLite is now in the Plugin Repo.