SageTV 6.5.1 Beta – EVR Support

I honestly didn’t think EVR support would be SageTV’s next development priority. Of course, if I was a mind reader I would have a happier wife ;). Along with EVR support major advancements include HDPVR support enhancements in Mac & Linux, and Placeshifting enhancements.

Click the read more for release notes.

Click here for the SageTV beta forums.

It looks like there is a quick fix out for enabling EVR, I recommend reading through the stickies first :).

SageTV for Windows
http://download.sage.tv/SageTV_V6_5_1Setup.exe

SageTVClient for Windows
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVClient_V6_5_1Setup.exe

SageTVPlaceshifter for Windows
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVPlaces…6_5_1Setup.exe

SageTV for Windows Home Server
http://download.sage.tv/SageTV_V6_5_1Setup-WHS.msi

SageTV Media Center for Macintosh
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVMac_V6_5_1.dmg

SageTV Client for Macintosh
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVMacClient_V6_5_1.dmg

SageTV Placeshifter for Macintosh
http://download.sage.tv/SageTVMacPla…ter_V6_5_1.dmg

SageTV Media Center for Linux
http://download.sage.tv/linuxbeta/server_6.5.1.tar.gz

SageTV Placeshifter for Linux
http://download.sage.tv/linuxbeta/mi…t_6.5.1.tar.gz

SageTV Media Center for Linux – Debian Package Installer
http://download.sage.tv/linuxbeta/sa…6.5.1_i386.deb

SageTV Placeshifter for Linux – Debian Package Installer
http://download.sage.tv/linuxbeta/sa…6.5.1_i386.deb

And here’s the detailed release notes for you all.

SageTV V6.5.1 Beta 11/14/2008

Core Updates
1. Fixed bug where an invalid regex expression in a keyword Favorite could crash SageTV on load
2. Fixed bug where sorting Favorites by priority wasn’t always correct
3. Added property to force the PAR (pixel aspect ratio) instead of
basing it on the DAR (display aspect ratio):
ui/forced_pixel_aspect_ratio
4. Fixed bug where Favorites that had their Favorite status removed
would temporarily be ranked as the most ‘deletable’ file. This could
cause them to get removed accidentally if modifying a favorites
settings and a temporary mistake is made.
5. Added property xcode_disable_mp3_encoder which defaults to true and
swaps the mp2 encoder whenever the mp3 encoder is requested (due to the
lack of an mp3 encoder in the transcoder)
6. Added HTTP timeout calls to the downloader (they’re only in 1.5 and higher; so we try/catch them for compatability)
7. Increased wait for SageTVPlayer startup from 5 seconds to 30 seconds
8. Fixed bug with SageTVPlayer volume control where sometimes it wouldn’t allow it to increase properly
9. Fixed issue with having a period in the name for a DVD folder which affects finding the thumbnail correctly
10. Enable the SageTV server by default (we already did this for service modes)
11. Fixed timeout bug in scheduler where the start time wasn’t getting
reset when the first timeout occurred which would sometimes cause an
incomplete schedule to be built (so once it had a timeout it would
timeout on all other operations and not complete its scheduling)
12. Fixed bug where we’d constantly be doing library import scans if they took longer than 5 minutes to complete
13. Fixed bug with retaining partial recordings of Favorites that won’t air again (it should actually work now)
14. Fixed NPE bug when there wasn’t a valid default quality for a tuner
15. Fixed bug where files were marked as incomplete after being replaced by an externally transcoded version
16. Refresh the user activity timeout if any client is playing video or connected to the MediaServer
17. Added ‘ignore_window_close’ property which can disable the standard
window closing events from having any effect if set to true
18. Only save the last window position if it’s not full screen or maximized (before we didn’t check maximized)
19. Fixed bug where the previous channel command didn’t always work properly
20. When going through a playlist always start each file at the beginning
21. Fixed bug where doing a unit up/down in a vertical scrolling area
of very short height would actually scroll in the opposite direction
22. Changed the way ‘focus_follows_mouse’ works when its disabled so
the first click sets focus to the item and the second click actually
selects it. This won’t apply if there’s a ‘MouseClick’ listener since
that will receive both of the events. This only applies to the default
action chain that is the child of the item.
23. Refresh UI components even if their image load fails so that we can update properly in that situation as well
24. Language descriptors for audio tracks now always include the format name (before it was only included if it was AC3)
25. Cleanup whitespace better in RSS descriptions
26. Merged with latest versions for SageTVTranscoder and SageTVPlayer
27. HDPVR transcoding should now function correctly in SageTVTranscoder

28. Fixed bug where playback of FLAC files with thumbnails largers than 64k would crash the player
29. Added PID filtering for the HDHomeRun on all platforms
30. DVB Frequencies: Add entries of cable Netherlands-Casema (Thanks
for Pascal Scheffers), "Finland-Helsinki" DVB-C frequency, "Canal
Digital on Thor 3/5 at 0.8°W", new frequency entries for Italian DVB-T,
DVB-T frequency for Albania, New Zealand DVB-T frequency
31. Added VC-1 & DivX format detection support for MPEG2 files

Extender Updates
1. Fixed bug where we’d seek to live sometimes when we shouldn’t upon
resuming playback when playing back MPEG2 files on the media extender
2. Fixed bug where rewinding at x256 of an MPEG2 file would sometimes
cause the timestamps to go to the end of the file and stop playback on
the HD media extender

Windows Updates
1. Added support for the Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR) (it’s an option if SageTV detects that it exists on the system)
2. Add Kword DVB-T PCI-160-2T dual tuner support. ( it’s faked as USB tuners, two tuner share a USB device entry ).
3. Disable fast mux switching for devices named: Hauppauge WinTV-7164 Analog Capture
4. Don’t add HDHR tuners to ignore encoders on Windows
5. Updated DShow DVD player to respond properly to native STOP events
6. Moved directshow video renderer filter setting into a single property (videoframe/video_render_filter)
7. Fixed NPE bug where we’d have a black screen render when recovering from a D3D device loss
8. Added property mplayer/use_for_online_content (defaults to true)
which will allow use of SageTVPlayer for all online videos even if
always_use_dshow_player=true is set
9. Added property ‘mplayer/use_for_mkv_playback’ which defaults to true
and tells SageTV to use ‘SageTVPlayer’ for all MKV playback on Windows
10. Updated included JRE to be Java 6 Update 10
11. Fixed transcoding to AppleTV/iPhone formats
12. Fix Mpeg2Dump crashing on M780 (Randomly crash, or waking up from deep sleep)
13. New Mpeg 2 Demultiplexor with accurate seeking (same one that’s been in beta for a few months)
14. Fix: a QAM channel that its QAM modulation is not set in scn and
frq file has a trouble to tune, we use the QAM 256 as a default QAM
modulation.
15. Fix: HVR-2200 and HVR-2250 can’t record on its duel analog tuner at the same time.
16. Increased quality of native D3D rendered fonts
17. Updated to handle Unicode taskbar tooltips properly

Linux Updates
1. Added property ‘linux/enable_progressive_deletes’ which if set to
true will progressively delete files instead of deleting the whole
thing at one. Very useful for filesystems with slow deletion like
ext2/ext3 on Linux.

2. Fixed bug where we weren’t setting the broadcast standard correctly when using the HDHR on Linux
3. Adding ‘delay_to_wait_after_tuning’ property for Linux as well (very useful with HDPVR if it’s crashing right after tuning)
4. Added support for HDPVR S/PDIF input
5. Improved compatability with HDPVR IR blaster

Mac Updates
1. HDPVR playback is now supported (recording is still experimental, and not in the builds yet)

Placeshifter Updates
1. Fixed bug where we’d drop keystrokes sometimes over placeshifter connections
2. MAJOR improvement to bandwidth utilization for placeshifter streaming
3. Optimized initial bandwidth detection in the placeshifter so it does
multiple tests with more advanced statistics to try to get a better
initial bandwidth estimate.
4. MAJOR reduction in placeshifter connection setup time
5. Updated bandwidth detection code for Placeshifter to force
transcoding if we’re under 10Mbps and we’re also not on the same LAN.
(the standard limit is 2Mbps, but many people have connections beyond
this now)
6. HDPVR playback is now supported

Studio Updates
1. Added option for Image widgets to specify a ‘Hover’ image which is shown when the mouse is over that image
2. Added implied java.io.File->Show and java.io.File->Channel conversions in the SageTV API now
3. Added methods for getting the cursor position on Windows. sage.UIManager.getCursorPosX() and getCursorPosY()
4. Fixed bug where StartPlaylistAt wouldn’t start where requested if random play was enabled
5. Enable variable sized row/height tables (experimental)
6. Updated Pressed and Hover image properties of the Image Widget to by dynamically modifiable
7. Added paging variables for Panels of NumPagesF, NumHPagesF and
NumVPagesF (these are floating point equivalents of the integer ones
that already existed)
8. Added Configuration API call ‘HasEVRSupport’ which indicates the presence of the Enhanced Video Renderer on Windows
9. Added Configuration API calls SetVideoRendererToEVR and IsVideoRendererEVR
10. Added Database API call: GetMediaFilesWithImportPrefix

STV Updates
1. Added EVR configuration options on Windows if EVR is supported
2. Search menu: added item for "All Results" at top of each column for
TV & Video searches. (Other search types already had that option.)
3. Prevented preloading the next image while one is sliding into place while viewing photos.
4. Folder view is the default Video Browser view; Album view is the default Music Browser view.
5. Video Browser: optimized folder view to use new GetMediaFilesWithImportPrefix() call.
6. When adding network import paths, always use the SMB path name.
7. Channel Setup: added ability to clear all channel remaps on a lineup.
8. Weather location config: removed reference to Postal Code since it no longer seems to accept postal codes.
9. Added some information dialogs shown after using the Play command in the File Browser menu.
10. Updated calls to GetMediaFiles() to use media masks instead of filtering all media files.
11. When starting playback of a TV recording that is not still
recording, restart playback and reset watched status if only a few
seconds of playback remain.
12. Don’t allow the default recording quality for a tuner to be cleared
if the overall default recording quality is not valid for the tuner.
13. Fixed class cast error when loading video & photo browser folder info
14. Fixed online video properties update issue on Vista.
15. Remove BuzzOutLoud feed