>Gone is the 2x, 4x, 8x seeking that we had in earlier versions. Sadly, yes :(
>This is a major upgrade, thanks a bunch! > I just don't get it: why some people see this as a major upgrade. Surely I'm not the only person that sees this as a major downgrade. I've given up playing long podcasts through it, and resorted to using my iPod instead. We had the choice of the old functionality (much more useful in my opinion), or something very much like the new functionality (provided by KDF's song scanner). Now we don't. Pro's of the new functionality: 1. Has a little more eye candy. It shows a slider bar which goes up or down as you move through the track. Con's of the new functionality: 1. No audio feedback, so unless you know the absolute position in time that you want to fast-forward to, it's a guessing game. 2. No control over acceleration to move through a track quickly or slowly. >Now we have a time clock that allows us to navigate through a track like we >would on a normal CD player. I don't understand this. It's nothing like a CD player; it's more like a PC software player. All CD/Video players that I have ever used have accelerated playback with audio sound, and none display a progress bar. They do show current time or elapsed time, and you can see that time accelerate up/down accordingly. I do like the new mechanism, just don't find it as useful. It's also not perfect - it can take ages to scroll through a long piece of music, because navigating through a long track using the slider is not accelerated, and potentially will not be accurate enough. eg. consider a podcast that lasts 2 hours. On my transporter, it takes many complete 360 rotations to get from start to finish (I can't remember now how many, but it was into double figures). Worst of all is the lack of audio feedback. I ultimately think that it should support both mechanisms - both seek and scan. On an iPod, press and hold ">>" and it will skip forwards with audio feedback, so you know when you've skipped over part of a song that you don't like, then release the button and it resumes normal playback from that position. Or press the middle button to select progress bar mode, where the wheel can then be used to position the playback cursor to an arbitrary point in time to resume from that position. The iPod functions are alright, but I think that both mechanisms could live together. For example, the mechanism as it is today in 7.2 could be enhanced to provide some form of audio feedback, and additional press-and-hold of FWD/REW (or add/press-and-hold add) could increase/decrease acceleration. I personally prefer the former for skipping over parts of a song. eg. when I've ripped the last track on an album and there's some "hidden" track with several minutes of silence between the end of the track and the start of the hidden track. I don't want to sit through the silence so I want to fast-forward. But I don't know how much silence there is to skip, so I can't position the playback at a particular point. I used to press-and-hold FWD to play x2, and then maybe accelerate playback further, until I hear music and press play. That would then play from just before the music started. The world's gone mad! Sky+ is widely regarded as one of the best PVR's on the market, and also regarded as easy to use. It uses a FWD/REW mechanism that shows visual feedback when scanning through in 2x, 5x, 15x and 30x speeds, quite similar to SqueezeBox FWD/REW. You can also enter a time position to jump to, so it too supports both mechanisms; but fast-fowarding through a song is the most predominant feature, and Sky+ would be rubbish without it. Phil _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
