Zune Spring Update

re: Zune Spring Update

fed up — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:04:54 GMT

dammit this sucks why couldnt it b the way it was when zunes 1st came out now they have all this crap and updates and new ways of using it. what ever happened to the easy way of doing things and still being able to get what u desire. but i guess. i went through hours of trying to update this thing and all i get is error or unable to complete or ...................? i mean come on im a dude that loves his music now i gotta figga this out.F.Ck!!!!!

re: Zune Spring Update

J9 — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:17:01 GMT

Has anyone found a fix for the sync problem? I get 79 songs out of 1500 I told it to sync. This really messed up my whole weekend of music listening. I was heading out of town camping and decided to add some new songs and now I only have 79.

re: Zune Spring Update

Aaron — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:55:34 GMT

I'm also baffled as to why the Zune software now sorts tracks according to Disc number, but the Zune itself continues to ignore the Disc tag.

Result: Box sets show up in the correct order on my PC, but still get listed as 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, etc. on the Zune.

re: Zune Spring Update

ApK — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:29:35 GMT

This update seems to have a problem if you DON'T have track number tags properly set in your album tracks. While it worked in the previous version (sorting on..who knows...filename maybe?) on the new version, when it tries to add an album to the collection, it LOOKS like it's working...the UI says 'Added 10 items' but only two tracks show up. There's just no way to add the other tracks unless you set the track tags. And weirder, if you try to 'play with Zune' any of the OTHER tracks from Explorer, ONLY the track that the collection THINKS it already has will play. This might be a factor in why a lot of folks are complaining that Zune is not importing chunks of their libraries...check those track tags.

re: Zune Spring Update

annoyed — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:56:34 GMT

This update, at least for me, has been a total disaster. It's trashed my podcast lists, it's doubled up entries on everything from music to podcasts, and the "constant play" with no way to disable it is super annoying.

With the old software, I could set the zune to play one lecture as I was going to sleep, and after that lecture ended, the zune turned itself off. Now, it'll play everything in that lecture series, so the zune will be dead in the morning...no zune for the commute if I want to hear a lecture while going to sleep.

Also, the ordering of things inside music and podcasts is a nightmare. Nothing is in order anymore.

It looks like I'm going to have to delete everything from my zune, delete all of my podcast subscriptions, start from scratch, and then hand-mark everything as played/not played.

What a complete and total waste of my time, to have to totally reset my entire library of media. Seriously, was there any QA on this thing at all? Does nobody on the team ever use the product? Did it not occur to someone, somewhere, that giving the consumer a toggle to decide whether they wanted the system to automatically "play all" would be a good idea?

If Play All is up there at the top, and I can *choose* play all, why did you make the system automatically do that, with no way to turn it off. Really horrid UI design there.

Don't get me wrong, I loved my Zune, but now it's completely useless unless I'm doing something that lets me babysit it all the time, and the hours I'm going to have to spend to reset all of my content have made me consider just swapping it out for an alternative player and ebaying this one. I don't want to have to reset all my content every time you guys do an update.

re: Zune Spring Update

spyd3r0x — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:46:59 GMT

I'm sorry, I just read that you can include multiple genres in an autoplaylist by separating them with semi-colons, though I have yet to try it. Wish that was spelled out somewhere in the Zune software.

re: Zune Spring Update

spyd3r0x — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:39:10 GMT

I find the autoplaylists lacking as they don't allow for multiple criteria. I would like to be able create a "Rock" autoplaylist, for example, which automatically contains all rock related genres (Hard Rock, Soft Rock, Punk, etc.). Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think this is possible.

re: Zune Spring Update

CPare — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:24:33 GMT

Not that I dont want to sound unappreciative of this huge update, but the new autoplaylists dont have all the functionality we used to have.

All I want to do is make a playlist of all the files in a directory, or a directory and it's subs. I pull lots of free music from sites like this, and to keep them logically organized I store them in directories named after the provider (in the event the RIAA comes knocking I can know where I got my tracks from)

I just want a playlist called "zuneinsider.com tracks" or "mysteriousuniverse.org tracks" or "ioda.promonet tracks"

I used to have these and loved it, now they all blend together with the rest of my music, and I am not getting the "New Music Exposure" I am looking for.

re: Zune Spring Update

Scott F — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:37:38 GMT

I was really disappointed at the Zune 2.5 upgrade process. First, when I followed the instructions to upgrade, they did not work. I received a message to use Microsoft Update to upgrade. I did that, after finding out that Windows Update and Microsoft Update were not the same. Time wasted. That was not even the bad part. Once I installed the update, the Zune software wanted to sync everything in my collection to the Zune again. This was over 1200 items. The worst was the podcasts, which it seemed to really mess up. It was going to transcode everything again and put duplicates in the collection and on the device. I found that the upgrade did not find that I had set the transcoded files directory different than the default. Even after switching it back to my setting, the sync problems did not fix themselves. I finally gave up and deleted all my podcast subscriptions and files from my collection and from the device and starting over. I needed to resubscribe to them all and mark which ones I had played. Another couple hours wasted. There were over 250 downloads to do over and the transcoding will take about two days. This is worst upgrade experience I have ever had on any software or device I have owned.

re: Zune Spring Update

Zuner69 — Sat, 10 May 2008 06:32:52 GMT

When is the clock/alarm coming out?? How is it possible Microsoft hasn't done this yet? No wonder the Ipod continue to dominate the Zune in the marketplace. Apple knows how to deliver what consumers want and demand. I'm giving it 6 months (I've already waited a year), and then if there is still no clock release, I'm ditching my Zune and going to Apple.

New Music Friday: Sixty-Sixth Edition

Zune Insider — Fri, 09 May 2008 22:35:55 GMT

Welcome, the internet, to another exciting edition of New Music Friday! Ready for some more free tracks

re: Zune Spring Update

Luigi — Fri, 09 May 2008 02:51:55 GMT

grommet, one other question on the tags. Is the Zune editor writing UTF-16 or ISO-8559-1?

re: Zune Spring Update

Luigi — Fri, 09 May 2008 02:14:37 GMT

Oh yeah, I forgot. The problem with the Zune device and the disc number was in sorting the tracks like this:

etc.

re: Zune Spring Update

Luigi — Fri, 09 May 2008 02:12:27 GMT

grommet, yes, I see that the tag editor is writing id3 v1 and id3 v2.3 to the files. One thing that I'm trying to figure out is how we should be editing disc numbers. If you leave the disc number field empty it defaults to disc 0. When you then look at the file in mp3tag the discnumber tag reads 0/1. Not a problem now, but I'm wondering if I then load my files onto an iPod or something will it have trouble with the "0/1" BTW, is #/# the "standard" format for tagging disc numbers? Nice to have a calm discussion here. I had the wolves after me in another forum for expressing my disappointment with the gapless implementation :-)

re: Zune Spring Update

apathymusic — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:22:06 GMT

Thank you for the gapless playback!!! I've been waiting for this feature for a long time! And it works great.