If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

Ces — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 16:14:15 GMT

Those 'cool kids' Three Imaginary Girls have zero references to Zune on their site (try searching!) but loads to the iPod. Cool? I don't think so. Expel them! Gotta have a Zune to be cool!

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

Joe B — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 18:27:35 GMT

For the most part I love my zune. With that said, the problems The Shutdown has mentioned are really killing me. I can't get 4-8 songs before a skip, just about the first 10 seconds of every song I play skips. Sometimes not so bad, usually bad.

Now I'm not one to just sit and deal with this s*&% so I went out, got a docking station and upped the screen to always on. Seems to work, but yeah I didn't want to spend $100 and I still didn't buy a car charger which I'll need. On the plus side, having a remote is cool, because browsing music on my 360 *SUCKS* so with the remote I can plug it right into my aux input and get easier access to the music when downstais.

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

admin — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 18:57:17 GMT

Wally - he's extremely busy - patience, my man, patience

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

bastard son — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 20:00:04 GMT

those top songs are horrible

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

WallyWare — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 15:33:36 GMT

Cesar,

Bill Witt is ignoring me. Do you know if he's out of town or is he just very busy?

Wally

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

The Cyber Nerd — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 21:11:14 GMT

Where is the Clock in the zune ui?

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

Gg — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 18:19:23 GMT

1 - I'm new here so I apologize if you've addressed this already, but could you please tell me Microsoft is at least working on the album art issue? Myself and many other people at the ZuneScene message boards aren't having it upload to the Zune at all, or for some people it's very hit or miss. I know you can't tell me when the next update will be out or if a fix will be included in it, but I'd at least like to know it's high on their radar screen.

2 - Speaking of which, even if you don't correct the resolution of all the album art in Marketplace right away, which could take a while, the next update should at least resize user-supplied album art to 240x240 instead of 200x200. That seems like a very easy fix, and a very silly oversight to begin with.

3 - Please tell someone to set up an e-mail address or web form for suggestions at Zune.net. There's only a telephone number for support, and I don't want to wait on the phone to pass on an idea when I don't really need a response. As you can see I've had to resort to bothering bloggers.

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

The Shutdown — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 16:01:30 GMT

Devil & Karla:

After some testing, the skipping also happens with a single album playlist, set to play, ZMP files. So I'm not sure that list size or shuffle are variables in the equation.

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

Karla B — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:46:57 GMT

Devil,

I have the same issue I have been trying to resolve with support. They did tell me about the backlight but that drains my battery too quick. They did call me the the other day telling me it's a hardware problem and to get an exchange, been there done that, and still have the same issue on the new device. It's rather annoying to hear the skipping and I hope they have something resolved soon.

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

John — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 06:14:36 GMT

Keep your eye on Tavi..they make some nice hardware. It would be great if the Zune supported the high def video capabilities like their device does.

http://www.tavi.com

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

The Shutdown — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 02:15:16 GMT

Devil, nice work. Those are precisely the circumstances/settings I've noted for my skipping issue, since those are pretty common defaults I never bothered to tweak them. I clearly have less technical know-how than you, but figured it was simply a DRM/processor issue. I just set it to shuffle all music and get the skipping... I'll be testing it tonight on various backlight settings. It is a great device, hopefully this issue can be resolved with a firmware update. Thanks for the info.

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

TheNumberDevil — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:11:33 GMT

Following up to previous post:

Thinking about why turning display backlight to always on seems to defeat the skipping ... I suspect the Zune device might shuts down a execution thread that updates the display backlight times out (I have noticed that the display slowly fades away and can be seen up to minute without any backlight before it turns tootally dark.) Some display code might be getting swapped out of device virtual memory ... hmmm ...

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

TheNumberDevil — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 23:59:40 GMT

The Shutdown: I see the skipping problem with Zune Marketplace tracks. I have been trying to resolve this by working with Zune support and have been escalated to Tier II.

I did extensive testing (in the meantime) and find that the problem can be reliably reproduced if you reset the zune device and do the following:

1. Select a playlist (or another list like artist or album) with 30 to 40 tracks with MarketPlace downloaded songs

2. Display brightness set to medium, display backlight set to 15 seconds

3. Shuffle is on

4. Select play all and lock the zune

5. Set Zune device down and listen away.

The skipping happens before you have heard 8 tracks (third track was very common for me) and only in the first 30 seconds of playback of the song. You can press "show song list" to see how many you have heard when it happens. If you continue past the song and (I checked upto 2 songs later) then use "show song list" to go back to the skipping song it plays back flawlessly. The song that skips is random as songs that played correctly before skipped at other times.

I was able to make the problem go away by changing the display brightness to low and display backlight to always on.

When I switched back the settings the problem reproduced again. Also, using a playlist with all songs that I ripped using my own CDs does not reproduce the problem.

The Zune software plays these tracks correctly every time. I actually used the "flagging" mechanism on my Zune Device to mark skipping tracks. This is a really cool feature!!!!

My conjecture is that the problem has something to do with how long it takes to process the DRM information. The song probably starts at the end of the Zune Device read ahead buffer and reads are blocked while the device is processing the DRM information (or some other processing that blocks reads). Later on the song plays flawlessly because it is in the buffer!!!

Does any one else see this problem?

I haven't had any other issues with the Zune Device and love it.

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

The Shutdown — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 23:41:36 GMT

Ryan, got it to download today... there's no telling what the issue was. Ready to get crackalackin with "The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me."

Cesar, keep up the good work. The world of digital music needs all the competition it can get. As a user, I hope you guys keep improving the product and expanding the scenarios for the Zune. Like many others, when I bought mine, I was assuming I was paying for a pretty steady stream of upgrades and features, a la XBox Live. Deliver, and this can be a big edge for yall. Buying an mp3 player has traditionally been a guarantee for buyers remorse within 3 months... it'd be nice to offer a product that improves over the course of it's life rather than becoming another instant victim of planned obsolescence.

re: If Your Comment Got Deleted, Here's Why

koi — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 23:14:48 GMT

zune. stinks.