For those that don't know...

While browsing any playlist, you can press the numbers on the remote to jump to the first entry with the corresponding letter (be it song or another playlist). Pressing #8 once takes you to "T" pressing it again gets you to "U" - there doesn't seem to be a time-out on this. The player seems to simply track what the last number was and takes you to the next letter on subsequent presses.

Some people are splitting their playlists into single letters because they have too many entries to comfortable scroll through. This player feature allows you to navigate lists very quickly. But it is restricted to the remote control. For now.

What about being able to assign a special function to a button that would sequentially run through the letters of the alphabet each time it's pressed? That would be simulated with numbers of course as above.

Unlike the player, where each # button represents 3 letters, this special Hijack button would represent ALL of them. Sort of like this: "2,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,4,5,5,5,6,6,6,7,0,7,7,8,8,8,9,9,9,0" - notice, no need for the 1 and you have to include the special "0" case for "q" and "z"

The special-ness of this feature comes with the fact that you have to track what the current position is within that numerical list.

Then there's going backwards. This would also need a special case. You could not simply go in reverse through the numerical list. For instance, because press 8 while currently on "u" would always go forward to "v." Going backwards would have to involve skipping every third letter.

That said, all I've described about moving through the list, is by sending the player the numbers and letting it use its current logic to navigate the lists. If the player could be instructed to go to specific letters, by-passing its built-in number logic, then that would allow for proper/seamless forward/backward movement.

And lastly, there are a few tweaks that can be discussed such as where to start the button codes when entering a list - do you look at what the current letter for the current track is, or do you just start at "A" on first press...

Discussion is open.

Bruno

Mmm.. I don't think I'll try to tackle that one, because the state tracking is impossible without parsing fonts from the screen (the player often "tosses" button presses..).

But perhaps something along the lines of the existing "Knob Rotate (not press) Redefinition" might make playlist browsing even simpler, if we had a way to turn it on/off on the fly (a PopUp?), instead of just through the Hijack menu.. play with it and see what you think.

I was going to ask you to disregard this request. I thought of a better idea. This would make a really good code for the player to support. I'll add it to the wishlist forum. Then tracking wouldn't be a problem. And then we could just map any remote or face button to that new code. No hack needed.

My knob rotate already whips through playlists. But it's not an ideal control because of the inherent lack of precision (esp. while driving )

Bruno

One thing mentioned before is assigning PIN numbers to each track..

I like that idea, but even better would be a way to access and navigate through the PIN numbers using the head unit's buttons, and not the remote. A few simple button clicks and then by rotating the knob would start you scrolling through each number till you get to the one you want..

Another angle would be to simple rotate the knob and scroll through the list of artists, titles, or whatever else you specify. This would be a reasonable alternative to the alpha search, and wouldn't require any re-editing of ID3 tags to accomodate such searches..

Maybe I am an exception, but I find using the remote to be very inconvenient..

So how possible is this idea?

Thanks

John M