Im not sure how possible this is but, it would be nice to when you are skipping through the tracks for the empeg to automatically go into now next mode so you can see what is coming up and then after about 5 seconds of continous play the empeg would go back to whatever info it was at.

when you are skipping through the tracks for the empeg to automatically go into now next mode

A nice concept, but I think a bit difficult to excecute. How would the player know when you were "...skipping through the tracks..." as opposed to just advancing to the next track? Maybe counting how many tracks were skipped in X number of seconds or something, but that would get pretty cumbersome.

Probably better to just use the remote to go to Now and Next mode before you start skipping.

tanstaafl.

Don't be such a stick in the mud, Doug.

I like this idea a lot. How does it know whether you're just advancing or skipping to the next track? It doesn't, and it shouldn't need to. It could just pop into Now and Next whenever you hit Next or Previous track, and sit in Now and Next for a short (perhaps configurable) amount of time before switching back to your chosen Info mode. I think all the business about calculating your "track advance speed" is unnecessary... When I skip a track, I'm "skipping through the tracks", I don't see a distinction...

What would make it neat if you could configure it to only do this when in Shuffle mode, since that's when it's most useful (if not in shuffle, you probably know what the next track is.)

I like the sound of this Tony.

g

I would love this as well.... I like the concept of "now and next" but it usually isn't worth switching modes and then back again manually.

Now... if the Now&Next could also show artist.... (I'm real bad with remembering track names and having 9000+ songs makes it hard too...)

Most useful idea i've seen for a long time ... it gets my vote !

I think this is a good idea, but I don't want it to be automatic. It should be a separate mode that you can select, like Track/Now&Next.

I think there would be times where I'd want to skip and see all the ID3 tag info.

Maybe something like a setting you either turn on or off. Something like Settings>Now Next on Track Advance>On or Off? I dunno how doable it is but it would be nice.

What I'd really like is:

while (button == "Next Track") {

  if (info_mode != ("Now and Next"||"Seek Tool")){

     # mode is Line, Transient, Track or Off.

     change_for_3_seconds_to("Now and Next")

  }

}

While we're at it, I'd also really like a quick seek mode, entered from a FFD button press:

while (button == "Fast Forward") {

  if (info_mode != "Seek Tool") {

     change_for_3_seconds_to("Seek Tool")

  }

}

Of course this wouldn't be so easy in the real code, for instance the player would need to reassign the buttons and knob to the temporay mode, and handle the timeout whilst in that mode. This would allow seeking so while you turned the knob whilst in the temporary "Seek Tool" mode, the timeout doesn't occur, but once you stop turning the knob, the 3 second timeout counts down again to return to the 'real' mode.

Just wnated to bring this excellent idea back up... and add to it.

Can we PLEASE show the artist in the Now & Next display? I leave my player on shuffle a large majority of the time, and i can't identify the next song simply by name. It drives me nuts. I really wish we had some amalgam of the Now & Next and Track Info screens... and if that screen could be made transient... i think a lot of us would be incredibly happy.

Now & Next

------------------------------------------

song title : artist

song title 2 : artist

song title 3 : artist                X:XX

song title 4 : artist           [xx/xxxx]

------------------------------------------ 

OR... howabout a mode where it's always in Visual mode until a button is pressed, at which point it
goes to an info screen, either Now & Next or Track Info for as long as an interaction is going on, then a
short delay before it returns to Visual mode. That along with a Transient song change display... sweeet.

Ah, if only the fonts were that small, and song titles and artists were that short.

then scroll them. i think we've gone over that part before. . .

edit: actually, i'd be happy with just an artist based now & next!

Right, and I think their answer was that the screen looked awful with all the track names scrolling.

Although, having the current track scroll with the artist, the way the Karma does, might work. Of course, by the time you see the full artist and title, you've already heard enough of the song to deduce that information yourself...

Probably more work than anyone is willing to put into it, but how hard would it be to have something like a folder full of XML based schemas for the INFO display? That way people could have whatever they want....

> Can we PLEASE show the artist in the Now & Next display?

Yes, please!

-brendan

Loren, this idea of yours: OR... howabout a mode where it's always in Visual mode until a button is pressed, at which point it
goes to an info screen, either Now & Next or Track Info for as long as an interaction is going on, then a
short delay before it returns to Visual mode. That along with a Transient song change display... sweeet is really a good one... It's kinda like transient, except that it uses a Full Screen info mode rather than Line..

I agree with Tony, and trust emepg towers judgement if they say it looks worse in RL.. Would a Now&Next that only showed the Next 1 or 2 tracks have room for Artist? What'd be cool is if that info could be sent to something like empegface. I'd just love to have a playlist view like in Winamp... but alas this thing was made for my car wasn't it?

This is easy (meaning "possible") to do from userland, if anyone wants to do it..

>howabout a mode where it's always in Visual mode until a button is pressed

Switching visuals would be a real bugger with this, but I suppose one could special-case that part..

This is easy (meaning "possible") to do from userland, if anyone wants to do it..

Way ahead of ya. I don't have anything that's "release quality" yet but I do have primitive Now & Next custom info modes working. Having N&N pop up just during track selection is a trivial next step.

Incidentally, there are some Hiajack API improvements that I've suggested in the past that may make a "player frontend" app like emphatic a lot easier to develop (and more useful, like not having to quit out of it to run another user app.) But I think even with the current API, I can make this one happen, as long as people are willing to accept a user app in between them and the player (and having to manually select said app from the Hijack menu each time their empeg boots.)

No timetable for completion, though, as I need to clean up a lot of spaghetti code first.

=D