Keep in mind, assuming Tesla is pricing options based on the "Model 3 is 20% smaller than S", then AP could conceivably be $6400 rather than $8000. But now back to the media player. Model 3 demo software showed the controls on the far right of the touchscreen, way out of reach for the driver, discuss.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
BertL
Active Member
1) I bet sections of the M3 UI were only incomplete mock ups, so Infotainment had not really been considered to any great degree yet in the development cycle, or
2) Tesla has not focused or prioritized their broader Infotainment System functionality/usability/quality including Media Player as much as some owners would prefer with MS/MX, so if Tesla hasn't changed their ways for M3, it may unfortunately be dealt with and added-in after other "more important" things the UI is primiarly oriented towards... or
3) Another variation could be that Tesla is really pulling out the stops with voice recognition to come out with 8.1 or beyond, and they think most users will be happy with maybe scrolling favorites/recents that perhaps could be accessed via future steering wheel selection, so they feel physical Media Player CID interaction will be minimal. Maybe? (That could hold true for primiarly lovers of streaming and Radio environments perhaps, but IMHO breaks down a whole lot with USB unless Tesla truly added M3U playlists, etc so Media Player functionality would be closer to what a hardwired MP3/iPod provides in competitive vehicles.)
As you know, I'm a bit pessimistic
related to Tesla Infotainment given continued quality/usability concerns and how far behind the competition it functionally is -- but an tried to be optimistic with #3!!!
RogerHScott
Active Member
Nigel Tufnel
Member
Although I agree we should contact Tesla, complaining here can and has made things change. Elon has people monitoring this forum and some of us have been contacted after a posted complaint because we include our VIN.
Also, "complaining" here is helpful to those of us who learn about the issue and its workarounds from other members.
It seems as if I'm complaining about your post, perhaps I should contact Tesla.
CarlK
Active Member
You can call it workaround but I call it what works. The folder structure is vastly improved. Using it is not just better but it actually is better than even the old way, People tend to fear of thing that is new and different and not want to embrace it but what works works. All I know is it works better than before and I'm happy with it.
STbreaker
Member
I very much appreciate your suggestions and think they are an integral part of figuring out "what works." However, I would argue that the behavior of sorting alphabetically by song title tag in folder view just doesn't work if you have any desire to play things in order and you have a library of any appreciable size
I think the new UI is prettier but it certainly isn't more functional or otherwise "better." The nested list approach from 7.1 worked fine - and frankly that's how any other functional media player sorts things. I just can't understand why they dumped the usage of so many info tags. At this point, the only thing that works for me (i.e. play the album I want in track order) is to sort by album and go through the tedious scrolling routine. At least now I get to see the album art while doing that?
Boatguy
Active Member
I'm glad it works for you.
It doesn't work for me because it pushes the burden of content which already contains copious meta-data onto the user. It's also entirely infeasible for large music collections (e.g., 11,000+ tracks). You talk about creating a dozen folders for artists you listen to most often. I have 600 artists in my collection and routinely listen to at least 100.
Again, I'm glad you found a work around that works for you, but Tesla owes us at least the capabilities of a 10yr old iPod.
theslimshadyist
Active Member
CarlK
Active Member
I agree with that and I did acknowledge it in that thread. That's a small inconvenience though since most times people don't care about order songs we play. Many, like myself, do shuffle play most times anyway. In case there are albums that one does care order of playing it is pretty easy to prepend the song title tag with track # so they will play that way.
Aside from that, which I think Tesla definitely should fix, there is no reason not to do the folder way. It is way better than the old tag search in every other aspect. Searching an album with folder and sub-folder on the screen is much easier than the old jump to first letter that you need to seek and press the tiny letter on that alphabet bar. Anyway I'm not trying to sell this to anyone I'm just offering a way to do it, although I don't like it to be called a workaround. It is not a workaround. We have been doing the same folder thing on our PC before and after iPod/iPhone came along.
Yours actually is the best scenario case that the folder will work better than before. You can have many levels of folders to accommodate your more demanding situation. Three levels of 20 folders (so all of them could show on the screen at the same time) for example could cover 800 artists. The sky is the limit if you need even more. This is way easier than the old way that you have to scroll through the long list with or without the hard to use jump to first letter feature. Again I'm just making a suggestion to you. You are the one to decide if this is what will work best for you.
Last edited:
STbreaker
Member
I'm not arguing just for the sake of arguing, but it is a bit optimistic to say that most people don't care about playing songs in order. Also it is not a "small inconvenience" to retag literally thousands of tracks to get them to play in order for this one interface because they didn't bother to test it for more than 10 seconds. They essentially turned a slightly flawed, but completely usable, interface into an ipod shuffle and tried to say that is an "improvement."
I don't think this is a fair comparison because it's easy to scroll on a PC with a mouse or by simply typing the first letter to jump to where you want or using page up/down...
Given the limited memory available in the car, if you have a large library, the best thing to do is to keep your directory as flat as possible. So while creating your own nested folders may help alleviate the scrolling problem, it creates an issue for some where the USB drive never even finishes loading. So now I'm faced with retagging and nesting and hoping the drive will still load OR retagging and dealing with the terrible scrolling. Again, if this had always been a problem, then so be it, but they took something that was working fine and ruined it for no apparent reason.
If you're really trying to make things better, you need to cater to your largest market - in this case it's the iPod user. I think it's been pretty clear that we're not just "too old" to adapt, but rather that these changes are not user friendly to the average person. It may have been a sidestep for anyone who tags track numbers in their titles and nests folders alphabetically (which iTunes does not do natively) but for anyone else it's a step backwards.
Last edited:
EV-lutioin
Active Member
I have gone to 100% streaming; It's possible the USB drive will go the way of the dodo bird.
BertL
Active Member
If I don't count the man-days it took me to figure out what was going on with 8.0,
then to determine workarounds for my biggest hot buttons,
then let my poor Mac spend 16+ hours to build my custom USB Flash Drive,
AND if this other dumb problem with USB devices being rescanned almost every time after turning off your MS, only when Energy Saving is ON (meaning you have USB silence for several minutes every time you start your MS),
I'd honestly say I'm happier than I've ever been with USB in my Tesla.
I received .21 yesterday, and I have to say, using the media player to play USB content is far better now. Granted I have not tested it enough yet, but I'd go so far as to say the media player is not unusable anymore.
Alpha shortcuts are still much needed, and I'd prefer Album list show the Album Artist tag rather than the list of the Artist tags of all the songs within. Also, I'd much like the scrolling and browsing to be faster.
I have been very critical of 8.0 for the media player thus far, and now I take most of my critique back.
- I have over 700 albums, and scrolling from A to Z on the album view now only takes less than 2 mins for me. I have to do a lot of swipes, and it stutters, but as I said, it only takes a couple of minutes.
- Moreover, if I accidentally enter an album when scrolling, going back takes me to the exact same position in the album list - not to the top.
- Once I finish this 2 min scroll, scrolling up and down afterwards is far smoother (although still stutters a little).
- And of course, the search function now includes USB.
Alpha shortcuts are still much needed, and I'd prefer Album list show the Album Artist tag rather than the list of the Artist tags of all the songs within. Also, I'd much like the scrolling and browsing to be faster.
I have been very critical of 8.0 for the media player thus far, and now I take most of my critique back.
STbreaker
Member
I have been using streaming more because of how they broke the USB playback. I have 2 complaints about streaming...
1) They don't really have all the music I like, though I'll admit I have some obscure likes. But even what they do have is hard to cultivate on the car interface - I really would like to be able to create stations with multiple artist seeds. I tried to login on my PC with the credentials Tesla sent and wasn't able to. As much as people hate on Pandora, I think it does a better job actually matching music to my thumbs up and down tastes than this saddled version of Slacker. Would be nice if I could easily "share" the stations on my free personal account with my Tesla supplied "plus" account
2) Slacker still is a random playlist. Most of the time I want to be able to play artists I want on demand, not as an integration into some radio station. I know I can pay extra to be able to do that, but why would I when I have the music (which I already paid for) sitting there on a USB drive I was using fine until 8.0 came out.
That being said, I'll say that the browsing interface for their pre-made stations was one of the things that actually was an upgrade in 8.0
Really?
On the average, Tesla owners are spending at least $100K on their cars.
Are we really saying it is acceptable for owners to spend hours on their computers massaging their USB storage to rename and move files to workaround flaws in the Tesla media player?
For people who want to play audiobooks, is it really acceptable for it to be so hard to listen to a USB audiobook (when the media player does a poor job in maintaining the current position in the currently playing audio file)?
Two minutes to scroll through a long list of songs? With 7.1, this was possible in a few seconds by scrolling through the first letter list and quickly positioning anywhere in the long song list.
Looking at the big picture...
The media player and navigation apps are software.
Autopilot and self driving are software.
If Tesla can't produce a reasonable media player and navigation system (without obvious bugs and periodic crashes), will anyone really trust the car's software to automatically drive the car anywhere (even with auto-park or summons)?
I've been a long-time Tesla supporter. And the state of Tesla's software continues to be a disappointment - especially with the lack of progress they've made over the past year in producing releases that provide more functionality and are really an improvement in the user interface - and without having bugs and console crashes (while the car is in motion).
Tesla can do much better - this isn't "rocket science"... And hopefully they'll start addressing these problems as they start to see more EV competition.
On the average, Tesla owners are spending at least $100K on their cars.
Are we really saying it is acceptable for owners to spend hours on their computers massaging their USB storage to rename and move files to workaround flaws in the Tesla media player?
For people who want to play audiobooks, is it really acceptable for it to be so hard to listen to a USB audiobook (when the media player does a poor job in maintaining the current position in the currently playing audio file)?
Two minutes to scroll through a long list of songs? With 7.1, this was possible in a few seconds by scrolling through the first letter list and quickly positioning anywhere in the long song list.
Looking at the big picture...
The media player and navigation apps are software.
Autopilot and self driving are software.
If Tesla can't produce a reasonable media player and navigation system (without obvious bugs and periodic crashes), will anyone really trust the car's software to automatically drive the car anywhere (even with auto-park or summons)?
I've been a long-time Tesla supporter. And the state of Tesla's software continues to be a disappointment - especially with the lack of progress they've made over the past year in producing releases that provide more functionality and are really an improvement in the user interface - and without having bugs and console crashes (while the car is in motion).
Tesla can do much better - this isn't "rocket science"... And hopefully they'll start addressing these problems as they start to see more EV competition.
Boatguy
Active Member
Completely agree. Unfortunately the only way to play it is streaming from my phone, and then I have to use the phone for the up/down buttons, though that's not nearly as often as when using Slacker.
artsci
Sponsor
Couldn't agree more. Owners are trying to correct for Tesla's failures in designing 8.0.
Tesla's management should be embarassed by this USB media player disaster. It was rushed to market without sufficient testing.
CarlK
Active Member
Definitely agree. Cloud is the future. The only reason I use USB is I use FLAC files for the better audio quality. Perhaps there will be no need for that when Spotify becomes available. We'll see. For people who are listening to MP3 or for those iPhone/iPod users, streaming, even on Slacker, is much better than playing on USB no matter what UI has. You can search for anything from tens of millions of songs by a simple voice command. Couldn't be any better than that.
It's 30 minute's work for me and probably for most people too. Even if it takes hours it still beats frustrated and having to whine on the forum for days or weeks but still not get you anywhere. It's absolutely your choice and I need to say no more. This post will conclude my stay on this thread. Non-believers can do whatever you want to do.
Last edited:
The only thing I would take issue with on your comments is that is takes you "minutes to scroll". I would argue that even just seconds engrossed in the touchscreen while operating a 5000lb electric death missile is ill-advisable.
But with the rest of your items, I guess that's promising, right? That's two bugs out of a dozen they squashed.
This is why I suspect that EAP members are chosen based almost entirely on the hardware config of their car, not for any technical prowess of the owner or desire for actual improvement suggestion/feedback based on usage. I spend, literally, 3hrs in the car every day, interacting with the software. Again, myself and others know *exactly* what it does and doesn't do well from the standpoint of A) What does the user want to do vs. how does the software react, and B) What should the software do? But I feel Tesla becomes deaf when myself and others bring up legitimate concerns based on the previous comments. The response or lack thereof might as well be, "Who us? Tesla? We don't make software mistakes, you're using it wrong, idiot."
