I played around on 8.0 last night after our Model S updated yesterday; the first thing I did was check out the media player, which we all know has the potential -- thanks to the 17 inch display -- to be a fantastic piece of software with an industry-leading interface.
The 8.0 media player is really frustrating. It's simply not designed to be seriously used by someone operating a car.
I can't comment on the frustration that others have with listening to music on USB devices, as my wife and I primarily use the media player to listen to the radio -- a mixture of AM, FM, and XM channels. Here's what I've discovered:
1. While we finally have the ability to store more than 6 'favorite' channels, it's impossible to re-organize any of these "favorites" in anything but the order that they were entered. (They do automatically self-sort into 4 categories, presented in this order: AM, FM, XM, and Streaming. So I guess that's a victory for the lone AM traffic-and-news station I listen to on occasion.)
But it's impossible to reorganize any of these channels (within their specific category) after you've made them a 'favorite'. I'd love the ability to just press and drag each "favorite" channel icon to reorganize our favorites, and create a mixture of different sources (rather than presenting them in separate categories).
One of the reasons I want this ability is because my wife and I have different tastes in music, and without the ability to tie in these favorites to an individual driver profile (my #1 feature request -- it would be so great if media and nav preferences were stored in driver profiles!), I just want to be able to "swipe" across a list of my wife's favorite channels to get to my "favorites" list.
My workaround was to carefully enter each channel we wanted (in reverse order, because the last channel I entered would show up as our #1 favorite on the list). But I dread the day we want to 'add' a channel favorite, which means if I want to keep it organized, I'd have to wipe out all of our favorites in that category and start again from scratch.
I can't believe our magical electrical supercar is this dumb when it comes to creating a list of favorite channels.
2. As so many have noted, the XM channels are unlabeled on our favorites list, so you only get the title of the channel when the channel itself is selected and playing.
There's also, as far as I know, no easily available screen that shows a "master list" of labeled XM stations. Instead, the channels seem to be organized in an index that's based on categories (to find a list of rock stations, for example, you have to hunt for the "rock" category, tap, and then make your selection).
But if I have a specific station number that I want to get to that I had never listened to before (for example, XM Channel 117), the only way to navigate to this channel without going through categories is to tap an arrow 117 times to get to this channel. (But there must be an easier way, right? Power users, please let me know if I'm missing something super-obvious. Maybe voice commands would solve this issue?)
It was getting late, but I do remember a moment where I was swiping around (this interface is all about swiping around) and found a list of XM channels that were displayed as icons -- one that would require a lot of swiping to get through -- but the system, in my opinion, would be so much easier to browse using a simple list that shows channel number, channel name, channel category, and currently playing (for example: 20, E Street Radio, Rock, "Thunder Road").
3. Media source selection missing from instrument cluster -- this function needs to be brought brought back with the next update. It's simply so much easier and, more importantly, *safer* to make this change from the steering wheel, while keeping your eyes forward, rather than averting your eyes to the 17" display if you want to switch from AM to XM or whatever-to-whatever.
