Media player in 8.0 actually got worse (for local music)

[BertL]

Guys, IMHO it's fine for us all to complain about and report the bug with spaces in the volume name, but for me since it's not earth shattering, I just workaround Tesla's bug having an old style name without spaces and special characters (for you young ones, volume names have not always allowed spaces in early days of Personal Comouting when I started with CP/M, DOS, PC DOS, earlier releases of Windows, etc.)

Similarly, I've reported elsewhere in the past (so it's not unique to 8.0) of poor handling of certain non-Latin characters in both directory/filenames and/or meta tags -- the results if one elects to use them accidentally or on-purpose vary, but seldom for the good in MS Media Player. Now that I'm part of the Tesla Family, every time I find one of my tags with a special character somewhere in my library, I eliminate it. Even though it all worked fine with my former PC, Apple and prior Lexus, BMW and MBz that accepted hardwired "iPod" devices, it's just not worth the added annoyance to me once I'm in my MS.

 

[Boatguy]

Guys, IMHO it's fine for us all to complain about and report the bug with spaces in the volume name, but for me since it's not earth shattering, I just workaround Tesla's bug having an old style name without spaces and special characters (for you young ones, volume names have not always allowed spaces in early days of Personal Comouting when I started with CP/M, DOS, PC DOS, earlier releases of Windows, etc.)

Similarly, I've reported elsewhere in the past (so it's not unique to 8.0) of poor handling of certain non-Latin characters in both directory/filenames and/or meta tags -- the results if one elects to use them accidentally or on-purpose vary, but seldom for the good in MS Media Player. Now that I'm part of the Tesla Family, every time I find one of my tags with a special character somewhere in my library, I eliminate it. Even though it all worked fine with my former PC, Apple and prior Lexus, BMW and MBz that accepted hardwired "iPod" devices, it's just not worth the added annoyance to me once I'm in my MS.

So we're essentially waiting for Tesla to reproduce the capabilities of the iPod that was introduced 15 years ago. Cutting edge indeed.

 

[supratachophobia]

So we're essentially waiting for Tesla to reproduce the capabilities of the iPod that was introduced 15 years ago. Cutting edge indeed.

Or the Empeg from 14 years ago.

 

[dhjdhj]

It's late April, 2017 --- latest software update --- media player is still displaying my songs in alphabetical order even though the track number is right there and displayed as well.

WTF?

 

[dgpcolorado]

It's late April, 2017 --- latest software update --- media player is still displaying my songs in alphabetical order even though the track number is right there and displayed as well.

WTF?

Really? I use folder view and had to retag my tracks in each folder with a number in front, a nuisance to do, but it works fine. Album view wasn't useful because it merged pieces of music that I had split out on purpose. Changing the computer file names with a number didn't work, I had to use a media editor — Media Monkey, suggested by someone here at TMC — to put a number in front of the actual track name.

My current complaint with the media player — I'm on 17.14.23 — is that every time I turn the car on it defaults to the phone connection on the screen, which I never use. The USB plays the track it was last playing but it takes a lot of taps to get the display back to the proper USB folder screen — every time I start the car! Didn't do that on 7.1. However, the bug that the media player starts playing even when I had it paused before I turned the car off seems to have been fixed. If I have the media player paused, it is still paused the next time I turn the car on, as it should be. That's progress of a sort.

 

[supratachophobia]

Really? I use folder view and had to retag my tracks in each folder with a number in front, a nuisance to do, but it works fine. Album view wasn't useful because it merged pieces of music that I had split out on purpose. Changing the computer file names with a number didn't work, I had to use a media editor — Media Monkey, suggested by someone here at TMC — to put a number in front of the actual track name.

My current complaint with the media player — I'm on 17.14.23 — is that every time I turn the car on it defaults to the phone connection on the screen, which I never use. The USB plays the track it was last playing but it takes a lot of taps to get the display back to the proper USB folder screen — every time I start the car! Didn't do that on 7.1. However, the bug that the media player starts playing even when I had it paused before I turned the car off seems to have been fixed. If I have the media player paused, it is still paused the next time I turn the car on, as it should be. That's progress of a sort.

Oh geez, you are right. I thought I was doing something wrong.

 

[TomatoOne]

However, the bug that the media player starts playing even when I had it paused before I turned the car off seems to have been fixed. If I have the media player paused, it is still paused the next time I turn the car on, as it should be. That's progress of a sort.

Same behavior here. If you paused an album when exiting the car, it remembers it and resumes once you're back.

However, if playback ended, or if nothing was playing last time you left, it may randomly select a new source and start playing a Slacker stream, a radio station or ringtones from my phone ;[. That doesn't happen every time, but it's very annoying when it does.

 

[dgpcolorado]

...However, if playback ended, or if nothing was playing last time you left, it may randomly select a new source and start playing a Slacker stream, a radio station or ringtones from my phone ;[. That doesn't happen every time, but it's very annoying when it does.

I haven't had that happen but it may be because I tend to put my USB folders on repeat so that they play continuously until I select something else and playback never ends.

 

[bob_p]

Disappointing that Tesla hasn't yet fixed the 8.0 bugs in the media player. The XM radio is almost unusable without the station list and station slider. Losing the USB song/position whenever changes sources is annoying. And fixing the USB random playback could be as simple as adding a "current time" function to the randomization equation, likely a one-line fix.

Perhaps if Consumer Reports graded on software reliability, Tesla would try harder to get obvious bugs fixed faster...

While I want to see our AP2 hardware get quick updates to provide the promised functionality, surely the media player is a different team and they could at least fix the problems they introduced back in 8.0 - last year...

 

[DrumCoder]

I'm personally now hating that the Albums view doesn't respect the Album Artist ID3 tag and instead goes by Artist. I listen to a lot of compilation albums (soundtracks with multiple composers) and I can't just listen to an album, I can only listen to a specific artist's contributions to an album.

 

[fishadelphia]

I'm personally now hating that the Albums view doesn't respect the Album Artist ID3 tag and instead goes by Artist. I listen to a lot of compilation albums (soundtracks with multiple composers) and I can't just listen to an album, I can only listen to a specific artist's contributions to an album.

This exactly. USB was working perfectly until this update and now I hardly ever listen to my USB music. Most of what I have are compilation albums or albums that need to be played in a specific order (ahem - Hamilton). So frustrating! Are you saying there still isn't an easy fix for this? I'm not about to go an re-tag my metadata on principle.

(I still frickin' love my car, though. Don't get me wrong.)

 

[bob_p]

Evidently adding the new Easter Egg menu was a higher priority than fixing some of the obvious bugs introduced over 6 months ago in 8.0.

At least it's easier now to get access to the easter eggs - though I'd rather "shuffle" mode actually played a different sequence of songs - and the media player would remember what song was playing after doing a source change...

 

[supratachophobia]

Not going to say that I disagree with your statement. Internal rumblings I hear is that they are understaffed and that's why these updates are dragging. But I simply tell them that there is obvious priority for Easter eggs so their excuse doesn't jive.

Evidently adding the new Easter Egg menu was a higher priority than fixing some of the obvious bugs introduced over 6 months ago in 8.0.

At least it's easier now to get access to the easter eggs - though I'd rather "shuffle" mode actually played a different sequence of songs - and the media player would remember what song was playing after doing a source change...

 

[bob_p]

If you ask any software team, they will likely give the same answer - management gives us unreasonable schedules and doesn't provide us enough resources to deliver the functionality they are requesting.

As someone who's been on both sides of this, I understand the challenges in managing aggressive software projects, with limited teams - and know Tesla can do better.

Tesla evidently had the resources for making some major user interface changes in the 8.0 release - and instead of prioritizing for maximum functionality, Tesla's management evidently placed having a better looking user interface above having a more functional media player. And since that release, even though Tesla (Musk?) promised 8.1 would have media player fixes/improvements, we haven't seen that - yet.

Ultimately the responsibility for the content and quality of the releases must be with the management - and not the developers. It's up to the management to balance expectations vs. the available resources, prioritizing what should be in each release, and putting in place a process that covers development and testing of the software. While the developers do the actual implementation, any problems customers see are usually more due to the management decisions than the capability or dedication of the software developers.

And for some of the obvious bugs (like fixing "shuffle"), the amount of software development needed to fix this problem is likely pretty small - possibly less than the amount of time it took me to type in this reply!

 

[whttiger25]

If you ask any software team, they will likely give the same answer - management gives us unreasonable schedules and doesn't provide us enough resources to deliver the functionality they are requesting.

As someone who's been on both sides of this, I understand the challenges in managing aggressive software projects, with limited teams - and know Tesla can do better.

Tesla evidently had the resources for making some major user interface changes in the 8.0 release - and instead of prioritizing for maximum functionality, Tesla's management evidently placed having a better looking user interface above having a more functional media player. And since that release, even though Tesla (Musk?) promised 8.1 would have media player fixes/improvements, we haven't seen that - yet.

Ultimately the responsibility for the content and quality of the releases must be with the management - and not the developers. It's up to the management to balance expectations vs. the available resources, prioritizing what should be in each release, and putting in place a process that covers development and testing of the software. While the developers do the actual implementation, any problems customers see are usually more due to the management decisions than the capability or dedication of the software developers.

And for some of the obvious bugs (like fixing "shuffle"), the amount of software development needed to fix this problem is likely pretty small - possibly less than the amount of time it took me to type in this reply!

yeah....like fixing the usb album storting bug is changing an "order by" clause from [song title] to [track number]. Or a conditional, when track number is null then file name else track number. Whatever. it's easy. Much easier than AI learning for autopilot or an easter egg menu.

 

[supratachophobia]

yeah....like fixing the usb album storting bug is changing an "order by" clause from [song title] to [track number]. Or a conditional, when track number is null then file name else track number. Whatever. it's easy. Much easier than AI learning for autopilot or an easter egg menu.

The funny thing is, it's the same shuffle order for every car. I just had a loaner X and realized my USB tracks were shuffled into the exact same order. The least they could do is pick a random number seed based on VIN.....

 

[whttiger25]

The funny thing is, it's the same shuffle order for every car. I just had a loaner X and realized my USB tracks were shuffled into the exact same order. The least they could do is pick a random number seed based on VIN.....

My random number seed would be based on current seconds on clock, outdoor temperature, and odometer reading.

 

[supratachophobia]

My random number seed would be based on current seconds on clock, outdoor temperature, and odometer reading.

Yeah yeah, I know. But if they had to pick a static number, at least the VIN would be unique to the car. As it stands, they probably chose whatever year Half-life 3 was supposed to be released.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

Senior management must be completely incompetent.