Media Player Problem

[asrose]

Ever since I purchased my Model S at the end of September 2016 (unknowingly 2 weeks before HW2), the Media Player has been erratic:

1) It constantly loses connectivity to the Tunein station and the "action wheel just rotates", or..

2) It switches to an adjacent favorite station.

On a 20 minute drive this morning, it happened several times and after hundreds of times since the car was new, this problem has become very irritating.

I had been waiting for the 8.1 upgrade for HW1 since last year thinking that would cure the problem (SC stated that it was a known problem that would be fixed in a future firmware update), but it doesn't look like that I will get it anytime soon.

I understand that there will be UI, Linux kernel and browser (which barely works) improvements but that will be another 6 weeks (? - hopefully not 3 months and counting as in the 8.1 upgrade)

Does anyone have these Media problems? Is it a pending firmware problem or do I have defective hardware??

Thanks!

 

[Tam]

...the Media Player has been erratic...

The title & poll is too broad.

I use

1) Radio
2) Slacker
3) USB

but seldom others such as Tune In.

 

[Mark Z]

I find that an additional tap or double tap of a favorite station icon helps get the non-playing station operational faster. Sometimes it requires switching to a radio station or another tunein station and then try tapping your favorite station icon again.

In regard to the phantom switching to an adjacent favorite station, Tesla knows about it. I have found it occasionally occurs after a phone call. Both my 2012 and 2017 Model S experience the same problem, so it is the software.

IMHO, problems like the phantom switching can be frustrating for the programmers, as a counter in a program loop could be the cause. Other times a table is one position off. Maybe the original author isn't working on the project anymore, so it is up to the new programming engineers to find the cause. Maybe they will be motivated if the code problems occur in their Model 3 later this year.

 

[bob_p]

The media player has been problematic since we purchased our S P85 in early 2013.

While the media player looks great on the console display, it could use quite a bit of work to make it easier to use and more reliable.

The USB playback has multiple problems - frequently forgetting the current song and position - and "random" playback isn't random - it follows the same sequence every time.

Since 8.0 was released, new cars can't get the XM radio station list, and because the station slider was dropped in 8.0, changing to specific XM station is very time consuming - single stepping through every XM station.

And then there's the step backward in usability in source selection in 8.0. Prior to 8.0, the media player source could be changed from the steering wheel scroll button. That was removed in 8.0 - and now changing sources requires hitting the display once to bring up the menu bar, selecting the media player app, and then changing the source [assuming you aren't keeping the media player up all of the time.]

Some of these issues are so obvious, it's hard to explain how these issues were missed during development, internal testing or testing by Tesla's hand picked beta testers.

8.0 was supposed to have media player improvements - which fell short.

8.1 is supposed to again have media player improvements, though last week's "8.1" release appears to be more of an AP2 update than the long-promised improvements to the media player, browser and Linux kernel.

Many people have shifted to using their smartphones instead of the onboard media player (the only way to reliably listen to audiobooks).

Despite the frustrations with the media player, we still accepted delivery of our second Model S three weeks ago - our new red S 100D, and don't regret that decision...

 

[supratachophobia]

Ever since I purchased my Model S at the end of September 2016 (unknowingly 2 weeks before HW2), the Media Player has been erratic:

1) It constantly loses connectivity to the Tunein station and the "action wheel just rotates", or..

2) It switches to an adjacent favorite station.

On a 20 minute drive this morning, it happened several times and after hundreds of times since the car was new, this problem has become very irritating.

I had been waiting for the 8.1 upgrade for HW1 since last year thinking that would cure the problem (SC stated that it was a known problem that would be fixed in a future firmware update), but it doesn't look like that I will get it anytime soon.

I understand that there will be UI, Linux kernel and browser (which barely works) improvements but that will be another 6 weeks (? - hopefully not 3 months and counting as in the 8.1 upgrade)

Does anyone have these Media problems? Is it a pending firmware problem or do I have defective hardware??

Thanks!

Your survey is flawed since the Media Player works unreliably all the time. In other words, if you know it's shortcomings, it's broken the same way every time you use it (so in that aspect, it's reliable).

 

[joebevatl]

The media player has been problematic since we purchased our S P85 in early 2013.

While the media player looks great on the console display, it could use quite a bit of work to make it easier to use and more reliable.

The USB playback has multiple problems - frequently forgetting the current song and position - and "random" playback isn't random - it follows the same sequence every time.

Since 8.0 was released, new cars can't get the XM radio station list, and because the station slider was dropped in 8.0, changing to specific XM station is very time consuming - single stepping through every XM station.

And then there's the step backward in usability in source selection in 8.0. Prior to 8.0, the media player source could be changed from the steering wheel scroll button. That was removed in 8.0 - and now changing sources requires hitting the display once to bring up the menu bar, selecting the media player app, and then changing the source [assuming you aren't keeping the media player up all of the time.]

Some of these issues are so obvious, it's hard to explain how these issues were missed during development, internal testing or testing by Tesla's hand picked beta testers.

8.0 was supposed to have media player improvements - which fell short.

8.1 is supposed to again have media player improvements, though last week's "8.1" release appears to be more of an AP2 update than the long-promised improvements to the media player, browser and Linux kernel.

Many people have shifted to using their smartphones instead of the onboard media player (the only way to reliably listen to audiobooks).

Despite the frustrations with the media player, we still accepted delivery of our second Model S three weeks ago - our new red S 100D, and don't regret that decision...

I can't bring myself to purchase another Tesla until they get the USB playback problem fixed where it forgets the current position. I listen to audiobooks almost 100% of the time I'm in the car. I have a small paper notebook into which I have to write the current track and position every time before I get out of the car. A car that had a cost of over $100k should be able to keep up with where it was. That is a minor software problem to fix. It worked previously and then was broken in a software release a few years ago. They have never fully fixed that problem.

 

[bob_p]

It's tempting for us to take the same position - we won't purchase our next Tesla until they fix the problems we have with USB (losing position, shuffle), XM (no station list, no station slider), and navigation (missing or wrong speed limits on many roads, doesn't know our street address, thinks it takes 5 minutes to move several feet on our street).

However, now that my wife has seen the pictures and videos of the first production Model 3's, this won't stop her from hitting the ORDER button on the website as soon as Tesla allows us to configure it.

For anyone who is frustrated about these issues, I recommend calling Tesla's service line and/or sending e-mail and report the problem. While it's a low probability this will have much impact (at least in the short term), it can't hurt - and the more people provide feedback, hopefully that will increase visibility.

Though, surely Tesla knows about these problems - and should have known about these flaws during beta testing, and still decided to release the software. And, hopefully, they have the fixes ready, and are being held back by the higher priority need to get AP2 working.

Since we haven't seen any updates for a while now, it's possible Tesla is readying a major release - and I'm hoping we'll (finally) start seeing some of the bugs fixed.

 

[kort677]

I can't bring myself to purchase another Tesla until they get the USB playback problem fixed

I don't mean to provoke an argument, and I agree that the system can be very wonky but did you purchase a great car or did you purchase an entertainment system?
IMHO if the entertainment system is your biggest issue with your car consider yourself fortunate.

 

[supratachophobia]

I don't mean to provoke an argument, and I agree that the system can be very wonky but did you purchase a great car or did you purchase an entertainment system?
IMHO if the entertainment system is your biggest issue with your car consider yourself fortunate.

After taking a 13hr trip with passengers wanting to change stops on the fly, I can tell you we'd be dead without Autopilot. Such a distraction overall with Nav. Thankfully we've given up on the media player with audiobooks. But the latter requires that we keep a separate phone paired to BT for them. So for all the Mode 3 owners that have 1 screen, the S owners that have 2 screes, eat your heart out, I have 3 now.

 

[bob_p]

Today - purchase decisions on buying Model S and X are most likely made because the customer wants to have a long range electric vehicle. And Tesla has the only long range EVs on the road - today.

There is competition for the Model 3. But the Bolt has a number of drawbacks, especially the lack of support for road trips (superchargers, destination chargers), which appears to have reduced the competitiveness with the Model 3.

And as long as Tesla has the only long range EVs on the market - features like the media player or poor software quality probably won't have a significant impact on sales - and it's understandable why Tesla hasn't placed much emphasis on that over the last 5 years.

But that's going to change.

We're going to see many new Tesla customers in the next year - and I suspect they'll be less tolerant of software bugs and missing features. Tesla's evidently redoing the navigation system - which could address the long backlog of NAV issues. But we haven't seen any movement on fixing the media player or adding the promised screen mirroring.

And when other manufacturers figure this out - and start offering competitive vehicles, and features like long range, supercharging or autopilot aren't unique to Tesla - features that are secondary today could drive some customers to Tesla's competitors, which is why Tesla probably can't wait much longer to start addressing the growing list of issues/missing features with the "infotainment" system.

 

[Boatguy]

Ever since I purchased my Model S at the end of September 2016 (unknowingly 2 weeks before HW2

I took delivery the day before they started shipping the Model S refresh, which explains why they routed us around the final assembly area during the factor tour!