S9 Update Wishlist

[Synchestra]

Originally Posted by Rams

dude, there is software to be found that can merge 'm for you on your pc..

Dude, there is software to be found that can convert your x.264 videos into .avi for you on your PC.

What's that? You reply that that would take away some of the enjoyment of using your player and ignore some of the great strengths of the S9?

Well...

(Sorry, I don't mean to offend, but that's really how we feel about gapless. I, on the other hand, can take or leave h.264 support, although of course it would be great to have.)

[CrowdAds]

[paul_one]

Well, most of the stuff I see in here is grossly un-required.
AAC support and MP4 support?
... It's 3 inches of screen real-estate, and you want mp4 support?

The only thing I can think of is that you want to hook it up to a TV, and I think you'd probably find it easier with a proper PC (flash read speeds plus the amount of data needed to be processed may be a factor to think about here).

Along the lines of a wish-list:
Graphical "charging" icon.. How far is left to go with this charging? I dunno because all the 2.08 shows in the word! A simple bar would do, with maybe a percent meter underneath.
Flash - doesn't work very well at all. The audio keeps cutting out/not even playing in the first place. Graphics are very slow (I guess the detail is set to high).. Why not let us change the quality to medium/low?
Documents - allow side-scrolling PLEEEEEASE!!.. Width is very important to reading.
More precise touchscreen - autotuning/etc. I have thin-ish fingers, but when I touch I need to touch *higher* then I should to activate a button/area.. I'm getting used to it, but maybe an autotune part where the person clicks a button around the screen can better calibrate to the user?
Videos - if I want to change the audio preset qualizer thing, then I need to come out of the video. I see no easy button for changing it (although I may have missed it).

Calander would be good (as suggested earlier) - but would probably need a lot of textual-interface work behind it (so version 2.5 then?).
I like the idea of bluetooth file transfers - shouldn't be too hard to change the bluetooth stack a little.
Maybe some small built-in games (cards/mah-jong/something) - don't need to be too fancy.

I really can't think of much more 'features' I'd want from this media player... maybe some dodgy speakers - so I didn't have to get any external ones.

[Synchestra]

Why all the talk about 'your suggestions are not required'? It's pretty obvious that these opinions are just expressions of the different things that we each want the player to do. How about we stop with the 'this feature is unnecessary' and just continue to construct a list

As for me, since Cowon seem to be monitoring public opinion to some extent, I'm going to add my voice to the call for playlist support. It shouldn't be too hard to add support for .pls or .m3u, and it would add some serious functionality to the player.

[dfkt]

Embedded ID3 album art support needs to be improved - some album art that displays well on the D2 doesn't work on the S9.

[The DarkSide]

1. Gapless - my Zune can do it, the iPod's can ALL do it, why can't Cowon??? And for those asking why we wan't gapless, cause we do - and I don't want to rip my cd's as 1 track!!!
2. M3U Playlist support
3. regardless of flash UI, allow the use of custom wallpaper

Also, bump the highest capacity up to 64gb, as 32gb is a bit small for such an EXCELLENT player. I'm planning on the 32gb version myself, but I'd KILL for a 64gb!!!!

[dfkt]

MP3 playback/error handling needs to be improved. Sometimes I get an obnoxious "invalid file" popup and playback stops. Having to skip these supposedly "invalid" files and pressing play again is annoying. These files play fine on the D2 and O2.

[Cynic]

Originally Posted by dfkt

MP3 playback/error handling needs to be improved. Sometimes I get an obnoxious "invalid file" popup and playback stops. Having to skip these supposedly "invalid" files and pressing play again is annoying. These files play fine on the D2 and O2.

Same here! Not one bloody Rolling Stones song plays properly. Either t plays too quick for a while then skips to the next song, or, I get the invalid file error. Sucks.

[Cynic]

Originally Posted by paul_one

Well, most of the stuff I see in here is grossly un-required.
AAC support and MP4 support?
... It's 3 inches of screen real-estate, and you want mp4 support?

Maybe because lots of people have a few mp4 videos that they don't wish to convert. mp4 looks decent enough at a high bit rate, and takes lesser space. And what does the ability to play AAC have to do with the screen?

[shimage]

I get the impression Cowon doesn't read this, but I feel like venting anyway. Mostly I want the UI to not suck so hard. It's not bad; it's more of a death by a thousand cuts kind of thing. Some of these have been mentioned before, but I'll mention them again because I want people to know that there's more than 1 person that wants those things. Specifically:

• You can't add an artist, album, genre, etc. to favorites. You can add folders, though. It ought to work on tags.
• There needs to be a "clear favorites" button.
• This would be obviated by the addition of the above, but it would be nice to have an internal "active playlist". Here's what I mean: you're browsing, and you want to listen to all the songs by an artist. So you navigate to that artist (either by tags or folders), and press play. Nothing happens. What should happen is every song below that point in the hierarchy gets added to the "active playlist" and the S9 starts playing it. I get the impression that the S9 internally only keeps track of the current song, and builds the "playlist" based on the rest of your settings, which is too limiting IMO. Alternate fix would be a better, context-sensitive replacement for the 1/dir/all setting.
• The shuffle code is piss poor. I had about 7 albums on my favorites list, and it would play a 2-3 songs from the first album, then a song from the second, then a couple from the first, etc. Awful, although I must admit that the ipod's randomizer is not much better.
• The play/pause and next/previous buttons should always do something. None of them do anything on the menu screen. Play/pause doesn't even do anything when browsing music, even if something is playing.
• Video mode is mostly perfect, but I would like the ability to scan through videos by dragging on the progress bar while the video is paused.
• It should obey the MSC/MTP setting even when connecting to linux or mac os. I'm thinking that those of us running linux are clever enough to leave the device in MSC mode if libmtp doesn't work.
• .m3u support would be nice, particularly since it won't let me use it in MTP mode ...
• There should be a configuration option for the time delay in slideshow.
• There ought to be an option to auto-rotate pictures to best fit them on the screen.
• Picture viewer should not let you zoom past 100% for 2 reasons: 1) it's not useful, and 2) it makes it hard to zoom to 100%. If they insist on it, I would prefer buttons; something like fit-to-screen, 25%, 50%, 100%, 200%. That's more than 3, so maybe +/- buttons instead? I don't really care, but the slider is irritating as implemented.
• I have downloaded the picture.swf that allows hiding of the picture menus, but the default should do this on its own.
• This is not necessarily a firmware issue, but the biggest allowable resolution for pictures should be documented somewhere. This is important, because pictures above the cutoff resolution look worse than those below that cutoff (i.e., it defaults to some ridiculously low res if the input res is too high).

I want to emphasize that I like the device. My wife has an ipod touch 2g, and I much prefer the Cowon. As I said before, I don't even think the UI is necessarily "bad". It's just not ... good. Most of these issues simply make the device harder to use than it ought to be -- which is forgivable -- but some (particularly with respect to music) make it impossible to do things that ought to be simple.

[dfkt]

Excellent first post, Shimage - agreed on all points (that are relevant for my personal needs).

[e-wan]

Mentioned in the thread but let me say it again. Please Cowon add a parameter to the system menu for user configurable passcode. It doesnt need to be dynamically entered on a connection. Seems like a simple request...I asked Cowon in the middle of January so fingers crossed it happens.

[Olley]

Now that I've got the A/V output cable, it would be great to have the ability to send photos out that cable. It would also be great to allow music out the Left/Right line-outs of that cable.

[Digital Fury]

aac/mp4 for video podcast support

[Rams]

More video codecs.. Divx/Wmv just isnt enough.

Would also love to see the screen adjusting the size of the video automatically to view it at its best.

[dfkt]

The screen does adjust the size automatically - and you still have manual choice over the aspect ratio, pan&scan, and the like.

[Sacramento]

I particularly agree with this point. Surely some coders could do something for this, even if it won't be addressed in the official firmware. It would be better than nothing to have a fix just like the "picture.swf" fix that was made.

Originally Posted by shimage

• The play/pause and next/previous buttons should always do something. None of them do anything on the menu screen. Play/pause doesn't even do anything when browsing music, even if something is playing.

[tbone92]

AAC and AC3 would be nice. >.>

[Digital Fury]

A way to permanently disable the auto-rotation feature. I already grew to hate it on my iPhone, and the S9 is unfortunately plagued with the same sickness.

[dfkt]

You can disable it permanently, at least with the recent firmwares.

[Digital Fury]

How?