This has previously been sent to Dell, I just discovered this board last night, so I thought I would post my wishes here too.

I have a few problems with my receiver. Some I think are very serious, some less so. I believe these can all be fixed in future version of the device either through firmware or through the PC software. I am not a programmer, but from what I can see, I think most if not all really have to do with how the database is created.

Here is s simple example:
I want to listen to a classical album that has 13 movements, but I want to start at the 6th and play until the end, there is no way to do this other than going through the whole process to get back to the album, artist or genre, selecting the 7th song, playing it and then repeating this process for the all the remaining tracks. You cannot play the album from track one, forward to track 6 and begin playing because of problem number 1, you cannot cut the process short by jumping back one step because of problem number 3, and you cannot skip forward or back to find the different movements because of what I have described as problem number 4.

1. The unit completely ignores track information in the ID3 tag.

If I select an album to listen to has 10 tracks, and track numbers are correctly identified in the ID3 tag, the receiver simply plays them in alpha order, disregarding the correct album order. This is unacceptable for many types of music, especially classical and spoken audio/books. Track ordering is essential.

I am assuming that the application that runs on the workstation goes through your music files and it builds a database of tracks. This process could take a look at the ID3 track field and build the database in the correct order. It could then default to alpha ordering if track information was not available.

2. When selecting an artist, albums are ignored.

Very often when wishing to play a particular album, you can remember the artist name, but not the album title. When you select music by artist, you should have the ability to be presented with a list of albums not just a list of songs. Ideally it would be presented as follows:

Artist
________________
Play All Music
Album 1
Song 1
Song 2
Album 2
Song 1
Song 2

Alternatively another idea would be to add an additional search menu item as follows:

Select Music
________________
Artist by Song
Artist by Album
Genre
Album
Title
Playlist



3. When playing music pressing the menu button takes you right back to select music menu. It should take you one step back. I realize when you are not playing a song, it works this way, just once you play a song you can't get back a level.

I can select a song by the Rolling Stones, say Paint it Black. If I want to hear another Rolling Stones song, I have to go all through the process of scrolling through all the artists, and then scrolling through all the songs. It would be much simpler to press the menu button and be back on Paint it Black by the Stones. I could then pick my next song. If I wanted to get back to select artist I could simply press the menu button again to go back another level.

4. When selecting a single song by artist, album, title, whatever, you can’t press << or >> to get to the pervious or next song in that category selection.

When you select a single song from any of the menu options you, all you can hear in that session is that one song. You should have the ability to select a previous or next track from within the main category without having to back all the way our, or without having to select play all music/files and then skip forward to the one you want to hear.

5. I would love an incremental scan of the drive(s) at some interval. Say set the server program to rescan at midnight, regardless if it is a full scan or a incremental. Just so I know that if I add to my collection it will appear on the receiver at some point without my intervention.

6. If number 5 can be accomplished where it runs an update on its own, I would never need to see the program other than the initial time I set up the path to my files. At that point, it would also be great if it could simply be a service that runs in WinNT/2K/XP. The benefits are clear, no more shutting down when a user logs off, system reboots don't kill the server software (at least one the machine comes back up)

7. Display layout preferences should be set in the PC software.

I should have the ability to set the layout preference of the display through the software component as well as on the unit itself. Having to reset your display type every time the unit powers on is annoying.

Right now to read the display I have to get right down in front of it. Somehow if it could be more readable from a distance I think that would be wonderful. Maybe a very large font while skipping through the songs, and the normal font when going through the menu. Maybe it could scroll the song title once it has begun playing so large that a few characters fill the screen top to bottom, that would get about 6 characters or so that could then scroll across the display. Might also be more readable if the type were reversed, blue for the type, blackout for the background. I don't really know, but anything to make it more read about would be cool.