Beta 11 pre-release

Since tfabris and mcomb had a peek at the latest features in the player software I couldn't keep them a secret any longer.

If you like to live life dangerously and feel like trying a release that is potentially even more unreliable than the average beta release then this might be for you.

A beta 11 pre-release is available at http://www2.empeg.com/upgrades/test/beta11pre/

The files are not complete as is the case for a full release. The .upgrade file only contains the actual software (i.e. no kernel, no boot code, no cheese) so it won't stomp over custom kernels. The emplode zip only contains the emplode executable and a newly required DLL.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention. It has proper immediate shuffle. Don't get too excited (yes, I'm talking to you Tony!)

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

Oh, I almost forgot to mention. It has proper immediate shuffle. Don't get too excited (yes, I'm talking to you Tony!)

I was plenty excited about it when Hugo showed it to us. I'm pretty impressed with what I saw.

I assume that the version you just posted was a little bit farther along than the version Hugo showed us. There were a couple of things that hadn't quite been implemented yet in the one he showed us. But it was pretty great nonetheless.

For anyone who's interested, off the top of my head, the new stuff I saw in the software was:

- "0" key on the remote control shuffles and unshuffles immediately, while the current song still plays. There is a slight pause in the song as it mashes the playlist (I assume that the larger your playlist, the longer the pause). I forgot to ask how it handles the case of multiple occurrences of the current song in multiple sub-playlists.

- Other number keys on the remote keypad were set up to "search for same". For instance, one of the buttons would search for the same artist, another button would search for the same year, another button would search for the same genre. In other words, let's say you're listening to a big random playlist. A B-52's song comes on. You decide you want to hear more B-52's. You hit the appropriate number key on the remote, and it displays a short text message at the top of the screen to tell you it found some more B-52's successfully (although this text message had not been completed in the version that Hugo showed me). The current song keeps playing, but the rest of the songs in the playlist are now B-52's tunes. I'm pretty sure that it reshuffles the playlist so that the same playlist is still there, it just added the B-52's songs to after your song in the playlist.

- The new playlist code had broken the "Now and Next" screen temporarily, but that was going to get fixed pretty quick. I don't know if it's fixed in the version that was just posted.

I'm a little groggy after some late-night filking last night, so I'm not remembering much else right now. What else was in that version?

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Tony Fabris