Fixing the "No Visual" on DC startup issue

I know it is supposed to be a safety feature, but there has to be someway to allow the empeg to just show the last info mode used in DC mode no matter if its visual or not. It is pretty annoying to have to switch to visual mode everytime I start my car up. Has anyone figured out how to do this?

ED7

Hijack (see link at top of BBS page) is supposed to fix this - use the 'Restore DC/Car Visuals' option. However, it appears to be broken in beta 2.11 - certainly it's not working for me.

A.

Ah...that makes sense...i wondered what that was for. Not working for me either unfortunately. I guess this is a request to the almighty Mark Lord!

Looks like the "Restore Visuals (v2beta11)" option on HiJack seems to take care of this problem. Thanks for the pointer. I really wish there was a more comprehensive manual to HiJacks options than what is given on the FAQ...not that it isnt helpful, but there is just so much that HiJack can accomplish.

Restore visuals Is not broken in 2.0 B11/Hijack,
you have to first force the player into thinking that its visuals are onscreen.
The way to do this is to switch to your favourite visual using the front panel (i.e. not using the remote OR the Sony Stalk if you have one).

That then sets the correct 'bit' in the Flash memory and then the player will resume from that visual everytime you power on again, if you've set the 'restore DC/visuals' in Hijack.
Note: There are 2 options in the Hijack kernel for this and I'd set both.

Until I did this I had the same problem as you did with visuals not displaying even though I told hijack to do so.

There is a post about this somewhere on this BBS in the last few months and no doubt in the FAQ and if its not, then it should be.

I have tried all this, selected visual from front panel and both hijack options are set and it still goes to no visuals on every power up.

FAQ gives no other clues. I have tried this on my mk2 and mk2a, both give the same result.

Any ideas

Firstly this is my first post here. I just got a Rio a couple of weeks ago, download my CD's to it and its been in the car since. I'm a C++ developer by profession, Windows VC++ mainly so I gotta get into some linux developement in the near future me things.

Anyway. just reading this post has saved me a real headache. I was sure I'd wired the docking bay into the car wrong which is why I was loosing the Visuals on startup. But then I was a bit puzzled as to how it still knew what song I was last listening too.

But ta, at least now I know its a software issue not my amateur wiring without the cars circuit diagrams.

Welcome, and make sure to skim through the FAQ.

Tony, is the restore visuals still working for you (the ultimate beta tester)? If so, I'll ignore this thread; otherwise I may try to schedule some debugging time for it.

Thanks

I stopped using the Restore Visuals feature a long time ago because it has always been flaky for me.

- If I don't manually go into the "visuals" menu and HAND-SET each of the two desired video modes, it doesn't always work. For instance, when cycling through info modes with the remote, the restored mode isn't always what I expected. I think this is a player bug and not Hijack's fault.

- There is the issue with the player UI response being sluggish right after a boot or in some cases during playback or track switching. Again, this seems to be a player bug, but it sometimes prevented the restore visuals macro from working.

I was never able to nail down the details of either of these, and I'm waiting for The Guys to do another bugblatting session and a release before investigating them further.

Waitasec, now that the product is EOL, can't they just get rid of the whole idea of setting the info mode to the last non-visual info mode entirely? Or at least provide a config.ini option so that the user has to go do something (change config.ini) to enable visuals, thus absolving them of any wrongdoing if I drive myself off a cliff watching Hula Hoops?

I don't think a company is absolved of legal responsibility for their products just because they're not in current production. If that were the case, car companies would never have to issue recalls.

Okay forget I said the EOL part. If they made it a config.ini option, the user would be intervening in making the visuals go away, thus acknowledging their legal responsibility not to stare at the visuals while driving.

Oh yeah, one more thing... I heard it said (possibly by you or someone else) that based on some conversations with SonicBlue legal people, the EOL of the car player kinda cleared the way for some relaxing of the restrictions on downloading tunes from the player. Hence the inclusion of the "Download Track" feature in Emplode. How is this different?

I don't believe that the EOL had anything to do with the download feature.