[CurtC]

I've been trying to use the Media app to play podcasts, and am having some frustrations. I've also tried the Berrysoft one and the Dollars5 one, with a different set of frustrations, so I'll stick to the built-in Media app here. One thing I'd like to do is to confirm that others see this same behavior and it's not just me. These problems are so serious that I have to consider them to be bugs, and not just lack of features.

First, I really like the fact that I can hit the Mute button on top to pause and restart it. That's convenient whether it's in the holster or out. If I'm listening to an audio file and I get an email notification sound, or the phone rings or whatever, it pauses the audio playback in Media. That's great as well. But the problem is that if I hit the Mute button to resume playback after this notification, it starts over at the beginning of the file. If I'm listening to a 90-minute podcast and I have to find my place again, that's extremely frustrating, and even dangerous if I'm driving.

I've found a workaround - if I go back into the Media application instead of just resuming with the Mute button, roll up to select the playback position slider, then click the ball twice, then roll back down and click Play, that resumes where I left off. But I can't remember every single time to do this, and I often end up restarting files from the beginning.

The other major bug is that the playback position slider is too coarse - with some files, every little scroll you slide changes the position by six minutes! I need to be able to have a little more resolution when finding the position to resume from, without having to go back up to six minutes before in order not to miss anything.

Other features that would be really nice, would be able to pick files not simply based on file names, but by Artist, Album, etc., tags, like the iPods do. And to select multiple files to play.

I think this app has great potential, it just needs to have a couple of bugs fixed before it's really useful.

[JRSCCivic98]

It's most likely a bug. Mine will continue it's playback automatically after a call ends on it's own. I have no interaction with it. Notifications have no effect on playback either, but I have my email set to mute notify and only SMS dings at me, but neither one interferes with the playback... it simply blinks the LED red when something comes in.

[CurtC]

Interesting... I recall one day that it seemed to resume playback after the notification, but I haven't been able to reproduce that. I wonder if this could have something to do with the "Device Memory Limit" under Media's Options? It's set at 20 MB now, but can go up to 25 MB. The files I listen to are usually larger than that. I wonder, if I'm listening to something smaller than the limit if it will be able to resume. I'll experiment.

[JRSCCivic98]

Weird, on my 8830 I have 12MB and 15MB on the mem limit. It doesn't matter to me anyway because I put all my stuff on a 2GB card. I also did some other testing yesterday, like playing a song and hooking up the phone to my PC and answering yes to turn on mass drive support. The song playback immediately stopped, but Media Player stayed on the same song. When I unplugged the phone I had to click on play again and the song started from the beginning. Would have been very impressed it if could have continued from the same spot on it's own, but in the device's defense, full access to the memory card get's cut when mass storage gets turned on.

[CurtC]

I had become used to the app I had used on my Palm for mp3's. It would remember the position no matter what. The way that it would do it, is that when it stops playing for whatever reason, the app stores away the file name and an index pointer into the file. Then the next time it starts, even if the memory card access had been interrupted, it opens the same file and indexes the right amount into it. I can't see why this is not done with the Media app on the BB.

And I tested out the memory thing with no luck. I had memory set to 20 MB, and played a 17 MB file, then when the email notification happened while I was listening to it, it stopped and when I (manually) restarted it, it started again from the beginning of the file.

Like I said, one day last week my unit behaved properly. I wish I could get it to do that every time.