Rio Car Beta Release 17-October-2001
Version 2.00-beta3

Copyright (c) SONICblue, Inc. 2001


* Notes

This is a Rio Car beta release.  BY DEFINITION, BETA SOFTWARE MAY NOT
PERFORM AS ADVERTISED.  It may not be stable.  It may eat your music
and spoil your day in any number of ways.  Please do not install this
release unless you understand these important points.

Release 2.00 has been in development for many months.  These notes are
by no means comprehensive, if you notice a significant new feature that
isn't mentioned then please let us know so we can add it to the list.

Note that 2.00-beta1 and 2.00-beta2 were restricted releases.  The
release notes have been combined here, for this first public release.


* General

Please submit bugs to carbugs@riohome.com - preferably after reading
the BBS (http://empeg.comms.net) to check that the bug has not already
been discussed.

Release notes are not cumulative. If you are upgrading by more than one
release then please read each set of release notes.


* Installation

Download either the consumer or developer images and emplode (or emptool)
from the empeg-car upgrades site.

You should install the new emplode or emptool before installing this
release. If you fail to do so your empeg-car unit may not function and it
will be necessary to apply the upgrade again using the correct version of
empegUpgrade or upgclient.

We strongly recommend completely de-installing the previous emplode before
installing the new one, which installs into a different location.

Connect your computer to your empeg car using the supplied serial cable.
Switch off your player at the wall or unplug the IEC cable from the brick
power supply.

The upgrade can be installed by serial only.  Run the Upgrade Wizard and
either enter or browse for the upgrade file. Click Next and select the
serial port that your unit is connected to. Click Next again.

When instructed to do so by the upgrade program re-apply power to your
player by switching it on at the wall or connecting the IEC cable and brick
power supply. If you have an all-in-one power supply then switch it on at
the wall if possible or plug into the wall. The upgrade should then be
applied. If it fails, try again.


* What's New Since 1.03 - Player

NB: Features which require a real time clock may not work on Mk.1 players.

MP3 playback is now done using the ARM decoder. There should be little in
the way of audible difference but the VBR support is much improved, and
certain tracks that would not play before may now play.

WAV files are supported.

Significant improvements to caching performance (turn on the disk
indicator to see this in action).

Gapless playback of properly-constructed MP3 files has been improved. Note
that this is dependent upon how the MP3s were created - most MP3 encoders
will add artificial silence to the beginning and end of each track as it
is being created. The car player will no longer insert its own gaps between
two consecutive tracks on playback.

Play counts and last played times have been implemented.

The running order and programme are now preserved over synchronise
operations.

Three bookmarks may now be stored and restored.

Repeat modes are now selectable from the player itself. An "r" (repeat all)
or "R" (repeat track) appears in Track info modes.

Tracks can now be marked for attention on the player. This is done by
pressing "7" on a Kenwood remote or "Mark" on a Rio remote. The function
is also available from the Bookmarks menu (we're looking for a more logical
home for it). Marked tracks appear in emplode with a distinguishing icon,
and can be a search criteria.

It is now possible to toggle timecode display modes by pressing "1" on the
remote. It is marked with "Time" on the Rio remote.  Display modes are:
- Time of Day
- Track Elapsed
- Track Remaining
- Total Elapsed
- Playlist Elapsed
- Playlist Remaining
- Playlist Elapsed / Remaining
A number followed by "d" indicates days (!).

Balance, beep volume, and loudness are now remembered separately for in-car
and in-home use.

Several alternative shuffle behaviours have been added..
- Random: As before
- Least often played: Tracks played less often will tend toward the start
- Least recently played: Tracks played less recently will do as above
- By year: There will be an approximate progression through history
- Off: As before

Toggling shuffle with the remote will switch between no shuffle and the
last shuffle mode selected.  When shuffle is active an "S" is shown on
the Track info screen.

Shuffling the running order is now much less likely to glitch the audio.

When selecting tracks to play using the musical note icon only the tracks
are played, not the playlists.

It is now possible to skip tracks/fast-forward/rewind while the disk is
spun down without causing the UI to hang.

Soft power on/off now works during synchronise.

It is no longer possible for the player to pick the wrong menu item if an
item is selected very quickly after moving to it.

Wendy filters have been implemented.  These provide a means to completely
hide content on a player, for example if your mother is in the car.
Filters can be combined for more advanced applications.  They are defined
from within emplode.  An 'F' appears in track details view if a Wendy
Filter is active.  Wendy filters are explained in greater detail later in
this document.

A new "hush" mode has been added which reduces the volume by a configurable
(from emplode) amount rather than muting it completely.  This is achieved
by holding the pause button on the Rio remote (there is no Kenwood
equivalent).  An 'H' appears in track details view if Hush is active.

A detailed info screen is now available for tracks. Press and hold the
"Info" button on the Rio remote to see this screen. Not available on the
Kenwood remote.

Pressing the rotary knob now toggles through the various Sound menu
settings (Volume, Balance, etc).

The volume can now be fixed at a specified gain.  Set the desired level
then select Settings - Volume - Fix at current level.  Note that this
setting is stored independently for home (AC power) and car (DC power)
operation.  To disable the feature, select Adjustable from the same menu.

The external mute line can now be configured (from emplode) to cause mute,
pause or hush.

A large number of new visuals have been added, and existing visuals have
been enhanced.  Note that there are random elements which reseed from time
to time, so any one visual could have several random looks.

Implemented visuals for Aux-In and Tuner.

A transient line info visual has been added which appears and disappears in
a "Top of the Pops"(tm) style.  The graphical visual behind it squashes into
the remaining space rather than clipping.  The timecode pops up in isolation
when scanning within a track.

Volume now ramps up gradually at startup when in the car to avoid pain the
morning after the heavy night before.  This can be configured from emplode.

Whizzy startup animation (thanks Tony) - empeg and rio versions depending
on the player personality.

Player reports "No hard disk found, contact support" if it cannot mount
a root device, instead of just hanging.

DHCP client now does uPnP address allocation in parallel with normal DHCP.
This means it can be plugged directly into a PC with no network setup (ie,
set to "automatic") and ethernet will work.

Time zone now works correctly.

Position is remembered in playlist menus - press and hold the playlist menu
item to return to previous level.  This does not currently work across
reboots.

Minor UI enhancements, e.g. round corners of menus.

Added support for insert/appending to playlist when the menu button
is held in the playlist hierarchy.  A submenu opens:
- Replace: Replaces the entire programme with the new selection (default).
- Append:  Puts the new selection at the end of the current programme.
- Insert:  Inserts the selection into the current programme. Multiple
  insert operations will insert after the last inserted item, not just
  after the current play position, allowing proper cueing of new tracks

Added insert as well as append during search.  Use "Select Mode" on the Rio
remote or "CDMDCH" on the Kenwood.  Multiple insert operations will insert
after the last inserted item, not just after the current play position,
allowing proper cueing of new tracks

Improved download efficiency.

Implemented Hate Music buttons - press and hold the appropriate remote
tweak function to remove tracks from the running order.  e.g. If a
Britney track comes on, press and hold Artist (2 on Kenwood) to remove
all further Britney tracks from the running order.

Aux-In detects track transitions, and guesses at track numbers and
timecode.

Fixed the cumulative duration calculations.

The visuals information is now updated via RDS if the selected
channel is FM.

The EQ UI has been changed to allow more features and make things a little
easier for the user. In particular:
- The settings that used to live in the centre of the display have been
moved into a menu structure. Access this by pressing left/right until the
preset name is highlighted in the top centre of the screen, then press down.
- This menu also includes a "copy from" feature for copying entire presets
- The number keys 1-9 select the n-th band, or the n-th preset
- The rotary can be used to adjust levels, and can be pressed to select
gain/freq/Q adjustment
- Saving has been made automatic

The powerfail indicator now stays on the screen for as long as the voltage
is beneath the threshold.

Long track names now scroll in info screens.

Search By Playlist has been implemented.

When you un-shuffle, the player will properly un-shuffle "around" your current
tune according to the order of the playlists you've specified in Emplode. If
you want the player to always "un-shuffle around the current track" so that
you're dropped into that track's album, then make sure your album trees are
listed first in Emplode (based on the Position column).

The visual re-seed function has been re-implemented using the 'Select Mode'
button on Rio remotes.

It is now possible to have a list of favourite visuals which can be cycled
by pressing the 'Visual' button on a Rio remote.  The list is channel
dependent and resides in the config.ini file of the player as shown below -
This list could be updated via emplode eventually.  Pressing and holding the
'Visual' button will toggle between 'Favourites mode' and 'All visuals' if a
favourites list is available for that channel.

config.ini :

[VisualFavourites_DSP]
count=n
1=Visual Name
n=Visual Name
[VisualFavourites_AUX]
...
[VisualFavourites_FM]
...
[VisualFavourites_AM]
...


* What's New Since 1.03 - Emplode

(emplode has been completely rewritten, what follows is far from
comprehensive.  Please refer to the built in help.)

New player discovery dialog, which continuously monitors for players on
the enabled interfaces.

The tree includes views by Artist, Genre, All Tracks and so forth.  Tracks
are automatically sorted into these views.

Tracks no longer have to exist within playlists.  All tracks on the player
are shown in various views from the tree, of which Playlists is one option.
If a track is erased from all playlists it will not be removed from the
player - this will only happen when it is erased from one of the fixed
views.  In future it will be made more obvious to the user whether they
are erasing a reference to a track, or removing the content entirely.

Implemented "emplode today" HTML view.  This is the first view presented
when a player is connected, and provides some useful links.  Tunes can be
dragged & dropped onto HTML view (in which case they will not be added to
any playlist and will be accessible only from within searches - in future
the emplode tree structure will be recreated on the player).

Now allows drag and drop onto "Artists", "Albums", etc in which case the tags
will be updated appropriately.  This is useful for mass retagging of tracks
using multiple views.

Tracks can be dropped onto the player icon in the tree, in which case they
are added as content but not added to any playlists.

It is now possible to scroll whilst dragging and dropping.

A search capability has been added with both simple and advanced
interfaces.  Advanced searches can be saved to disk.

Wendy filters have been implemented.

The free disk space tracking code in emplode is much better, in particular
it now copes with deletions.

Files already on the player can now be trawled automatically to fill in
extra information (such as codec, bitrate etc. information) that has been
supported for newly added files since before v1.0.

Dropping files is now much more user friendly. Items dropped are now sorted
alphabetically by filename.

Implemented Yes to All confirmation in appropriate dialogs.

Dragging an item from the search results onto the tab control in emplode
now switches tabs.

Implemented context menu in RHS views in Emplode.

Implemented redirector URL for product support.

Users can now name AUX channel in emplode, to match whatever hardware you
might have attached.

The volume can be capped at 0dB from emplode.

The Kenwood remote control can be disabled from emplode, to prevent clashes
with other Kenwood head units in the vehicle.  The Rio remote uses different
(unique to Rio) codes.

Implemented buttons to allow reordering of tracks. You can also hold down Alt
while dragging to enable this functionality.

Group-editing multiple selections has been implemented. For instance, you can
group-select ten tracks, get their properties, and change their Artist field
in a single operation.

Pressing Alt+3 with multiple items selected gives you WinAmp style
functionality - pressing OK moves to the next item, rather than applying the
changes to all of them.


* Wendy Filters Documentation

Wendy filters provide a convenient way to filter out tracks from your player.
When a wendy filter is applied, any tracks which do not match the conditions
of that filter will no longer appear in playlists or search results. The tracks
will still exist on the player, but will simply be hidden from view. When the
wendy filter is cleared, the tracks will be visible and can be played again.

To set up some Wendy filters, first select the option 'Wendy Filters' from the
emplode Tools menu.

The first step in setting up a wendy filter is to name the wendy flags
themselves.  There are 32 flags available and by default these are named 'Wendy
flag 1', 'Wendy flag 2' etc. To rename a Wendy flag, double click on the flag
itself and then type in the new name, pressing Enter once you have finished.
Flags you may wish to create could include "Bad Language", "Hated by Wife" and
so forth.    

To create the Wendy filter itself, switch to the Filters pane and click on the
New button. You will be prompted for a name. Type in the name required and
click on OK.

Next, select which flags this filter will examine by clicking the check boxes
next to the relevant flags. Click once to place a tick in the check box,
indicating that when the filter is applied, only tracks where that flag is set
to True will be available. Click twice to place a cross in the check box,
indicating that when the filter is applied, only tracks where that flag is set
to False will be available.

Any flags which do not have a tick or cross set for them in a particular filter
are ignored by that filter.

Once you have set up your Wendy filters, you must ensure that the relevant
Wendy flags are set in the tracks that you wish to be filtered. To do this,
select the track and then select 'Properties' from the Edit menu.

Select the 'Wendy Flags' pane. You will now see a list of the flags that you
previously named in the Wendy Filters dialog. Check any flags which apply to
this track by clicking on the box next to the flag.

Note: Once you have created your filters and set the relevant flags for tracks
you wish to be filtered, you must synchronize emplode with your player for the
relevant information to be uploaded.

You can then apply a filter by going to the 'Filters' menu on your player and
selecting the relevant filter. To clear a filter, go back to the 'Filters' menu
and select 'Off'.

Here is an example filter:

Create a flag titled "Bad Language", and tick it for all tracks which have
bad language in the lyrics.

Create a filter called "Mother Present", then cross (double click) the Bad
Language flag.

When you select the filter "Mother Present" on the player, all tracks which
contain bad language will vanish (temporarily!) from the player.


* Known Issues - Player

WMA support is not included due to licensing issues.  This functionality will
be added when the problem is resolved.

The clock could be set from RDS on Mark 1 (isn't currently). (#188)

Player sends junk to the serial port on exit. (#778)

Rewind time pop-up window moves slowly. (#17)

"Title bar" text on search screens overlaps "xxxx tunes" text. (#1020)

Info:Transient doesn't display frequency when scanning in radio. (#1038)

Player has been seen to fail to upgrade to due to "Hardware Revision Failed"
at stage 0x04 error - please contact us if you see this. (#1021)

Now and Next screen shows multiple repeats of single track. (#1052)

Time info popups - cosmetic problem in info:line mode. (#1073)

InfoTex visuals contain blitter and don't always get proper info fed to
them. (#976)

Play count (& other stats?) not updated in Repeat track mode. (#1104)

Some users report too much bass in tuner mode. (#1055)

The player doesn't yet keep count of how many times a track has been skipped
over (but emplode has a column for it - so it always shows 0).


* Known Issues - Emplode

Help file is missing because it refers to unannounced products - this will be
released in a future build.

Rapidly plugging and unplugging USB while empeg is booting can cause a
blue-screen error in USB driver. (#541)

No close icon on sync dialog and cancel is greyed out. (#79)

Free space doesn't increase when deleting tracks in emplode. (#1054)

Cut & paste into track properties doesn't forget font. (#1056)

Emplode truncates exit event WAV. (#1031)

Tracks dropped on web view aren't deduplicated. (#936)

Occassional errors writing player configuration. (#919)

Network configuration dialog should allow DNS server entry in emplode. (#1080)

User should be warned less often that deleting a playlist doesn't do what
they might be expecting. (#1105)


Rob Voisey 2001/10/17 16:18 +0100 (BST)
rvoisey@sonicblue.com