I am a new owner of the SqueezeBox 3, and explored the entire menu of the SqueezeBox, the one thats used with the SqueezeNetwork, on 12/30/06 from about 11am-3pm, and would like to make a few comments that may benefit the entire SqueezeBox community:
There should be at most about 5 levels of organization. There are 10, thats too complicated and takes the fun out of the Squeezebox. There should be a diagram of all the Internet radio subgroups, is there? Regarding the display, it typically shows Now Playing on the first line, and something like http://dsl-64..... on the second. None of this information is useful. It would be so useful to see something like Smooth Jazz on the first, line, followed by Rippingtons Celebrate on the second. Even when I define the title of the url at SqueezeNetwork, it doesnt always display when the show or song is playing. And Now Playing on the first line is never useful, its completely redundant. Why not just display the time instead? The Roku SoundBridge (another brand of internet radio) seems to have the right idea concerning this their recent upgrade displays the time of day, rather than the elapsed time for that program (that displayed in the previous operating system). Since talk radio is a very popular format, Talkers 100 should be in the main menu, rather than buried 6 levels deep, which means that the 20 odd channels in this category are at the 7th level in. Good Grief! Let me recount. Yes, thats 7 levels deep! Talkers 100 should be at level 1, not level 6, and all English Speaking talk or news shows should be included in Talkers 100, because its easier to scroll through a single list than a tree structure that branches illogically. Rule of thumb: The fewer sublevels, the better! Some elements of the outermost levels are poorly organized. Obviously, theres something wrong with the logic of Talk/More Talk/Talk. In the outermost, main menu, you should have 1. Talkers 100 (with would include all the personality driven talk shows, morning shows, current events, and issues oriented shows) 2. News (dont break it down by local/national. People will locate what they want and put it in their favorites.) Dont really need a local news subgroup, since people use their regular radios for that. 3. Special Interest (with subgroups like science, human interest, etc. The NASA TV channel would fit in here, along with subgroups on Police scanners, etc. It makes sense that this, and not Talkers 100, would be deeply buried in some subgroup that few people are interested in.) 4. International (with subgroups for individual countries, such as Ireland for Celtic Melt). 5. Pandora 6. Actually 5-9, to include all 7 Internet Radio subgroups except for Live Music Archive (which is pointless) and the Radio Time header, which is integrated into the main menu. Even Slim Devices Picks seems pointless, because people want either live news, relevant talk, or their favorite tunes. I couldnt even figure out what Slim Devices Picks was, since none of the channels worked. And please note that the reason they didnt work is because the urls are defunct or experiencing host server problems all my equipment is working perfectly. Most of the channels in Talkers 100 dont work. Which brings up my next point: so many of the channels in the overly expansive directory dont work. By getting rid of those channels that dont work, and putting ALL talk shows in the Talkers 100, youd be killing 2 birds with 1 stone: removing at least 1 entire layer of the directory, and those layers that remain will have fewer extinct urls. In some subcategories, none of the channels are working! For example: 1. Talk/More Talk/Entertainment/Comedy has 44 channels, including Howard 100, Howard 101, and Sirius 104. Come on, Sirius wouldnt be, and isnt, giving these away for free. You also have Martha Stewarts Sirius show listed under Self Development/Advice, and Sirius Left listed under More Talk/Politics/Liberal. Of course none of these Sirius channels work. Why are they even listed? Another show that did come in, the Mike Malloy show, also appeared to be a Sirius property, based on what the host and caller were saying, but Im not sure. 2. Talk/More Talk/Talk/Entertainment/Film has 8 channels. None work. The film subcategory should therefore be removed. Your deceiving your customers by implying they have access to film reviews. 3. Talk/Magazine has 7 channels, none work. 4. Talk/Morning has 8 channels, only 1 worked 12/26/06 afternoon (should they only work Mon-Fri morning?) - and all of these should be under Talkers 100 anyway. Why call it Talkers 100 if its really Talkers 3? 5. Talk/Special Interest has 2 channels, neither work. So this category can be removed entirely. 6. Talk/Truckers has 4 channels, none work, so this category can be removed also. (This seems strategically misplaced anyway, since the SqueezeBox is in homes and not trucks.) 7. Talk/Other has 244 channels and almost none work. Really, arent most radio stations either music or news/talk? Why not just classify those that do work under talk or music? 8. More Talk/Self Development has 9 channels but only 2 work. 9. Under Medical you have Best of Dean Edell, which doesnt work. Is he dead? 10. More Talk/Technology/Internet has 6 channels. Only 1 worked, and it was music. I would expect buyers of the SqueezeBox to be interested in these channels, so why do you tease us? 11. More Talk/Technology/Computers has 2 channels, neither works. I would expect users of the SqueezeBox to be interested in these channels, so why do you tease us? Under More Talk/Technology/Other there are 4 channels, one of which is NASA TV, which works! This is buried about 10 (ten) levels in and will never be found by many people, unfortunately, because its kinda cool. Almost none of what appear to be other cool stations work, based on my exploration. And most of the stations buried deep in the menu system that did work were in Chinese or Latin. You really have an obligation to get rid of stations that dont work because people will keep coming back to these to see if they will work, not knowing that these shows may have become defunct years ago. And some of the urls are strangely classified Jazz flight is umpteen levels in under More Talk/Talk/Public Affairs. Public Affairs? And Don Imus isn't in Talker's 100 but some odd, deeply buried subgroup. Did I say "deeply buried"? Other than that the device works fine! Thanks for reading my letter, I hope some of it will be useful. -- NauticusLX ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NauticusLX's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8981 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=31127 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
