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I'm sure there has to be something that does this somewhere, but I'd really like to see Windows Media Player and the Zune player (not the device) have the ability to organize your music in several ways. I'm not one to keep up playlists. I hate the idea of updating different playlists when you add new music. Instead, I like to organize music by genre. Granted, we've had the ability to add a genre to music for years and players have been able to filter based on genre, too; but I guess I just liked the idea of right clicking on a directory and selecting Play with Windows Media Player. Very simple. Of course, Zune doesn't have this comfort. What I end up doing there is changing all of my genres to be in a handful of groups, like electronic, hip hop, rock, pop, etc. Typically, when I listen to music, I want one or the other, so this works best for me. After ripping a new CD, tho, the directories and file names are wrong. Sure, I have a little control with WMP, but not much. I don't think the ripping part is where I need the flexibility, tho. What I'm really looking for is a way to say, "Here is my music library; now reorganize it based on these constraints."
Like I said, I'm sure there are tools out there that do this. I haven't looked. While I love the partner ecosystem Microsoft has built around itself, I want these features in the tools themselves.
There are only two ways to see how much time has progressed in a currently playing video: pause/play, which interupts playback, and lock/unlock, which is just stupid. If you ask me, I think the lock/unlock work-around is simply a work-around by chance. Granted, it's better than pause/play since it doesn't interupt what you're watching, but it's not obvious. The reason I think it works by chance is because locking and unlocking adds/removes a lock icon that is only displayed next to the play time. So, when you lock/unlock, the icon is displayed, which coincidentally shows the playback timeline. What I'm thinking about is a simple play time on the informational screen displayed when you press the Enter button (I guess that's what you'd call the main button).
Give me a programmable interface!!! Need I say more? I think not.
In the end, I admit that this wouldn't be all that great of a feature. I'm merely looking at this from the point of, I have a bunch of stuff to sync and not much time to sync it in, so I want to get as much done as possible before I grab my Zune and go. I'm not sure if there's any real order to what gets sync'ed when, but I want my content to sync from the smallest/fastest to the largest/slowest. This means I want files removed first, then pictures, music by size, and finally videos added by size and conversion status. Honestly, this order may not be 100%, but you get the idea. I want to get the most sync'ing done in the least amount of time. If anything gets skipped, let it be the large video files that take forever to convert.
Windows Media Player supports fast and slow playback. While I have never used slow playback, I absolutely love the fast playback feature. Plain and simple, I want fast playback on the Zune -- both the Zune device and the player on Windows. Why the heck would I want this? Simple: casts. I watch/listen to a number of casts and when I do, I like to get thru them as quick as possible to maximize my time. Sure, I don't want to listen to my songs with fast playback, but having the capability for casts would be outstanding.
I'd love it if the Zune could keep track of any cast feeds I subscribe to. I'd love it if I could connect my Zune and have it automatically download my casts. I'm not sure if that's how the iPods work, it seems ideal.
You've gotta be kidding me, right? I can't delete songs from my Zune? What's up with that!? What if I'm maxed out on the road and someone wants to share something with me? I should be able to delete a song or two from my device. If that's not good enough of a reason, I should at least be able to delete songs I don't like without having to wait until I get back to my computer to do it.
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