A zune player with clock and asian language support

[sectionboy]

update3::
v0.11
Protected songs are now shown as red, and will be skipped. Might help with some reboot issues. jazp0.11.rar

or jazp0.11.rar


update2::
v0.1b. XNA3.0BETA and zune firmware3.0 compatible. Removed ff and rw functions, should be called 0.099b

update::
v0.1 released. Report bugs in this thread please. Thank you.


In case you haven't noticed:
the zune font is included in the package.
adjust time - press and hold down center at "playing" screen.
select the whole genre - press and hold down center at "browsing" screen.
skip to next/prev album - right/left at "playlist" screen.

Limitations won't be solved any time soon:
1) can't turn off backlight (device limitation)
2) can't fast forward and rewind (device limitation)
3) can't resume from last play (device limitation)
4) reboot after exit (device limitation)
5) No touch pad support ( I only have a 30G).

--------------------------------------------------

Hi, guys,
Inspired by Adrian Vinca's zune clock, I've been writing a zune player with clock and asian language support. Check it out here:

+ YouTube Video

I am also adding the resuming function for audiobook genre. Now I would like to hear from you guys what else I should add into it? sleep timer maybe?

Here are some more pics:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3139/...524e7477_o.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3105/...9f408ef1_o.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3153/...414b7cf8_o.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3194/...4fa2345c_o.jpg

[USMCWarrior]

That's pretty nifty!

[Space Toast]

good idea.
Nicely done.

[withthelightsout]

do we have an eta on a release? or you just gonna tease us?
suggestions:
alarm clock.
visualization
downloadable switchblade,
molecular transporter.
seriously though, nice work.

[Soccerfreak24]

Lol, nice work! I'd suggest a stop watch.

[Red Sky]

looks good
good job

[trustaugustus]

Video Link is dead. But the pics look cool. So the concept is building a game/app that will function like a firmware where asian characters are supported?

[Spike!]

As awesome as this is, I really can't say i'd ever want to go into games, and start up another app before I even listen to my music just for the clock and asian character support. Plus, being in a game eats up your battery pretty fast, and there's certain things you have no control over, like the backlight setting. I mean if none of those things bother you then great, it's just a shame that the actual firmware can't be modded like this becuase frankly this would end up being more of a hassle then it's worth, for me anyway, having to start it up every time I turn my Zune on.

[sectionboy]

I don't have an eta just yet, but I might release it after I finish coding for "now playing list". I am think about 1 month out.

Spike, to me this is just a pet project. But you are right about one thing, the lack of asian language support is a shame on zune. If they weren't so, IMHO, unbelivably incompetent and may I say, arrogant to acknowledge this problem, I won't be doing this. It's already more than one year since the release of the 1st gen zune, and my Chinese and Japanese songs still show up as boxes. We did hope fw2.5 could solve this issue, but MS just kept failing us. When I saw the xna release, I just wanted to take this problem in my own hand.

Let me run offtopic a bit more. To be honest with you guys, I don't believe XNA for zune will go anywhere. Today, apple just announced $199 for 8G iphone. I am not trolling here, but iphone/itouch is simply a much capable platform as a handheld device. Did you guys see the monkey ball demo? On the software side, apple's SDK has been out for months, when xna is still shooting for xmas release. I am not saying xna will not be successful on xbox or pc platform, but on zune, don't keep you expectation too high, enjoy what you have now, which isn't much .

[Tiptup300]

XNA for the Zune isn't supposed to get revenue for MS. It just gives the users the ability to make their own games. I didn't buy the zune to make games for, I bought it since it's a great mp3 player. Now that I can make games for it, Sweet!, I have a bigger audience to share my free games with.

[Condor.Hero]

Is this going to be limited to the original Zune or will it be supported by Zune 2 as well?

[runtohell121]

lol pretty nice right now i guess.. hopefully microsoft/zune will just give us the asian language support already..

[funoffan]

Great, cant wait to see this in my zune

unless zune starts selling in asia, there won't be any asian language support from microsoft. Now the iPhone 3g gonna totally control the asia market.

奕神

[Spike!]

Originally Posted by runtohell121

lol pretty nice right now i guess.. hopefully microsoft/zune will just give us the asian language support already..

I doubt it.... I mean it'd be nice but I don't think it's all that high on thier priority list. Which is kind of sad really since it'd be pretty simple for them to include it in an Update.

[sectionboy]

Originally Posted by Condor.Hero

Is this going to be limited to the original Zune or will it be supported by Zune 2 as well?

zune 2 will be fine, but I only have the 1st gen, so there won't be any touch function, only button pressing.

[Condor.Hero]

Originally Posted by sectionboy

zune 2 will be fine, but I only have the 1st gen, so there won't be any touch function, only button pressing.

Nice... I'm just interested in the asian character display. I have a huge collection of Chinese songs I can't really read =/

[stantang]

I'm very interested in how did you managed to get the Chinese fonts with the player. Everyone has the same problem when comes to building the spritefonts for Chinese (whole set). Did you prefilter the words?

[jtloo]

Originally Posted by sectionboy

I don't have an eta just yet, but I might release it after I finish coding for "now playing list". I am think about 1 month out.

Spike, to me this is just a pet project. But you are right about one thing, the lack of asian language support is a shame on zune. If they weren't so, IMHO, unbelivably incompetent and may I say, arrogant to acknowledge this problem, I won't be doing this. It's already more than one year since the release of the 1st gen zune, and my Chinese and Japanese songs still show up as boxes. We did hope fw2.5 could solve this issue, but MS just kept failing us. When I saw the xna release, I just wanted to take this problem in my own hand.

Let me run offtopic a bit more. To be honest with you guys, I don't believe XNA for zune will go anywhere. Today, apple just announced $199 for 8G iphone. I am not trolling here, but iphone/itouch is simply a much capable platform as a handheld device. Did you guys see the monkey ball demo? On the software side, apple's SDK has been out for months, when xna is still shooting for xmas release. I am not saying xna will not be successful on xbox or pc platform, but on zune, don't keep you expectation too high, enjoy what you have now, which isn't much .

I look forward to see your release version

[stantang]

I don't we will see its release ever, the asian text issue is not something that can be fix. I believe he did filter the words out for the song he shown in his demo.

[sectionboy]

Originally Posted by stantang

I don't we will see its release ever, the asian text issue is not something that can be fix. I believe he did filter the words out for the song he shown in his demo.

It's just decade-old dot array font, instead of spritefont.