Notices

having a hard time with shuffle/random play mode. i hit the shuffle button, i see the icon, but the songs are played in the order that they're displayed. i'm not sure if hitting the shuffle button is supposed to shuffle the playlist itself (which would be cool), or just jump around to random songs on the playlist. either way, it doesn't seem to do anything. is this a bug or am i missing something?

The shuffle mode causes jumping to random songs on the playlist without jumping to the same song twice before all songs have been played.
If it doesn't do this, you've most likely found a bug. What did you do exactly?

i've tried a couple of things. a) going to the browse view and selecting entire /media/mmc1 as a playlist, or more conventionally going to the "musical note" view (not sure what this is called) and loading either an album or artist onto the playlist. doesn't matter whether i turn shuffle on before or after the playlist is loaded. when i play it, the songs all play in the order listed, which is also the order in which they were loaded. i can't imagine that this wouldn't have been picked up before, so i'm still not sure if i'm missing something.

I get the same thing... I can't get it to shuffle at all, and I thought the update that occured this week would fix that... To no avail.

I just want to know one thing sure:

is it only the playlist where shuffling doesn't work or doesn't it work in the video, music, image viewers as well?
The default playlist "Queue" is not really a playlist. It's a queue where queued items get removed after playing. The "Queue" currently does not shuffle. You can add real playlist in the playlist viewer. Those do support shuffle.

But if shuffling doesn't work anywhere for you, then I guess there's a real bug that needs more investigation.

ok, well it's possible that i've been doing everything wrong--the interface is a bit confusing. i'm not sure how to add a playlist then. if i go to what i assume is the playlist viewer (paper with notes icon, then "playlist" on the right of the page), i see "queue". i'm able to add songs to the queue by either going to the musical note icon (which has "browser" on the right and "queue" on the left) and selecting albums (since the upgrade to 0.96.4.1, i can no longer see genres/artists/songs--only albums) or through the folder icon. going back the playlist viewer, i see the songs added to "queue". at this point, nothing shuffles, which you say is normal. however, i don't see how to add songs to an actual playlist. if i click on the plus icon in the playlist view, i'm prompted for a playlist name, which shows up on that same view. i then get a blank playlist, which i can't figure out how to add songs to. perhaps you can tell me how to get it to do what i want:

1. i'd like to either select all songs on my sd card, or better yet, be able to create a playlist by selecting all songs under several genres.
2. shuffle through all these songs. it would be nice if the playlist actually shuffled, so you could see what had already played, and what will be playing next. otherwise, just skipping from song to song randomly (which i think is the default behavior) would be ok.

thanks for the help--i'd love to RTFM if there was one...

well, apparently i was doing something wrong, but my install was apparently corrupt as well. after a purge/reinstall, i am able to add songs to a playlist that i create, and shuffle works as well. in case anybody else is wondering:
1. create a playlist by clicking the "plus" icon in playlist viewer. select the playlist
2. go to the "note" icon. find whatever you want to add to the playlist using albums/genres/artist/etc.
3. click the "list" icon next to the appropriate music. it then says "adding to playlist x"

back in the playlist viewer, your music should appear under playlist x. anyway, this wasn't working for me before the reinstall.

Thanks for your feedback. I'm glad that it's working for you again.
You can also add a bunch of albums at once to the playlist, by pressing the topmost "list" icon.
So e.g. if you want to add all albums of a certain genre to the playlist, go to the music view, genres, select the genre, and press the topmost "list" icon (where the genre name is written).

I agree that the user interface is a bit confusing without documentation. I plan on both, a simpler user interface, and some documentation.

yeah, i had figured out the top "list" icon. very versatile. also able to do it by device/media card, so that all songs from certain folders are added. this is actually one of the main reasons that i'm trying to use mediabox as my main player.