I’m a big fan of rating the tracks in your music collection. It doesn’t take much time, and the payoff is really wonderful when you hit the "5 star shuffle" list.
In Windows Media Player, it takes exactly one click in the Now Playing list or Library to add or update a star rating. In Windows Media Center, by contrast, here’s what you have to do when using a remote control:
- On the Now Playing screen, choose View Queue and press OK on the remote.
- On the Queue screen, press the right arrow to move the focus to the list of queued songs, and then use the up or down arrows to scroll through the list and select the track you want to rate.
- Press the Info button on the remote.
- Press OK to select the default Edit choice from the menu.
- On the Edit Song screen, press the down arrow twice to move the focus to the minus and plus controls at the right of the current rating.
- Press OK on the default minus control to lower a rating, or press right arrow to move the focus to the plus control and press OK to increase a rating.
- Press the left arrow once or twice to move the focus to the Save option, and click OK to record your changes.
Isn’t that overly complicated? You should be able to get to the rating screen for any song with no more than one or two button presses.
Too bad you can’t rate the song with one button press — in Windows Media Player on Windows Mobile, you can increment the star rating simply by pressing the * button on the phone keypad.
MS has issues with the way music libraries are managed on zune devices, zune software, media center, and the xbox 360 dashboard. I guess their inexperience with music content really shows when you use their devices often for this type of thing. I really hope they get better with this…fast.
I can’t agree more! I would really like a one-click way to rate songs (and even other content like photos, etc.) within media center. It should be as easy as the Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down remote buttons on TiVo.
I wonder if it would be possible to write an add-in that listens for a particular remote button and changes the rating. Perhaps you could use a more sophisticated remote (like my Harmony) to emulate a keyboard button (to leave all other remote buttons unchanged in funtionality).
Yep, surely we’d only need to press 1-5 to rate a song….