I'm sorry XM. I understand that you don't want people to have idle streams wasting precious bandwidth; corporate penny pinching and whatnot. It's just that the general idea of this is kind of stupid. I leave the radio on while I'm working. Subsequently I have to finagle the radio webpage every two hours or else I get this annoying message. It's a radio. It's supposed to be passive. Shutting it off aside, a user's interaction with a radio should end after he chooses the station he wants to listen to. Listening shouldn't be considered inactivity; it's the main event.
I'm sure you won't but please come up with a better anti-idle technique. If you are stuck, here's an idea. While playing, increase the timeout interval to eight hours. If the mute button is pressed, then 1 hour. I've already complained, and you didn't listen.
The deal is: I pay you, you provide music. It's not my job to entertain your radio. Change this, it's stupid.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Proof I Am Not Radio Active
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10 comments:
yessssssss! god i am sick of that message.
I would have to agree. It's annoying, hopefully XM will change this.
Here's something I do to counteract the inactivity of XM's Online Radio:
1. Download Media Connectivity addon for Firefox, configure so that windows media files don't play automatically, instead they give the option to open up in default standalone player
2. Browse to XM Online with firefox
3. Log in, and choose your station
4. Embedded Windows Media Player should be black with a play button in the middle, click it, opening up Windows Media Player and enjoy unlimited music.
I've had mine on for 9+ hours as of this writing.
Thanks Anthony, I'll definitely give that a try.
XMicroPlayer is great for XM radio too. It minimizes to the task bar and doesn't have the same log out problems either. http://www.sb-software.com/xmplayer/
guys, xm's timeout isn't half as bad. Sirius takes the cake, where every 30 minutes, whether or not you are idle, will pop up and ask you if you are still listening while stopping the music. Most annoying thing ever!
Check out Xamp Studio, it's a nice Windows app that looks similar to WinAmp, but it's for XM Radio. It doesn't have any timeouts.
http://xamp.imomo.net/
you should pester your local officials to investigate why the merger has been delayed longer than any in history. then you wouldn't have to worry about this since sirius doesn't do that bullshit :)
sirius does it too. i listen all the time and its annoying. howard 100 and howard 101 at least thats all i listen to in the house
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