jbs Posted August 3, 2008 Share Posted August 3, 2008 OK, now that I'm up and running on 1.6, and though I've not yet played with the timers or announcements, I have to say that the new Zone interface is a MASSIVE improvement in the user interface. We have a very open floor plan house, where three adjacent rooms (Living Room, Dining Room and Kitchen) each have their own audio zone. In the past, listening to music across these zones was a bit cumbersome because if the volumes were not correct you'd have to keep moving the MTS room assignment from room to room to get it all corrected. And adding or removing rooms was a nuisance as well.The new interface is a huge improvement on this, allowing me not only to control individual volumes from one place, but also to control all volumes at once, and to add rooms individually, or as a floor or as the whole house. One click can add every zone in the house to my session.But that's not all. I can't confirm this was not part of 1.3, but I don't think it was. If so, it's an apparently "undocumented" feature, but a great one. If I've got a DVD playing in the living room, I can now use the zones to add the dining room and kitchen to the session as well, which means I can get the audio from a video channel to feed into zones that do not have video.In the past I could do this with my Tivo or Cable boxes because those automatically present themselves to non-video rooms as an audio channel since they have digitial music, and in fact I recently had my dealer install a non-Tivo device once as a Tivo just so that it's audio would show up in all audio zones. So this zone change seems to be another really nice improvement in the interface and functionality.Can someone who's on a pre 1.6 version of Composer pull up a DVD player or some other video source in a video room and then see if they can hear it in a non-video room by creating a music zone? I'm curious whether it's new or just something I missed before.Enjoy the new zones, everyone!-Jason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATOH Posted August 3, 2008 Share Posted August 3, 2008 Any source with audio connections was available. DVD was listed under "VIDEO" and also under "MUSIC". Cable boxes, etc. are listed under radio because it is a broadcast service. So that part was there before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbs Posted August 3, 2008 Author Share Posted August 3, 2008 Again I don't have the 1.3.2 still installed to confirm this, but I do believe in my prior setup the audio-only zones were not showing DVD players (though now under 1.6 they do show up under Music). I'd brought this up in this thread:http://www.c4forums.com/viewtopic.php?id=2066because I have a DVD recorder that I wanted to be able to listen to in non-video zones, and I could not find it under Music or Radio. It may just have been something that was configured incorrectly when my system was set up, but for some reason they show up now under 1.6.In any case, the new Zones interface really is terrific. I used it all afternoon today and loved it.--Jason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil12011 Posted August 3, 2008 Share Posted August 3, 2008 the last 1.3 update allowed any video that had audio outs to be viewed under music. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbs Posted August 4, 2008 Author Share Posted August 4, 2008 That would explain it, then. I never got the last 1.3.2 update. I was on 1.3.2.318 from November '07. Wish I'd known that functionality was in there I'd have gotten upgraded sooner! The video sources under music is quite handy if you want to watch something from afar or spread the audio over a wider area.Great improvements!--Jason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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