Marc Collins

A painfully simple request...that required the push of a button or toggle 25 years ago: how do you get a music track to display the time REMAINING when it is playing instead of the time that it has been playing so far?

I guess it wasn't obvious enough to the software wizards at Nissan that showing the time played so far is completely useless information unless, i) they also show the total time (which they don't), or ii) you have memorized the length of every track you are listening to. Time REMAINING gives all the information you need in one simple display, which is why in the olden days of non-computerized stereos, it was standard procedure.

Is there a way to change our displays? (2009 w/nav here, because I have also found out the hard way with bluetooth and other features that it matters which year and version you have!).

Thanks in advance.

JayElDee

agree completely, Marc.
Is there an answer to this?

John

g37guy01

When you are driving why would you care?

JayElDee

assuming this is a serious question, I care because I may be curious how long a particular track is, how much longer it will play, how much longer I will have to endure or enjoy it.
Counting up doesn't really tell you much. Counting down will help the driver decide whether it's worth addressing, when a track plays that the driver would prefer to skip. It allows for greater attention on driving in this car that suffers inattention poorly. I prefer to pay attention and counting down a track allows that for me. Counting up does nothing.

and there may be a simple fix, but ymmv

8)

John

g37guy01

I guess I never gave it a thought. With XM, hard disc loaded with music, dvd mp3 and gigs of music on my blackberry streamed through bluetooth audio, using the steering wheel controls I just jump around and don't care how long a track is.

If I'm bored I move on to any of the alternate music sources. I didn't mean the question to sound condescending i am really interested in why, since I don't care with the amount of music at my fingertips.

JayElDee

Thanks, for the explanation.
Me, too, but most often I do not want to change the source. I am one of those who thinks the hard drive is wasted because it doesn't allow MP3s, so I don't use it much. I have an 8 gig compact flash card loaded and I want to stay on it. If a track has 20-30 seconds left I may do nothing, if the 10 minute drum solo is on the horizon, I will switch. Extreme examples I know, but the countdown timer is something that I grew up with, making mix tapes, playing with audio, etc. and it is far more useful that a count up timer, esp one that does not tell you the total time of the track. If I am switching sources, I have to watch the display with every switch to see where I am. That is distracting for me.
It would be a very simple thing to do, if the display allowed it.
Just trying to make good better.

Merry Christmas, g37guy!

John

cyberBeach

Yeah, I have a 32gb iPod hooked up and almost never play cd's and have never used the hard drive at all. When I buy a cd I rip it in iTunes to Apple Lossless. Maybe if I could put iTunes on the hard drive but even then why bother? If the hard drive could copy all the iTunes stuff off my phone, then that would work, but then it wouldn't have Genius playlists etc so.


To put it simply, it absolutely should be a countdown timer. iPhones & iPods all show both by the way, and that would be best of all.

The count-up timer is really only of interest when something cool happens in a song and you want to note at what point in the track it was.