[jasn]

Since getting my Curve 8900, (4.x OS), I've happily used my BBerry as my exclusive car MP3 player paired with the Bluetooth in my Toyota Prius, (first 2006, and now 2010). The sound is great and it syncs up perfectly over bluetooth, plus it's convenient to leave the additional MP3 player at home now. However there are some issues with the media player and the bluetooth connection that were very frustrating. I lived with them as best I could and soon found myself hopeful they would be addressed when I upgraded to the Bold 9700. Unfortunately not only were they not fixed, a big bug was added to the 5.x OS media player. My issues with the Blackberry media player and bluetooth, are summarized as follows;

1. When loaded, the Blackberry 4.x, (and now 5.x) OS, media player will issue a stop command when a call is received or made. This means that you have to start the song over again from the beginning, once the call is done. The correct behavior should for the media player to issue a pause command, when a call is made or received.

2. The media player should also automatically issue a play command once the call is terminated, and to be honest, I don't remember if it does this or not. (It may). That way without the user touching the phone, (if using the car bluetooth connection controls), they can make, (or take), a call, and then the song will automatically pause and then continue playing from the point that the call was made, (or taken).

3. When loaded, the Blackberry 4.x, (and now 5.x) OS, media player will issue a stop command when disconnecting from the bluetooth stereo device, (like turning the car off). The correct behavior should be to issue a pause command when disconnecting the bluetooth stereo device connection.

4. When loaded, the Blackberry 4.x OS media player will issue a play command when initially connecting to the bluetooth stereo device. This is in fact the way it should work, but there should be an option to enable or disable this, media player BT "autoplay upon autoconnect" feature for those that don't want it on at all.

5. Finally the Blackberry 5.x OS media player has added this bug to the mix. Now in addition to 1, 2, and 3, when the inital connection is made between the phone and the bluetooth stereo device, (car), the media player is loaded, (if not already loaded), all songs are selected for play in random shuffle mode, and the player starts playing the first song. I currently have 1800 songs on my media card, so every day there's a new surprise. This is a definite bug that needs to be addressed by the developers. At the minimum it should be reversed to the 4.x OS media player behavior described in 4.

This occurs with my Blackberry Bold 9700, 5.0.0.330 (Platform 5.1.0.91), and exhibits itself when paired with a bluetooth stereo device, as in my car, (2010 Toyota Prius). It does not occur when autoconnecting to a standard paired bluetooth headset, like my Plantronics Discovery 925. From others posting to the Blackberry support forum in this thread, this is a bug with the 5.x OS media player, not just on the Bold 9700.

If anyone knows of an update to the BBerry media player that addresses at least the 5.x bug, or knows of another media player for the Blackberry that behaves correctly when connecting via bluetooth as described here, please feel free to add the suggestion to this thread. I tried a couple of other media players and couldn't find any that I was happy with, as they provided less functionality than the BBerry media player. One I tried didn't even provide the ability to play the songs over the bluetooth connection. So for now I'm forced to pause before I start driving, so that I can switch to the media player and close it before driving down the road. <sigh>

This has got to be something that RIM developers address, and I just don't know how to communicate this kind of bug to them. If anyone can provide a contact point for the RIM developers for the media player, I would be happy to forward these comments to them directly, or you may feel free to forward these comments on to them yourself.

Thanks..

[warpdryv]

i've had a problem with mine in that the audio player glitches randomly, at least once every 3 minutes, and averaging once per minute - giving me half-second pauses in the music, but only when streaming audio to any BT audio device. could these issues be related?

[jasn]

I'm not sure it is. I don't experience any of the issues you describe. Of course I've only used my 9700 with one BT stereo device, (my car's BT system). Maybe someone else has seen a similar issue and can chime in here.

[jasn]

I can confirm that the media player does not automatically issue a play command once a call is terminated, as described in #2 above. So this should be fixed as well.

For those following this issue, I made a forum post here, at the BlackBerry Support Community Forums: BlackBerry Development: Product Management: The BlackBerry Application Platform forum, but there's been no response to that post. I'm not even sure RIM developers are aware of this bug.

If anyone else has either seen a new update to the Blackberry media player, that fixes this bug, or addresses some of these media player issues, please post your experiences, including software version installed, etc. Otherwise it seems like the usability of the Blackberry as a car MP3 player, will continued to be limited until these issues are addressed.

Thanks..

[BUC]

I don't think this is an issue for all 5.0 OS. I have a Storm 2 and it works correctly. And for the autoplay when autoconnect it doesn't do it but now if I hit play directly in the Bluetooth device after connect it will begin Shuffle All (if nothing else is playing).
So overall my Storm 2 with OS 5.0 works as it should for media playback.
I do get the sound glitch once in a while but I think it happens only after I've transfer files to the internal memory. And a battery pull fixes it.

[jasn]

Two questions;

1) What version of software, (version and platform version), are you running on your Blackberry? (Options -> About)

2) What's the bluetooth device that you connect to?

Thanks..

[amelnik]

One thing I noticed on mine, is there's an option of stopping the play after pause for a certain time. I disabled it and now my songs resume fine after calls and long pauses.

[jasn]

I don't know if everyone who was experiencing this bug has seen it addressed in an OS update or not. I've not tried updating my 9700 OS yet. However, I did discover something strangely related. I was trying out alternative media players, and specifically because I use my 9700 to listen to Podcasts, I loaded Podtrapper 2.6.9 in trial mode, and discovered that with Podtrapper loaded, when the bluetooth connection is made to my car's stereo system, nothing happens. The media player doesn't load and start playing songs, (it doesn't even load). I confirmed this behavior by trying out another media player app, BerryTunes 2.5, (or Tunes), and again, with the app loaded, once the bluetooth connection gets made, nothing else happens.

I'm not suggesting that purchasing another media player app just to stop this bug from happening is an actual solution, but if you do purchase, or have another media player app, handy, then keeping it loaded seems to be a way to stop the annoying "media player autoload/autoplay on bluetooth connection" bug from happening.

Good Luck..

[trax95008]

im running .545 and occasionally when i plug in my headset (supplied with phone) it will start the media player on a random song from my mem card.