Just got the SAT firmware installed on my phatbox. The only quibble I have right now is that the display always goes back to say XM Channel 1. If I press the disp button, it will show Name , then if I hit disp again it will show the mp3 tag breifly then go back to XM Channel 1. Is there anyway to get it so that it continually scolls the song title / name. The name doesn't stay on for more than a few seconds. It doesn't even have enough time to scroll through the entire name. Is this as designed or am I missing something?

 

Press and hold the RPT button, it will change what the display is locked on. Keep repeating the above until you see TITLE. From now on the car will always show the title (even after you turn off the car and back on). This is a "feature"of the radio, not the phatbox (i.e., the same is true if you have a SAT radio tuner, and there's nothing the Phatbox can do to do this for you).

 

I tried this, but all it did was toggle between different repeat modes.

Should I be able to see the ID3 tag on my radio's display? The voice technology works fine, but the only thing that displays is the track and time of the song playing.

I got the cable that hooks into the SAT pre-wire, and I was under the impression that you no longer had to specify which cable you wanted or even that there was a choice anymore.

 

You are not using the SAT firmware if you have different repeat modes. The SAT firmware does not support randomization.

Did you receive the files from Phatnoise? If you didn't make sure you get them and they'll send you instructions on how to do it. If they did, then you did something wrong. Make sure you follow the instructions and you should be fine.

 

Ok. Guess I missed that part. I"m assuming I can just email support and they will send me the files? I think at this point I should have Jennifer from PB on my speed dial as much as I had to talk to her about the defective PB I got.

But three questions:

1. If you lose the random function, is it worth it?

2. Is there a way, using either CDC or SAT firmware, to have the SSA read song titles as well?

3. If you install the SAT firmware, do you then hit the SAT button rather thatn the CD button to switch to the PB?

 

1. Yes, I believe it is. I do miss it sometimes, but I like having the artist name and title displayed on my head unit.. especially for my damn trance songs.

2. Yes there is. I forgot how exactly I did it, but just go to the PB forums and search for it. There is information there that you're looking for.

3. Yes. It recognizes your PB as Satellite radio, no longer as a CD changer.

 

You can still use the "force_random" hack to enable randomization for certain playlists. Mike Woo says he's going to look at adding random mode the next time he looks at the Nissan/Infiniti stuff, but you might send him a request, so he knows it's iimportant to us.

Along the same vein is the song title reading hack. Both are described on the unsupported hacks page.

http://phatbox.sixpak.org/

Yes, once the sat firmware is loaded you use SAT instead of CD to get to the Phatbox. You do not need to change any wiring.

 

FWIW....

I used the SAT firmware almost immediately when I hooked up my Phatbox for the first time. I sort of liked the way the song titles scrolled - although it's not a smooth scroll. It displays part of the artist-title and then jumps to the next block of the artist-title after a few seconds, not a smooth scroll.

The problem that I had was I like to listen to custom playlists and for the life of me I could not get force_random to work. I did it correctly via the phatbox.sixpack.org site but it never actually worked. I had to "pseudo random" by ordering the songs by track size and other methods.

I finally got sick of this and went back to the CD firmware after the most recent upgrade to the 3.0 firmware (past couple of weeks). While I kind of miss the track titles, I'm much happier now that I have my random back.

Plus, I may use the spoken track titles shortly. I bought ATT Natural Voices 1.4 with the Audrey16 voice (UK) and switched not only the artist/album/genre voice files but also the voice prompting to this UK Female voice. It's nice.

So to answer your previous questions....
1. For me it was not worth losing the random function. If Mike Woo can add random to the SAT firmware as well as tightening up the title scrollability, I'll switch back to SAT. Until then, I'm staying with CD. If you don't use random that much, you'll be happy with the SAT firmware. I'm not sure if there is a new beta of the SAT firmware to correspond with the 3.0 release of the CD firmware (bug fixes/plugin support/AAC support) though.

2. Using both the CDC and SAT firmware, the Phatbox will read song titles as well. You'll need PMM 2.35 at least to get this capability - PMM 3.0 and higher has it more easily built in with a checkbox. So you can have the artist - title scroll on the HU and have the title voice announced as well.

3. If you install the SAT firmware you hit the SAT button instead of CD to use the Phatbox. This is why there is no random for the SAT firmware yet as Satellite radio isn't playing stored tracks so it has no "sense" of random and there isn't a button assigned to it yet. That's what Mike Woo said he'd work on if he had time. We need to figure out in SAT mode which button can have its function hijacked without taking away any other features.

 

I suggested that Mike use the "set preset" buttons (hold down 1, 2, or 3). I know that can be made to work, since the presets are held in the tuner, not the head unit. Perhaps holding 1 to enable playlist random... hold 2 to enable global random, hold 3 to disable random.

It's unfortunate that the head unit files don't have a script command for enabling random, or else we could just add it ourselves into the feature menu (button 6) via the ini files.