@tomwspoon wrote:
I wrote to launchcastsupport@streamtheworld.com and submitted the following question: Although my Sansa Connect is connecting to my router and network properly, and is also connecting to the Zing servers on every attempt, when I try to play a Yahoo Music station I get an error message “Can’t Play Station - try again later”. This started on March 23rd. I verified that all Sansa Connect users are affected. Are the free stations no longer available to Sansa Connect users?
Their response received 4-15-2010: We’re sorry, LAUNCHcast is no longer available on the Sansa Connect. To listen to all your favorite radio stations, check out the new Yahoo! Radio powered by CBS RADIO here: http://new.music.yahoo.com/launchcast/ or visit CBS | All Access Support to find all of our available mobile apps
Thank you for contacting us
Yahoo!/CBS Support
Thanks for doing the legwork for us.
If I had bought a Sansa Connect, I think that I would feel cheated. What did SanDisk promise/represent to customers at the time of purchase? Was there an implicit promise that the service would continue indefinitely?
Too often consumers are helpless. I prefer Linux to MS Windows so that I retain ultimate control. I like the idea of RockBox and that’s in fact why I’m on this forum.
The Sansa Connect’s firmware (Linux based) is intriguingly close to hackable but it turns out not to be. As I understand it, new firmware can only be installed if it is cryptographically signed by a key controlled by SanDisk or Zing.
Of course most users don’t want to hack their MP3 players, but even a small number of hackers could make the devices much more useful to ordinary users. An example is how OpenWRT/dd-wrt/Tomato have made a bunch of wireless routers much better.
The Connect’s raw hardware would support a lot of interesting features with hacked software. For example, wirelessly playing music from your own computer.
