OK,
Here is my experience with.248:
1. I marked some songs with 5 stars that were not marked in MC9 at all.
2. I docked the ipod after loading .248 and then chose "synchronise ipod info with PC" but when i checked on the media library view I got the dialog box saying saving tags for about 1038 songs (turned out is was all the songs that were marked with any stars on MC9). So when that finished, the 3 songs that I had marked on the ipod were the only ones that were marked on MC9, lost all the ratings but I have a backup.
Also all the last played dates were wiped completely.
3. I then did a synch and gor the same problem that has been mentioned previously here, i.e. it synched and then there were no sings on the ipod when I undocked it, even though it showed there were songs in the MC9 view.
4. I initialised the ipod again and re-synched all the songs. Some of the songs that I had rated in MC9 now transferred the ratings to the ipod and showed up there.
5. I played a few in the ipod, rated some new ones and then uploaded files again from ipod to pc. This time it recognised the playcounts, but not last played date or the new ratings.
In summary:
Playcounts are going from ipod to mc9.
Ratings are going from mc9 to ipod
last played date is not going from ipod to mc9
ratings are not going from ipod to mc9
I will keep experimenting and let you know.
Cheers,
Paul
System info as follows:
Media Center Registered 9.1.248 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\
Microsoft Windows 2000 Workstation 5.0 Service Pack 3 (Build 2195)
Intel Pentium 4 1693 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 334 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2600.0000 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.81 / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2600.0000 / Shell32.dll: 5.00.3502.5436 / wnaspi32.dll: 4.60 (1021) , ASPI for Win32 (95/NT) DLL, Copyright © 1989-1999 Adaptec, Inc. / Aspi32.sys: 4.60 (1021)
Ripping / Drive D: Copy mode:ModeSecure CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive E: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: Yes / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: No / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / Drive E: IOMEGA CDRW19202EXT2-B Addr: 2:0:0 Speed:40 MaxSpeed:40 BurnProof:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
UPDATE
I now managed to play some songs on the ipod and rate them and they have transferred to the ipod. I did do what Adam said and changed the ipod clock to be a minute behind the pc clock which seemed to help.
I have the same thing as Adam, however, with all my songs saying the same as he stated with different decimals that seem to fluctuate for different songs.
However, after I managed to get lasy played and ratings to upload and then changed a few songs in mc9, when I synched again, I have the disappearing songs syndrome again. I have now re-initialised the ipod again and will try again.
Cheers,
Paul