I'm talking about on new installations. There is single zone named "Player" on new installations.
Having it mirror changes made to that zone automatically seems like it complicates things though, and what happens once you start adding new zones?
Does it stop automatically configuring things?
Is it permanently linked to the "Player" Zone?
It's one of those things where having it behave that way does make sense for a default, but then it complicates matters when you want to move beyond that.
Adding a "special zone" like this seems to be more trouble than it's worth, even though it does in theory solve the "unconfigured" state for IPC.
I currently have WDM routed to a zone that plays to the same device as my audio and video playback zones. It does not interrupt playback at all for me in that configuration (even with reciprocal stop playback rules): if something is playing or paused, the IPC never breaks through, and (because it's a different zone) it never affects the playing now or navigation. You have to change the "jump on start" zone-specific setting for the IPC zone to "nothing," but otherwise it's a magic bullet for me. In this configuration IPC only plays when playback is entirely stopped and affects nothing else.
It sounds like maybe it doesn't work the same for you?
Sorry if that was confusing. It does work as you suggest, because I have not assigned a "stop" command to the IPC ZoneSwitch rule.
What I meant is that this is the
reason to have IPC configured to play in a zone, because that prevents it from interrupting playback.
What I will say though, is that if you are playing music or a video and IPC tries to start, but can't, once you stop that music/video playback IPC remains stuck on "Opening…" indefinitely.
I have to stop the IPC zone before audio plays in it. It would be nice if this were more seamless.
I'm suggesting both: simplifying creation and baking it into existing zones because the separate zone solves the above issues for me (even when it's pointing at the same audio device).
It's the "baking it into existing zones" which is confusing me.
Are you suggesting that there should be an "IPC Zone" associated with each individual zone?
Because I am of the opinion that IPC should
either play to whatever the active zone is (current behavior)
or play to a specific zone that routes it to a specific output.
What might be a better solution for the former, is to have the IPC item have special treatment so that it only ever gets added to the existing playlist (slotted in above the current item) and then removed when it stops, rather than replacing it entirely.
And the latter is actually the better behavior in my opinion, but I can't see an easier solution for routing IPC to a separate zone than adding a checkbox to the "new zone" dialog.