There is only ZUNE. It’s out, and wow has it gotten little to bad press. Microsoft finally released it’s new media player, the Zune. I have been waiting for it for quite a while now, reading up on it where I could, saving money, etc. November 14th came around and I was at Target at 8am to pick one up. While I wasn’t the only one there to get one, there wasn’t exactly a line of campers out front to get one either. Point one against Microsoft, a little more advertising probably would have helped with this. Regardless, I went in a bought my new Black Zune. (the brown one looks like a turd brick) Target had a total of 4 of each color, and I got the first of the black ones.
So, first thing, let’s go over the publicized specs:
• WMA, MP3, AAC, JPEG,WMV, MPEG-4, H.264 media playback
• Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) connectivity
• 30 GB Hard Drive
• 3 inch video LCD 320×240
• White, Black, and Brown Colors
• FM Radio
• Dedicated song download site zune.net
• Podcast playback
• Updateable Firmware
• Tested 13 hr battery life for audio, 4 hr video
• 3 day playback of Wi-Fi transferred songs from friends
• XBOX streaming
• XBOX (Microsoft) points compatibility
• Preloaded music videos
• Over two dozen accessories at launch
• 5.6 ounces in weight, 4.4 x 2.4 x 0.58 inches size
• Metric: 158 g, 112 x 61 x 14.7 mm size
• Custom background images
• WiFi transfer of photographs
• Tag based storage system (Will not appear as drive)
• PC Compatibility (no Mac client at launch)
• Zune tag enabled
• Horizontal and vertical video orientation
The website Zune Scene also has a great comparison chart with the 30gb Ipod. Anyways, I had to head to work so I really didn’t get to play around with it till I got home (and it needed to charge) so, fast forward to the evening where I get to tear it apart. So it comes with all the parts and what-not that every other player comes with. Lets start with the pieces before we get to the player. The USB cable is on par with the Ipod one (I had a Ipod Mini and a shuffle before this), nothing terribly exciting about it, it’s a cable for petes sake. The headphones (ear buds) are good. I liked the sound of them, but for the most part, you either cope with the headphones you get or you have your own that you use. I liked the look and design of them, and the magnetic backs of the buds was kind of cool to keep them from getting too tangled. It was also a bitch to get the little foam covers on the damn things. But that could just have been me.
The Documentation was kind of a waste unless you really don’t know what you are doing. You can see in the pictures, they have the “dropping in a CD and plugging in USB for dummies” pictures. You also get a little card that has a code (obscured by my pen) for the 14 day free trial of the Zune Pass. The box itself had all this stuff crammed into little side compartments, which actually was pretty cool. I didn’t have to tear out all sorts of weird packaging to get at any particular piece. So, with that done…..let’s get to the player.
The first feel of the player was good. It has some weight to it, and the translucent over coating really made it feel comfortable. I have seen a lot of players that just feel cheap in your hands and you think they are going to break by looking at them, this isn’t the case. The buttons are few and straight forward. One of the things that is getting annoying is the constant claims of the circle control on the front being a bite off of Ipod and such. It’s not a wheel, it’s just a directional pad, and a very functional one at that. If you think they stole the design from Ipod, go out and look at 90% of other players on the market. They all have some sort of directional pad/wheel. Welcome to free enterprise. You have the pad, a back button, a play/pause button, and on the top is the hold slider.
Firing up the box, I was greeted by the standard menu and was able to jump in and play some of the pre-loaded content. I have to say, this was awesome for MS to do. Walking out of the store, you can fire it up and start playing music or videos. The menus were fairly easy to master. You can use the d-pad to move up and down the selections. Left and right are to change the category. For example, you select “Music” and are greeted by a list of albums in your Zune. Up and down will select which album (if you have a lot, you can hold up or down to zip through, a letter will show up on the side to show where you are in the list). If you hit left or right you can change to the artist category, again and you go to songs. So, going back to the albums section, if I select (center of the d-pad) an album, I get a list of the songs on that album. The left and right move me to the next album on the list. For me, at least, it was fairly intuitive. I used the back button to back out of any selections.
Next step was hooking it up to the PC (good thing I had those pictures handy). The CD was worthless, I went to Zune.net and downloaded the latest version (like I do with all new stuff). Running the install took a while to do it’s little update, and as with all MS software, I had to reboot. After the reboot, and firmware update, I hooked up the Zune and it went to town downloading all of my songs to it. Ok, so here is problem #2. I have about 60gb of songs, and my poor little Zune is only 30gb. I spent a good hour or so figuring out how to get it off its auto-sync tirade. The MS answer to get it to skip songs is to delete them from the Zune, of course this means letting it download them all first. Yeah, not so much. I set it to manual sync and…..crap just lost all the pre-loaded stuff. DAMNIT! Ah well, the Zune marketplace has a playlist with the songs on it for download, so if I really wanted to I could get them back.
After about another hour, the Zune software had completed compiling all of my library and play lists from Itunes. I went about moving over all of the stuff I wanted on the Zune and starting the sync. Here goes another hour while it syncs up. I threw in some pictures and videos as well. After the last of it was over to the Zune, I started playing around with my own content.
Setting the background was a snap, go to picture, select picture, center button, set as background. The radio function is kind of cool, if you are in a place that has good reception. The internal antennae kind of sucks, but I didn’t buy it solely for a radio. Watching videos on it is nice. I have seen videos on the Ipod and the screen is just too small. I know that the actual resolution and such is on par with the Ipod but the larger screen really makes a difference. Interesting fact: when watching a video, the d-pad flips as well as the player. Up/down = volume, left/right = fast forward/reverse. In music mode, the same functions apply. The pictures displayed look crisp and clean on the screen. I kind of wish that if a picture is in portrait mode, it would flip and fill the screen, but in picture mode it’s landscape view only. D-pad cycles through the pictures.
I also activated the 14 day trial for the Zune Pass. The Pass is MS’s all you can eat buffet of music through the market place. For a measly $14.99 (about the cost of a CD) per month, you can download/listen/put on your Zune and take with you, any of the songs in their library. You can also listen to CD quality full length music through the PC software (no download needed). This is huge for me as I hate the 30 second preview crap. So here is another test in the works. Right now I have the 14 day trial going and I pulled down some music and threw it on the Zune. According to the Zune pass, as long as I have an active subscription, I can listen to the music. If the subscription runs out, it won’t let me listen. So what happens if I don’t sync. Does the music on the Zune time out? I’ll know in about 13 days! If it doesn’t, I may think about paying for a month, loading up, then listen for about 3 months, then fill up again. We’ll see.
In the Engadget review they commented about how when the Zune is plugged in, it’s basically a brick. This is NOT true. While the Zune software is running, your Zune is “connected” and is seen by the software, if you close the software, the Zune menu comes back and you can play with it while it’s charging. It does not get seen by windows as a drive. On a whim I decided to have some fun and hook it up to the Mac (yup, I have one and like it very much). While it does not initially do anything visible (like show up as a drive), I went into the system profiler and sure enough, under USB devices it see’s it as “Zune”. (Really should have got a picture of that).
So, the main reason I wanted the Zune if for use in the truck. I have a good stereo there, and it even plays MP3 CD’s but I keep wanting more than just 700mb. I am so spoiled too, I even have XM there as well. So I bought myself a splitter and split my AUX-in for the XM to have an extra port for the Zune. It sits nicely below the 4×4 shifter in the truck. Another interesting fact: When you unplug the audio jack, whatever you are doing pauses. I understand that other players do that too, but damn that’s cool! So now it’s very nice to be driving around with the Zune, I can hit shuffle all and left/right d-pad through random songs.
Over all I am really happy with the Zune, while I haven’t had the chance to play with any of the Wi-Fi (report on that soon with Goon-Zune Buddy’s, Pukestain Pal’s help). There are a lot of things that can be improved. The Zune marketplace software could use some help, videos would be nice, but I am optimistic that those features will come. Also I am holding out that MS will implement some capability to sync via wireless, or allow us to browse some online content via wi-fi. The hardware is in place, it wouldn’t take much to push out through firmware. In the mean time, I am really happy with my choice. All of the Pictures are located here
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