Zune...

[ThunderPeel2001]

So Microsoft's answer to the iPod is finally here... or at least in the US! We don't have it in the UK yet. Any of you US folk picked one up yet?

The way I see it is this:

The WiFi thing: Useless unless they can get it to sync to your computer using it. Who cares about sharing a song for 3 plays for 3 days?! (Where did they do their market research...!?)

Bigger screen: Very nice! Nearly 50% than the iPod, great for watching TV shows on the train.

The interface: Finally an update to that drab iPod effort! It was nice in the original black and white models, but they really didn't use the colour capabilities of the iPod when they updated it.

Radio Included: Who can complain about this!

[Marek]

Brought to you by J Allard: listen to the Chemical Brothers on your Zune while wakeboarding or downhill mountainbiking!

[ysbreker]

:tdown: :tdown: This DRM riddled piece of crappola does not interest me in the slightest.

[Salka]

Seems alright to me. Nice large screen.

Found some RIDICULOUS quotes on zunescene.com, though...

Zune endeavors to bring back the social side of music, and break the isolation of the lonely man with his ear buds in the corner... The age of isolation could be replaced, by the dawn of "us".

Bring back the social side of music? ?!?

Oh my god look at this:

APPLY NOW

Zune players arrive in stores this November and we are looking for early adopters to help us spread the word. Zune college ambassadors are called The Zune Masters. Zune Masters help with on campus promotions, online promotions and feedback. If you qualify to be a Zune Master, you'll be one of only 200-300 people in the country ushering in the age of handheld, wireless media sharing. Our requirements are pretty simple: you must be motivated, professional, highly social, creative and passionate about music.

What does being a Zune Master mean for you?

* You will be a member of an elite team of 18-22 year olds representing and spreading the word of Zune.

* Once you show us you're committed, you'll be one of the first people to get a Zune player.

* Year long team member benefits include insider info, access to special events and some cash for special projects.

* This is a guaranteed resume builder.

I wanna be a member of an elite mercenary force TOO! Oh let ME be a Zune Master let ME!

[ThunderPeel2001]

That Zune Master thing is pretty scary, isn't it? I guess the idea is cheap word-of-mouth advertising.

ysbreker: How is it DRM riddled?

[Roderick]

Awesome animated commercial with rocking birds bursting into flames.

[vimes]

Cocaïne players arrive in stores this November and we are looking for early adopters to help us spread the word. Cocaïne college ambassadors are called The Cocaïne Masters. Cocaïne Masters help with on campus promotions, online promotions and feedback. If you qualify to be a Cocaïne Master, you'll be one of only 200-300 people in the country ushering in the age of handheld, wireless Cocaïne sharing. Our requirements are pretty simple: you must be motivated, professional, highly social, creative and passionate about Cocaïne.

What does being a Cocaïne Master mean for you?

* You will be a member of an elite team of 18-22 year olds representing and spreading the word of Cocaïne.

* Once you show us you're committed, you'll be one of the first people to get a Cocaïne player.

* Year long team member benefits include insider info, access to special events and some cash for special projects.

* This is a guaranteed resume builder.

People should do this kind of check to see if their marketing stuff is potentially embarassing and weird.

[toblix]

Note that the Zune screen, while bigger than the iPod's, has the same resolution. Also note that all music becomes DRM-fucked, even music with licenses granting you the right to copy at will.

[Nappi]

"Wireless Cocaïne sharing." Finally..

Those headbanging birds are excellent. I have a feeling that sharing music with Zune won't be as cool, though.

I like the big screen and radio, but the 14-hour battery life for music playback is very unimpressive. By comparison, my Samsung Z5F has a rated battery life of 39 hours (or 44 hours after the latest firmware update), which, I agree, is almost impossible to reach but one can get close to that. It's also very strange that Zune doesn't support PlayForSure content.

Looks like a pretty nice player nevertheless.

[Marek]

I, for one, am getting really sick of sharing cocaine through wires all the time. This thing is a blessing!

[brkl]

Note that the Zune screen, while bigger than the iPod's, has the same resolution.

It's a decent resolution. No real reason to go much higher for a screen that size.

[n0wak]

Zune! SO AWESOME. I want more DRM and more proprietary garbage in my audio players! And useless software just to get songs on to it! Software like this: http://faruk.newsvine.com/_news/2006/11/12/438632-zune-install-screen-raises-eyebrows

And the best part is that Microsoft spent millions of dollars developing a DRM system to compare against Apple's. Licensed it to many other mp3 player developers. Gave it that guarantee of a name "PlaysForSure". And what do they do with the Zune? They ditch it. Way to go! Way to breed goodwill with third party music distributors/player makers there Microsoft. And way to stick it to those people that bought music OFF YOUR OWN SERVICE that they can't use anymore.

Also it's totally awesome how everytime you buy a Zune you are giving money directly to Universal even if you never play anything from their fucking catalogue. YES! I LIKE PAYING FOR MUSIC I DON'T HAVE.

It's appropriate that there is a brown Zune.

I use a SanDisk

http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Catalog(1014)-MP3_Players.aspx

Good capacity/size. Decent UI. Has radio AND voice recording. Registers as a disk drive when I connect it and then I can just drag and drop mp3s into it through explorer (don't have to rely on iTunes or Sony Connect or Media Player 10+ or other bullshit). Sound's good. Price is good. Screen is nice. Highly recommend it

[ysbreker]

ysbreker: How is it DRM riddled?

See the post by n0wak

[Nachimir]

I'm especially impressed that it automatically puts DRM on everything you shove on it. Including non-copyrighted work

[Wrestlevania]

The New York Times has an excellent write-up regarding Zune and whilst I wasn't expecting great things from it, the list of 'flaws' is quite eye-opening. Brown definitely isn't the new white, so to speak. Engadget also has a (somewhat bitchy) retelling of their experiences when trying to install the Zune software, which is also worth reading I think if you're considering shelling out for this thing.

Personally, I'd go for something a lot simpler and hassle free myself -- that SanDisk player looks good for instance. You can also get a 2GB 65k screen MP4 player direct from Hong Kong, via eBay, for less than a new (screenless) 1GB iPod Shuffle too -- you get a digital FM receiver built-in as well, something no iPod or Zune can do out of the box.

"The world is your lobster," when it comes to personal audio gadgets. Buy anything but Zune IMHO (or that rubbish Sony Bean).

[elmuerte]

I wanna be a member of an elite mercenary force TOO! Oh let ME be a Zune Master let ME!

Somehow the term "zunejugend" comes to mind

[ThunderPeel2001]

I'm just, frankly, baffled. I thought Idle Thumbs was the place were people came to laugh at people making uninformed comments. I think some of you have been brainwashed...

:tdown::tdown: This DRM riddled piece of crappola does not interest me in the slightest.

Also note that all music becomes DRM-fucked, even music with licenses granting you the right to copy at will.

I want more DRM and more proprietary garbage in my audio players! And useless software just to get songs on to it!

I'm especially impressed that it automatically puts DRM on everything you shove on it. Including non-copyrighted work

See the post by n0wak :wink:

Will someone please explain? As I understand it the Zune only adds DRM to music that it's WiFi'd. How does this really affect anyone? I personally think the WiFi thing of sending music is a complete waste of time, but how on earth does it make anything "DRM-fucked"?

Here's a quote from the Gizmodo review:

A friend can take his Zune over to your computer, set up a "guest" relationship with your Zune Marketplace software (as opposed to a regular owner relationship), and you're free to drag songs and pictures from your library onto her device. These songs do not have the 3 play 3 day limit on them. Depending on whether you purchased or you're leasing these songs, you can do this with either 5 or 2 Zunes, respectively.

Does that sound "DRM-fucked" to you?

More baffling comments:

I like the big screen and radio, but the 14-hour battery life for music playback is very unimpressive. By comparison, my Samsung Z5F has a rated battery life of 39 hours (or 44 hours after the latest firmware update), which, I agree, is almost impossible to reach but one can get close to that. It's also very strange that Zune doesn't support PlayForSure content.

The Samsung Z5F has a 4GB maximum capacity and no moving parts, so it's obviously going to have a much larger battery life. The 30GB iPod has a 13-hour battery life and I don't know of a harddrive based MP3 with anything more than 14.

I use a SanDisk. Good capacity/size. Decent UI. Has radio AND voice recording. Registers as a disk drive when I connect it and then I can just drag and drop mp3s into it through explorer (don't have to rely on iTunes or Sony Connect or Media Player 10+ or other bullshit). Sound's good. Price is good. Screen is nice. Highly recommend it

It's got 8GB of memory, it's got a 1.8inch TFT (almost half the size of the Zune's), it can barely play videos and it costs $250! Bargain!

Personally, I'd go for something a lot simpler and hassle free myself -- that SanDisk player looks good for instance. You can also get a 2GB 65k screen MP4 player direct from Hong Kong, via eBay, for less than a new (screenless) 1GB iPod Shuffle too -- you get a digital FM receiver built-in as well, something no iPod or Zune can do out of the box.

That MP4 player looks cheap and terrible (forgive me if I'm wrong). A friend of mine bought one of these sort of things off eBay it was horrible. Aside from that, you do know that the Zune comes with an FM receiver built-in, out of the box?

Has Steve Jobs been messing with your brains again?

[ThunderPeel2001]

Sorry, just had to add the worst comment of all:

The Zune 1.0 player is pretty barren, too. It doesn't have a single standard iPod amenity: no games, alarm clock, stopwatch, world clock, password-protected volume limiter, equalizer, calendar, address book or notes module.

Oh my God! It doesn't have the least used and most pointless features of the iPod! What an oversight!

[Nappi]

The Samsung Z5F has a 4GB maximum capacity and no moving parts, so it's obviously going to have a much larger battery life. The 30GB iPod has a 13-hour battery life and I don't know of a harddrive based MP3 with anything more than 14.

I'm well aware of the technical differenses. The fact that there may not be many (Cowon iAudio X5L (30GB), for example, seems to have a rated battery life of 35 hours) harddrive mp3-players that have a better battery life than that of Zune's, doesn't change a thing: I still find the battery life of this player very unimpressive. In other words, I think that most of the hdd-based mp3-players have a very unimpressive battery life, Zune (and Ipod) included.

(and btw, Sandisk Sansa e280 (8GB) costs about $200 in most stores. Not a big deal but it's good to keep the facts right in facts-right-comments.)

[elmuerte]

no alarm? no world clock? no stop watch? no games?

wait... what was it again? oh.. a music player...

my music player is even better... it has an agenda, lots of games I can play and I can even phone people.

Although I don't have a lot of storage.. only 1GB... need to buy a 2GB miniSD some time.

[n0wak]

It's got 8GB of memory, it's got a 1.8inch TFT (almost half the size of the Zune's), it can barely play videos and it costs $250! Bargain!

It's more comparable to the iPod Nano than the iPod and Zune proper. 4GB Nano = $229.00 USD. 4GB Sansa == I bought for $170. CAD!

Bargain to me.

What? You want tons more space and really high quality video playback? AWESOME. Let's go to the Zune marketplace and buy some... oh wait, THERE ARE NONE. Want automatic podcast support? Can't have it.

Christ. Brainwashed?

There are a lot of brainwashed people out there then

http://db.tidbits.com/article/8751

http://www.medialoper.com/hot-topics/music/zunes-big-innovation-viral-drm/

http://db.tidbits.com/article/8750

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20061109.html

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2059039,00.asp

These guys are obviously such morons that don't know what they're talking about. Dvorak? Mossberg? Never heard of them.

To summarize:

you buy a Zune and put all your own LEGAL music on it -- Universal gets a portion of your money. AWESOME.

Microsoft points in the Zune Marketplace -- everyone loves those on XBox. AWESOME.

Wi-Fi enabled! Except not. Even you admit that the possible killer feature is useless. It's not useless because of the tech. It's useless because of the DRM BS. AWESOME.

Want to share your CC-licensed music with another Zune? Sure. Except for that fact that doing so ESSENTIALLY VIOLATES THE CC AGREEMENT. Awesome.

License agreements required for people to review the device? AWESOME

Doesn't play PlaysForSure despite Microsoft pushing it hard for years as an alternative to that evil closed system that Apple had going (which they now compied with Zune's DRM). AWESOME

Look, I'm sure that when it comes to actually playing music, functionally it is good. Quite good. But there are a lot of functionally good players out there that don't bury it under mounds of bullshit.

A friend can take his Zune over to your computer, set up a "guest" relationship with your Zune Marketplace software (as opposed to a regular owner relationship), and you're free to drag songs and pictures from your library onto her device. These songs do not have the 3 play 3 day limit on them. Depending on whether you purchased or you're leasing these songs, you can do this with either 5 or 2 Zunes, respectively.

Does that sound "DRM-fucked" to you?

Yes. They need to install the Zune software. There are restrictions on being a guest. There is a limit to the number of Zunes I can do this on. It does sound fucked to me.

My Sandisk. I can connect to ANY computer with a USB connection and drag and drop ANY mp3s into it without having to install anything.

AWESOME.

[Wrestlevania]

[You] do know that the Zune comes with an FM receiver built-in, out of the box?

Has Steve Jobs been messing with your brains again?

My bad -- the world stands on its axis once more...

Oh my God! It doesn't have the least used and most pointless features of the iPod! What an oversight!

You've missed the point I think. I know plenty of people who use a range of those "pointless" features on a daily basis, and for Zune to not include those - for no obvious reason - won't mean these people suddenly ditch their iPods and take up Microsoft's hardware instead.

[pilbeam]

I have a Creative Zen and I love it. It doesn't have Wifi, but I don't really want to 'trade' music. If I do, I'll be more than happy to use a USB cable and a computer. It also has those 'multi function' doo-dads that seem to be all the rage, like radio, microphone, video and photos. But to be honest, I just want it to hold all my music and play it back.

And who wants an mp3 player that's brown? Who thought that was a good idea?

[toblix]

Will someone please explain? As I understand it the Zune only adds DRM to music that it's WiFi'd. How does this really affect anyone? I personally think the WiFi thing of sending music is a complete waste of time, but how on earth does it make anything "DRM-fucked"?

I guess it's just an opinion of mine, and the term DRM-fucked is not an official one, but I think it describes well what happens when a product decides to apply copy protection to something without asking, without checking if applying the protection is in violation of other licenses. It's like they had this cool feature (wireless sharing of files between portable MP3 players), and then they... fucked it up the ass with DRM because, in the end they like being the lipstick-smeared whore of the RIAA or whomever.

About the brown, though, I thought maybe it'd be nice. I'm sort of liking the brown look of Ubuntu, but I haven't seen a real, brown Zune. Sounds to me people are thinking they ugly. But they come in other colors, right?

[Wrestlevania]

But they come in other colors, right?

• White
• Black