Two Bits of Bad Information About the New Zunes

[Jason Dunn]

After the Zune was officially announced last month, I peppered my Zune contacts with questions that came up from Zune Thoughts readers in our forums, and things I was curious about. Most of it has been covered in my previous posts, but there are two points that I think are worth mentioning.

The first is gapless audio playback. This is an important feature to anyone that listens to electronica music that's mixed to blend together as a single song, or anyone that listens to live albums where the whole album is meant to be a seamless live concert experience. Both are types of albums/music that are generally listened by the more hard-core music lovers among the population. You know, the people that the Zune is aimed at? Sadly, the new Zune still will not support gapless audio playback. It seems like a fairly small feature, and certainly one that should be standard on any audio player aimed at music lovers. Lossless WMA audio support has been added, so that's great news for you audiophiles using WMA lossless, but gapless audio playback is something I think everyone would have appreciated.

The worse news, however, is the reality about the new Media Center TV show synchronization: if you look at the bottom of the Zune description page, you'll see this:

“Requires a PC running Windows Vista® Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate and an integrated or external TV tuner.”

Windows Vista only? No Windows Media Center 2005 supported? I asked my contact on the Zune team about this, and he confirmed that it's Vista-only. The Zune desktop software works on Windows XP, so why wouldn't the Media Center transcoding of DVR-MS files work just as well? Surely the software is the same, with the same transcoding engine. Vista as an operating system still has it's share of glitches, and I can't blame anyone for sticking with XP at this point - so why give Zune owners a lesser experience? I've had so many problems with my Vista-based media center machine I've pondered rolling back to Windows Media Center 2005 because it was a better overall experience.

[Jason Dunn]

After the Zune was officially announced last month, I peppered my Zune contacts with questions that came up from Zune Thoughts readers in our forums, and things I was curious about. Most of it has been covered in my previous posts, but there are two points that I think are worth mentioning.

The first is gapless audio playback. This is an important feature to anyone that listens to electronica music that's mixed to blend together as a single song, or anyone that listens to live albums where the whole album is meant to be a seamless live concert experience. Both are types of albums/music that are generally listened by the more hard-core music lovers among the population. You know, the people that the Zune is aimed at? Sadly, the new Zune still will not support gapless audio playback. It seems like a fairly small feature, and certainly one that should be standard on any audio player aimed at music lovers. Lossless WMA audio support has been added, so that's great news for you audiophiles using WMA lossless, but gapless audio playback is something I think everyone would have appreciated.

The worse news, however, is the reality about the new Media Center TV show synchronization: if you look at the bottom of the Zune description page, you'll see this:

“Requires a PC running Windows Vista® Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate and an integrated or external TV tuner.”

Windows Vista only? No Windows Media Center 2005 supported? I asked my contact on the Zune team about this, and he confirmed that it's Vista-only. The Zune desktop software works on Windows XP, so why wouldn't the Media Center transcoding of DVR-MS files work just as well? Surely the software is the same, with the same transcoding engine. Vista as an operating system still has it's share of glitches, and I can't blame anyone for sticking with XP at this point - so why give Zune owners a lesser experience? I've had so many problems with my Vista-based media center machine I've pondered rolling back to Windows Media Center 2005 because it was a better overall experience.

[ale_ers]

I was afraid of that. Everything I read pointed that way.

Now the next question is will the programs like ZuneTVWathcer still work. I'm sure they will have to do an update, but I hope there is still a demand to update it. I hope the developer doesn't just say...get vista.

[Adam Krebs]

Can you copy a MCE 2005 dvr-ms file to a Vista machine and sync from there? I wonder if it's some dependency in the OS, though more likely Microsoft's just trying to get us to upgrade...

[Sven]

Originally Posted by Adam Krebs

though more likely Microsoft's just trying to get us to upgrade...

Yea, that's what it is. I'm sure the marketing guys said, 'if we withhold TV sync on the Zune for XP, we can trick a couple more into upgrading.'

I like conspiracies as much as the next guy, but XP is done, and the programming talent at MS is on Vista now. That just means they aren't expending any energy making sure new stuff works with Vista, or aggressively testing if it happens to. This is new stuff. like it or not, it costs resources to support the older OS. For this, the incentive isn't there. Trust me, I have four Media Centers, and the two that are used that way are XP. I have Vista machines with tuners, because they came that way (Dell outlet ) but MCE isn't their primary function. Maybe that needs to change. Maybe the true MCE boxes need upgrading. Ohh, maybe they have tricked me.

[Darius Wey]

Originally Posted by Jason Dunn

Sadly, the new Zune still will not support gapless audio playback. It seems like a fairly small feature, and certainly one that should be standard on any audio player aimed at music lovers. Lossless WMA audio support has been added, so that's great news for you audiophiles using WMA lossless, but gapless audio playback is something I think everyone would have appreciated.

*sighs*

So incredibly disappointed by this. The question is how long before we see gapless playback implemented? A year? Two years? I appreciate that Microsoft is really pushing the whole social aspect of music, but they do need to focus on core playback functionality as well.

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by Adam Krebs

Can you copy a MCE 2005 dvr-ms file to a Vista machine and sync from there? I wonder if it's some dependency in the OS, though more likely Microsoft's just trying to get us to upgrade...

No clue. I don't have an MCE 2005 machine any more. I doubt it's a change in the file types...

[onlydarksets]

Originally Posted by Adam Krebs

Can you copy a MCE 2005 dvr-ms file to a Vista machine and sync from there? I wonder if it's some dependency in the OS, though more likely Microsoft's just trying to get us to upgrade...

Yes, assuming the DVR-MS is not DRM'd. In that case, of course, it won't play on any machine except the one it was recorded on.*


*Unless the DRM license allows for syncing to a portable device.