Impressive. Zune firmware is actually truely buggy. Microsofts billions cant nail it?

[iforget]

Zune 30

Upgraded to 3.0
While playing songs, the bar would stay at 0:00 while the music played

Reinstalled Windows XP - clean install
Installed Zune software
Completely erased, formatted, reset, restored Zune

Upgraded to 3.1
Loaded 100-200 songs and videos
Play a song. Turn off Zune. Turn it on. Select new song. Select play with center button. Zune freezes, requiring a simple reset.
Also, will sometimes display locked icon when switch it unlocked. [Happens with iPods every once in a while, I know!]

"It's your OS!"
NO. Reinstalled XP and only installed FireFox and Zune software.
"You're doing it wrong!"
NO. Simple MP3s, simple WMVs, nothing complicated, no 1337 hax, nothing crazy, nothing unofficial.

MICROSOFT DID A POOR JOB WITH CERTAIN AREAS OF THE 3.X FIRMWARE! Step up your game! Trying to grab sales from Apple? Do a better job, coders! Don't approve crap, managers! I didn't have any extraordinary setup that would be hard to beta test, did I?!?

Just kind of disappointing.

PS: To comfort MS <3s... Backwards compatibility is epic win.
Laying in bed, previewing 30 seconds of every track on the Dark Knight soundtrack through my router with WiFi upstairs... AWESOME.

PPS: I know web browsing, typing URLs and all wouldn't be fun on the Zune. But each one has a wifi chip. Glad to see it's getting some use. Maybe someday even moreso with YouTube-ability? :)

[Jason Dunn]

I can imagine how frustrated I'd be in your situation, but are you sure it's not your MP3 files? If the firmware update was as buggy as you say, we'd have heard of more problems by now - which makes me wonder if it's your content (since content playback is what the problem is here). Try buying a single MP3 track from Amazon.com and see how that works...I'm interested to know. If that doesn't work, I suspect it might be a hardware problem.

[iforget]

Try buying a single MP3 track from Amazon.com and see how that works...I'm interested to know. If that doesn't work, I suspect it might be a hardware problem.

Sorry, I don't buy music online at the moment.

AHA! This person had the same problem with their NEW gen Zune and recorded it!

YouTube - bug Zune 3.0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF6stlKKdZA)

2 different commenters:
I have the same problem bro, I turned in my zune at best buy and got me another....
What is going on with zune with all these damn bugs!

i think everyone has that problem. if you fast forward a little the track bar will start working on that song

I think Microsoft fixed that bug. But now there's even more!
Just now, I was "next-ing" though songs, and I got to one and it would progress visually along the track bar. But I couldn't here anything. I tried a different song and it stayed at 0:00 this time, again with no sound. Had to reset.

WOW!
I was about to post "here's another bug I never had but I think was resolved in 3.1", and a link to this:
YouTube - Microsoft Zune 3.0 Next Track Bug (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAnj9lXB1Po)
So since I had never had the problem I figured I would just check it out, see if it actually happened.
3.1 ZUNE 30 - FROZE!!! Had to reset!

Want to play count the bugs on this page?

0 - 0:00 track bar while playing music [MAYBE RESOLVED?] - Multiple people including me [3.0]
1 - Hold switch off while Zune holds anyways - Me [3.1]
2 - Next Track Bug - Many people including me [3.x]
3 - Random freeze type 1 - Me [3.0]
4 - Random freeze type 2 - Me [3.1]


And don't even get me started on the desktop software. JOKE. Only good thing it's ever done is keep some videos removed from my computer and find album art and it recently even screwed that up with newly added tracks.
It will go from 100% to "syncing..." to 100% and back over and over again.
It will sync doubles of my music, too. So scrolling I'll see.
Song A
Song B
Song B
Song B
Song C
Song C
Song D
Song E
Song E
Song E

Yeah, pretty bad.

I'm not trying to gripe, I just seriously seriously hope that somebody at Microsoft is reading these forums.
Or, Jason Dunn, can you email my posts into their Zune team?

---

3.1 CONFIRMED BUG STILL UNFIXED

The stalled track bar is STILL an issue in 3.1 on the Zune 30 series

I feel like making a video so you guys know I'm not lying just for kicks!
[Sorry for double posting, there's a mod approval thing apparently...]

---

Sorry for the triple post, please combine mods if possible. I would love to do it myself if I could.

Do you know why it would randomly play a track sped up? It just did that a couple of times, sounds like the chipmunks as they would say on YouTube.

[David Tucker]

Do you rip your tracks from CD then? It really sounds like an issue with the files themselves. What's the bitrate the mp3s are encoded at?

[Jason Dunn]

Sorry, I don't buy music online at the moment.

Well then I guess you're not interested in getting to the bottom of this problem then, are you? When you're trouble shooting a problem like this you have to look at both the player and what it's playing. If the Zune had this problem with all music, the complaints would be more wide-spread. So it's likely that there's a certain type of content that it has trouble with, and the results are what you're seeing.

MP3s are more complex than you think - they involve a lot of header data that, if corrupted or just incorrectly formatted, can cause a huge amount of problems for some players - yet other players are more forgiving and might not have issues with it. As an example, it's incredibly easy to screw up an MP3 file by embedded album art that's too big - some people embed huge 2000 x 2000 pixel album art into the file, and when some players try to read that big embedded JPEG, they have trouble.

If you're not willing to spend 89 cents to try and trouble-shoot this, how about re-ripping a CD using the Zune software and seeing if those tracks have trouble? You simply cannot assume that your media isn't contributing to this problem.

[Jason Dunn]

I'm not trying to gripe, I just seriously seriously hope that somebody at Microsoft is reading these forums.

That would be nice, but they have their own forums and their own blog, so I'm not sure they're reading here. I suggest you go post on the Zune Insider blog, and over in the Zune.net forums.

[Pony99CA]

Sorry, I don't buy music online at the moment.
Yeah, that $0.89 might break the budget. ;) However, did you know that Amazon offers free music (http://www.amazon.com/b/?&node=334897011&pf_rd_p=456026201&pf_rd_s=right-3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=678551011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0Q06SRNN9NWKEZCZM4PT) regularly (at least on the weekends; I haven't checked during the week).

Download some of those and try them.

Steve

[iforget]

I grabbed the 9 top freebies, thanks! Never knew that existed. The "The Apples In Stereo - Energy" isn't too bad!

If the rest are good I'll put them on my Zune.
1 - Reinstalled XP again [not just for Zune! :)]
2 - Reinstalled the Zune software
3 - Will reset my Zune [later]
4 - Will check for updates
5 - Will resync and check for problems

Hoping for none [problems]!

Anyways, the 16GB iPod Touch doesn't look too shabby at the moment... We'll see about a price drop and pink Zune resale value :)

[Jason Dunn]

I grabbed the 9 top freebies, thanks! Never knew that existed. The "The Apples In Stereo - Energy" isn't too bad!

Let us know how your tests turn out...

[iforget]

First, I have a confession. Somehow I DIDN'T upgrade to 3.1, at least on the Zune firmware side of things. I don't know how I didn't, because at the time I formatted my Zune, 3.1 was already out. But upon checking my About screen I saw 3.0.

So replace 3.1 above this post with 3.0. Sorry!

[iforget]

AWESOME!

After actually upgrading to 3.1, all seems to work. More games! Tested wireless sync - to add 2 songs it took almost a minute I think for just a couple MB but oh well.

I'm happy for now :)

Thanks for the comments! And props to Microsoft for actually fixing stuff in 3.1 :D

*goes to find out what channels are*

[Jason Dunn]

After actually upgrading to 3.1, all seems to work. More games!

Did you get a chance to try those Amazon songs on your 3.0 device, or only after you updated to 3.1? And does that mean that all the content you were having trouble with is now playing fine with 3.1?

[iforget]

The problems weren't with any specific songs - like that track bar 0:00 bug happened with everything I had.

Anyways, 3.1 is perfect as of now! Nothing has gone wrong so far.

I found another Zune 30 owner today. She had 3.0 and tried to send me a song from 1 foot away and it failed! And she told me that she had to update it when she synced last night. See, I had to update a while back too, when I had 3.0, which is what made me think I was getting 3.1. I guess it needs to... well, I have no idea what happened.
Anyways, if she upgrades to 3.1 tonight then tomorrow I will retry sending/receiving.

Wireless syncing, previewing, etc. all work fine!
No song bugs, no resets needed yet except for when I launched a game and tried to get out immediately and didn't have time to see if it would work out.

3.1 - GOOD JOB MICROSOFT! Don't rush the original [3.0] next time though ;)

[Jason Dunn]

The problems weren't with any specific songs - like that track bar 0:00 bug happened with everything I had.

You can't say that for sure because you didn't try the Amazon tracks with your 3.0-based Zune, right? That's why I was asking that you try them before you upgrade to 3.1. Now you don't know whether it was the 3.0 Zune having a problem with your content that I've never heard of before, or the 3.1 Zune is now simply able to deal with whatever problems your content has.

At any rate, I'm glad you're happy with your Zune!

[iforget]

You can't say that for sure because you didn't try the Amazon tracks with your 3.0-based Zune, right? That's why I was asking that you try them before you upgrade to 3.1. Now you don't know whether it was the 3.0 Zune having a problem with your content that I've never heard of before, or the 3.1 Zune is now simply able to deal with whatever problems your content has.

At any rate, I'm glad you're happy with your Zune!

Ahh, sorry. At least you know that 3.0 had a track bug with many different types of MP3s as evidenced by the YouTube video. Whether it happened with specific encode types or with all encodes doesn't matter too much now because it's fixed. But I agree, would be nice to know.
Isn't worth downgrading for me though, don't mind that much! :D