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Quote:
Originally Posted by Damion Chaplin
The Zune software still has to encode it though, right? It would be nice to drag-and-drop that ripped DVD or recorded TV show with no reencoding.
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In an ideal world, yes. But I think we're still many years away from being able to do that. The reasons why:
1) Storage: a one hour TV show in DVR-MS format is about 2.5 GB (it varies depending on the quality level you set). With a 30 GB drive, there's not room for much video in addition to your music collection. Transcoding saves a lot of space.
2) Decoding a 720 x 480 resolution source file takes more effort than 320 x 240. That's 4.5x more pixels. More CPU work means a faster CPU is needed, which means higher cost, and lesser battery life.
3) The screen can't display 720 x 480 anyway, so you've got all those extra pixels going to waste, and instead you're relying on the Zune software to scale it down to 320 x 240 without it looking crappy.
I so BADLY want to have the Zune play without without any transcoding - trust me, I feel your pain - but I think if they were to do that right now it would probably cause more problems than help. 
Here's the thing though...I've seen the Zune desktop software resize my photos in preparation for synching without my Zune being connected. So clearly there's SOME sort of "offline sync prep". If the Zune transcoded your video in advance, it wouldn't be such a big deal, right? I know Media Center does this to some extent, but it's kind of a broken feature.
The SAD part about this is that if you were to ask a Zune spokesperson why this is all so screwed up, he'd likely say that the Zune team was "focusing on music first and foremost". So why did we get a 30 GB hard drive and a big screen then? The hardware is designed for video...
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