10-05-2006, 11:43 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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on10.net 16-Minute Zune Walkthrough
"Laura, Jesse and I headed over to Zune land to see what we could learn about this upcoming device. Since I'm a bit of a Zune enthusiast, Laura and Jesse ran camera and I handled asking the questions of Matt Jubelirer, the Zune team member who was there to show me the device (three devices, he had one of each color with him!). Matt takes us through a tour of the features and answers some questions that have been on our minds since we first started hearing about the Zune."
Watching the video (download the high-res version if you can, it's nice to watch), here are some points I gleaned:
- You can flag songs - it's a discovery tool. When you find content that you want to remember later, you can flag a song and it will be tagged as such when you look at your library in the Zune desktop software.
- The slideshow feature looks completely identical to the Portable Media Center version. Hopefully the performance improved - I was using my Gigabeat S the other day, showing a friend some standard photos (320 x 240) and was appalled when the player threw up the "waiting" icon. For a 30 KB file? Come on, that's just lame.
- The Zune was designed for landscape functionality: the circular intendation on the back matches up with the directional pad on the front, giving your fingers on the back a natural place to rest to line up with your thumb on the front.
- Just like the PMC, the navigation buttons change in landscape to be logical - when you're in landscape mode the left/right buttons become the next/previous buttons. I couldn't tell if the image zoom feature from PMC 2.0 has been retained or dropped from the Zune.
- Personalization is important to the Zune team. The Zune will crop and scale images to make it the wallpaper for the device. I get the feeling this is totally automated, which means it will likely be hit or miss in terms of how well it will work with all images.
- They talked a bit about the screen quality - it's so hard to judge the quality until I can see it in person, but based on the videos and photos I've seen, it looks very crisp and high-contrast. I hope it's better than the screen on the Gigabeat S - it doesn't have a bad screen, but when compared to my Zen Vision:M, it's noticeably more pale and lacks "punch".
- The headphones are the antenna for the radio (no surprise there), just like the Gigabeat S
- RBDS (USA), RDS (Europe) is the protocol that displays the name of the song you're listening to on the radio, the genre of the radio station, etc. I have this on my car, and while it works really well, only one radio station in my local market supports that feature - thus making it effectively useless. I'd be interested in knowing how many radio stations across the USA support RBDS.
- The community feature on the Zune will display what you're doing on your Zune. I wonder about privacy features? What if you're viewing a video/photo/song and you wouldn't want others to see the name of that file? (hey, it's bound to happen people) [later in the video: by default on the Zune, wireless is turned on, but the enhanced sharing notification is turned off and will only show basic details].
- The WiFi range was specified as being designed to work with other devices in the same room. They said they tested to ranges of 20 to 40 metres (60 to 120 feet).
- There's an Inbox inside the community section on the Zune, which is a cool way to keep track of songs and photos that you've been sent. Great feature - I was wondering how hard it would be to track down a song you'd been sent if you had 30 GB of music on there already.
- Is WiFi based data encrypted? Jubelirer responded that he wasn't sure about the technical details, but that the team was focused on security to make sure data flowing back and forth was protected. It should be a rule that there's a hardcore developer in the room when a marketing guy is giving a demo. ;-)
- Video cannot be shared over the Zune, only photos and songs. This disappoints some people, including myself. Jubelirer explained that they didn't view this as a core scenario due to the large file size of most videos. Here's what I think: they realized that when two Zune owners send a large 700 MB video file from one device to another, and it chews up a good portion of the battery life, it would give a negative impression of the Zune's battery life. Forget that the customer is being unfair by thinking a huge video file transfer wouldn't have a big hit on the battery life - perception matters, as does word of mouth marketing. Sometimes it's easier to drop a feature that sets up your product in a bad light and take the heat from the customers who wanted the feature. Jubelirer said that the team is open to adding this feature in the future. My thoughts? We're living in the YouTube era, and if the Zune is all about social sharing of content, not allowing video to be shared is a mistake. More from me on this later.
- Using WiFi on the device to connect to the Internet: Jubelirer said that entering in WEP keys on a device with no keyboard would be painful, and I agree completely, though it's not something you'd need to to very often. He also said that browsing through millions of pieces of content on the device would be a negative experience. I'm not sure I agree - there's got to be a clever way to accomplish that, especially when you think of people with 80 GB iPods that have 20,000 songs on them. Navigation can be solved. I think the real reason is that Microsoft didn't have the time/resources to create a slick on-device experience for the Zune Marketplace.
- PC sync is something they're "looking into". I think this is a huge failure and something that should have been built into the product. All the other scenarios are "would have been nice", but having a WiFi-enabled device that can't sync do your desktop PC is like....having a current Windows Mobile 5 device where they broke that scenario as well. Ok, nevermind, Microsoft has a bad track record here. ;-)
- They talked about the ability to update the device with new firmware. People seem to talk about this like it's an amazingly cool feature, but with the WiFi being only peer to peer, unless there's some hidden awesomeness where one Zune has the ability to upgrade another Zune via peer to peer patching, this updating is no different than Creative releasing a new firmware update for my Zen Vision:M. Granted, there's certainly room for Microsoft to make the process easier and automatic, but it's not revolutionary.
Gear Live also has a Zune video - it's a bit "freestyle" (read: chaotic), but worth checking out if the above 16-minute video didn't satisfy your Zune hunger.
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10-06-2006, 12:55 AM
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Sage
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 797
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I don't know if the demo guy lied or if he's an idiot.
He said something to the effect of "You really get the full effect of the 3" screen and you can see all the artists" blah blah blah.
Ummmm... Making the screen bigger didn't improve the resolution over, say, an iPod, so in reality, the 3" screen makes no difference whatsoever. When playing music, 2/3 of the screen is taken up by a covershot of the album. Do we really need a 3" screen at 240 x 320 for that?
God, so many weird decisions on this thing...
Anyway, this is still the question they aren't answering that I NEED answered:
Is WiFi based data encrypted? Jubelirer responded that he wasn't sure about the technical details, but that the team was focused on security to make sure data flowing back and forth was protected. It should be a rule that there's a hardcore developer in the room when a marketing guy is giving a demo. ;-)
Yes or no, folks. It really isn't that complicated.
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10-06-2006, 06:23 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vincent M Ferrari
He said something to the effect of "You really get the full effect of the 3" screen and you can see all the artists" blah blah blah. Ummmm... Making the screen bigger didn't improve the resolution over, say, an iPod, so in reality, the 3" screen makes no difference whatsoever. When playing music, 2/3 of the screen is taken up by a covershot of the album. Do we really need a 3" screen at 240 x 320 for that?
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I have to disagree with you here. The Zune screen looks much bigger than the iPod, and even if it's the same resolution, that extra half an inch, when combined with the different aspect ratio, makes for a much bigger "screen experience".
This picture especially shows how big the album art appears:
http://www.hollywoodreviews.com/jake/zune_album_art.jpg
As for your "do we really need" comment about the album art, that sounds like someone who's jealous and wishing his iPod did that. 
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10-06-2006, 06:44 PM
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Sage
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 797
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Oh come on. I'm one of the first members of the YBIC crowd ;-) "Nobody really needs x" would ever even remotely come out of my mouth... Maybe I should clarify.
I meant is it really worth touting the extra 80 pixels in height as some great interface enhancement when all you get out of it is a bigger chunk of album art? I mean, when you think about it, I could crow about the extra 80 pixels in width if I really wanted to.
It's just silly. I hate when marketing droids try to "sell" technology.
I can't wait to hear how great the brown model looks. 
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10-12-2006, 03:09 AM
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Developer & Designer, News Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 12,959
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Vincent M Ferrari
I meant is it really worth touting the extra 80 pixels in height as some great interface enhancement when all you get out of it is a bigger chunk of album art? I mean, when you think about it, I could crow about the extra 80 pixels in width if I really wanted to.
It's just silly. I hate when marketing droids try to "sell" technology.
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That's how marketing works. You know that. 
On the topic of album art, it may sound trivial, but I really do prefer my album art as big as possible. The Zune's UI has done a good job with it, whereas the iPod's still leaves a lot of white space around the sides. Not only do I want my tunes sounding good, I want them to look good too.
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10-12-2006, 03:28 AM
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Sage
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 797
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Call me a stodgy old crank, I guess. My first MP3 player was a Diamond Rio 500. No album art.
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned that way. Not that I don't like it, but I don't really care about it one way or the other :-)
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10-06-2006, 12:59 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 130
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Hi Jason,
hey you don't sound to exited about the device, I'm very curious about it, curently I use an Ipod just because my Alpine receiver in my car is ready for it. I was going to buy a gigabeat s to sync my recorded shows in my media center pc, can I do it with the Zune too?
PS. I like that I did have to register for this site, since I already register a pocketpcthoughts.
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10-06-2006, 05:53 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fgarcia10
hey you don't sound to exited about the device
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Well, I am excited about the Zune, but my excitement has been tempered because I've learned about all the limitations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fgarcia10
I was going to buy a gigabeat s to sync my recorded shows in my media center pc, can I do it with the Zune too?
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No, sadly the Zune desktop software cannot transcode DVR-MS files - which is totally baffling to me. So for that particular need, the Zune won't work for you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fgarcia10
PS. I like that I did have to register for this site, since I already register a pocketpcthoughts.
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You LIKED that? Eventually all our forums will be merged here, so the idea is that you'll have one login for all the sites.
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