10-31-2007, 10:25 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Higher-Resolution Zune Album Art Explained
Cesar posted an explanation over at Zune Insider about the sudden appearance of higher-resolution album art:
"A few folks have noticed that the album art on Zune Marketplace looks better, both on the PC and on your Zune. It's true. Last Tuesday, we started featuring 800x800 album available for download, and for sync with the Zune device. In addition, ripped CDs will have 240x240 art available where available, and this should also be synced to the device."
So there you have it: 800 x 800 album art, but only for songs purchased via the Zune Marketplace. That's great news for some people, but it sure leaves people who rip their own CDs out in the cold. It's also worth noting that the current Zune Desktop software can't display album art in a large view like Windows Media Player 11 can - so I'm assuming that the new Zune desktop software will allow the user to see big album art. Windows Media Player can't scale down album art that's bigger than the user window, which is why I've always kept my album art at 600 x 600 - I found that larger sizes required me to have the Windows Media Player window being just a bit too big. I'm hoping that the new Zune desktop software that comes with the v2 Zune devices will scale down big album art to fit in the window.
Will the new Zune software extract high-resolution embedded album art and save it externally at 240 x 240 like the current software does, or will it extract the album art and keep it at it's original resolution? I'm also curious about how well the Zune itself will scale the album art on the device - will it finally read embedded album art? Will it scale the 800 x 800 resolution image to the screen, or will it look bad like 640 x 480 images do today on the Zune?
Yes, I'm a huge album art geek and I'm curious to see how they've improved the situation...
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