New Zune HD Details...

ashmelev75 said:
It is the exact reason.
I tried to use my real headphones with 2+ meter cable and comparing to original earbuds Zune managed to pick a lot of extra radio stations, including few HD ones. With earbuds I'm lucky if it picks 3 main stations in my area.
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Strange, I used different earbuds and always seemed to get a lot of radio stations on my old Zune.

But I never tried it in the car, well because my car has a radio :p

I will be interested to see if the HD Radio works, because my Mazda didn't come with an Aux port by default, so I actually bought a little adapter that sticks on the back of the radio then has a 3-ft cord to go to any 3.5mm jack. So if it needs that wire as an antenna, my setup might just work.
 
Wendig0 said:
newegg.com has em :D
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Well I was actually looking for one that didn't charge me tax. I have check all over the place and everyone that will not charge me tax either does not have it, or is not in stock. I live near the boarder of VA where the sales tax is cheaper and the walmart and bestbuy there are out of stock of the 32gb model. The only store locally that has the 32gb in stock is best buy. I guess I will have to eat the $28 in tax. Oh it hurts badly :(.
 
I am enjoying mine. I heard a lot of complaining about the browser, but I don't think it is that bad at all. Yeah it has no flash support, but I think Microsoft was rushing to get this thing out soon to compete with the new itouch lineup. I am predicting they will increase the browser speed and add flash later on. They said a few months back before launch that they will still working on the browser flash support. I am guessing they didn't have time to implement that before it went retail.
 
TheSandman2236 said:
I'm returning mine...getting a 32GB or 64GB iPod Touch. :/ I have a good number of gripes with this thing.
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As someone who did the same thing, I understand your decision completely. Let me guess? The browser, apps, volume rocker, getting around the device?

I've been lambasted all over the internet for being an Apple fanboy by going w/ the touch over the Zune, so it would be nice to have a little backup. :p
 
If you don't like something then you don't like it; like anything else it is not perfect. I do think that it was pretty obvious that the HD is primarily a PMP focused of music. In that regaurd it is simply the best system ever.
 
I've had the Zune HD since Tuesday so I feel I can comment on my likes and dislikes thus far. A caveat here, I have never picked up an ipod touch until today so I can't directly compare it to the competition and this is my first experience with the Zune software and marketplace. Previous mp3 player experience is limited to the Sansa Clip (big jump :))

I was surprised to see that there is no hardware volume control, or rocker as its been referred to. One button whose only function is to bring up software volume and track next/back controls is a bit odd.

The menu UI took a bit to learn but after a few days I can navigate it pretty easily. In most menu's you can navigate to the previous menu by tapping on a little sliver of the previous menu that resides at the top of the screen. When you do not have that option the only way to go back is to click the button located on the face of the Zune. The exception is viewing images where the back button is hidden until you tap in the upper left corner. There may be others that I am missing.

What is strange is that you can tag a song with a heart to signify it as something you like, however, for the life of me I can't retrieve the songs I favor, in either the Zune HD or the Zune software. What is the purpose then?

We all know the browser is lacking so I'll skip that. But to the people that dislike it, come on, its a MP3 player first so it's no biggie IMO.

The Zune Software:

I gotta say, for the most part, I love it. I signed up the 14 day ZunePass trial, and I've been downloading tons of music to add to my Zune. It works pretty good out of the box, of course, there are exceptions.

1. I am having trouble syncing channels to the Zune. It says sync complete, but when I look at the channel from within the zune it is incomplete. Hooking the sync cable back up and syncing sometimes results in a few more songs added. It may be that the only reliable way to sync the zune's channels is to do the wireless sync, but I am not sure of that.
2. When I download audio from the marketplace from within the Zune, later on when I sync to the PC the Zune software deleted the content from the Zune. I need to test this again, but last time I downloaded from the marketplace I ended up getting a few albums deleted.
3. The add to cart/download setup is sort of cumbersome. When I am browsing the marketplace and click the "add" button, it should start downloading it immediately. Instead, one must go into the cart and manually set it to download. Don't see the point of this.
4. The music genre's are inconsistent. For instance, when I download Jay Z's new album, the Blueprint 3, the genre is "Hip-Hop". When I download Eminem, the genre is "Hip Hop", no hyphen. From the Zune, I wish to be able to just click on Hip Hop and listen to all albums of that genre. Now, I get multiple genre's when in reality they should be under one type.

There is more but it is getting late.
 
Jodiuh said:
As someone who did the same thing, I understand your decision completely. Let me guess? The browser, apps, volume rocker, getting around the device?

I've been lambasted all over the internet for being an Apple fanboy by going w/ the touch over the Zune, so it would be nice to have a little backup. :p
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It comes down to what you want out of the device... It looks fine as a strict media player imo, tho the lack of a volume rocker would still bother me (I guess you could always use an in-line volume adjuster, ick)... But the iPod touch still outclasses it overall even w/an inferior screen and Apple's draconian grip over it, again imo. Time will tell if MS can get on the ball and release enough apps/updates to make a race out of it, but I'm less excited about it now than I was before the launch... No SDK and, seemingly, no plans for it either since they've alluded to the fact that they're developing all apps in-house.
 
riot8ap said:
3. The add to cart/download setup is sort of cumbersome. When I am browsing the marketplace and click the "add" button, it should start downloading it immediately. Instead, one must go into the cart and manually set it to download. Don't see the point of this.
4. The music genre's are inconsistent. For instance, when I download Jay Z's new album, the Blueprint 3, the genre is "Hip-Hop". When I download Eminem, the genre is "Hip Hop", no hyphen. From the Zune, I wish to be able to just click on Hip Hop and listen to all albums of that genre. Now, I get multiple genre's when in reality they should be under one type.

There is more but it is getting late.
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In my experience, #4 is gonna happen no matter where you get your music from, heh... I've shopped at Amazon, iTunes, and Zune... And I've got a 150 CD collection ripped to FLAC, even the database that EAC uses to tag songs is wildly inconsistent about the genre tags... There's no getting around it unless you wanna manually edit them.

I can see a few reasons for #3 tho... I don't pay for a ZunePass so I like to make sure that the songs I'm buying are MP3s and not DRM-shackled tracks... Sometimes the distinction is hard to make when you're looking at albums in the marketplace, but it's very very clear when you hit check out and you're at that last dialog window before paying. I've noticed the Zune marketplace still has a lot of albums that are only available w/DRM or are only sold as a whole album (can't buy individual tracks)...

Pretty unfortunate for me since Amazon won't sell me anything while I'm in Puerto Rico and I've been avoiding iTunes because some of my older players don't play AAC files. I don't even remember how iTunes handles that process anymore, Amazon wasn't any more seamless tho (OTOH everything there is strictly 100% DRM-free MP3).

'Till Amazon stars working in PR I'll probably keep buying a good chunk of my music from the Zune marketplace even tho I don't pay for a ZunePass and I own an iPod touch, heh.
 
heatlesssun said:
I do think that it was pretty obvious that the HD is primarily a PMP focused of music. In that regaurd it is simply the best system ever.
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W/ the exceptions of Cowon's S9 and Sony's X1060 of course. Personally, I would love to check out the S9. FLAC, 55 hours playtime, and top notch SQ. :D

Impulse said:
Apple's draconian grip over it...
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I just lost 2 hours tagging my files so the compilation/various artist albums would not take over my iPod. I hate you iTunes + iPod.
 
riot8ap said:
3. The add to cart/download setup is sort of cumbersome. When I am browsing the marketplace and click the "add" button, it should start downloading it immediately. Instead, one must go into the cart and manually set it to download. Don't see the point of this.
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Is this on the device or on the computer? On the computer there's a button right next to the album art that says Download and that downloads the whole album. If it's on the device, sorry for misunderstanding. :)
 
General Crespin said:
Is this on the device or on the computer? On the computer there's a button right next to the album art that says Download and that downloads the whole album. If it's on the device, sorry for misunderstanding. :)
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On the device itself. The poster above us had a good point that the cart is probably setup that way to take into account the no-nzunepass holders. Still, I'd like to see that the device would acknowledge it is hooked up to zunepass and bypass the cart for free transactions.
 
Vinnard said:
really? like what?
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Have you ever tried to search for a song on the Zune HD before? I have 3000+ songs on it. There is NO search feature (unlike the iPod Series) on the Zune. Plus, I can't auto fill my Zune with songs using capacity.. (Fill randomly with songs, up to say 20GB's)

Jodiuh said:
As someone who did the same thing, I understand your decision completely. Let me guess? The browser, apps, volume rocker, getting around the device?

I've been lambasted all over the internet for being an Apple fanboy by going w/ the touch over the Zune, so it would be nice to have a little backup. :p
Click to expand...

See top post :) Believe me, I loved the Zune for SOOOOO many reasons. In fact, if they fix some of the must have features for me, I will for sure switch back. Though it seems to me I need a more solid platform. More apps...searchable index etc.
 
Just a quick question... any improvements to audiobook support, or the lack of it???

I have an older 30GB zune and my wife has a 8 GB model and audiobooks are a necessity for our commutes to work... which has been nothing but a headache. Do you still have to use the Audible or Overdrive software to import them? What about support for audiobooks not from Audible/Overdrive? MP3 format? M4B?

Honestly, since getting an iPhone I haven't used my Zune for much of anything. Considering iTunes picks up all my MP3 and M4B audiobooks I've collected over the years (my wife used to get audiobooks on CD and I ripped the ones that interested me to MP3 tracks) my Zune gets very little love. I prefer the Zune software for audio management, but this is one area that they have really dropped the ball, IMO, and they don't seem to have any desire to fix it...
 
TheSandman2236 said:
Have you ever tried to search for a song on the Zune HD before? I have 3000+ songs on it. There is NO search feature (unlike the iPod Series) on the Zune. Plus, I can't auto fill my Zune with songs using capacity.. (Fill randomly with songs, up to say 20GB's)

See top post :) Believe me, I loved the Zune for SOOOOO many reasons. In fact, if they fix some of the must have features for me, I will for sure switch back. Though it seems to me I need a more solid platform. More apps...searchable index etc.
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True but I have 6000 songs on my Zune 80 and just put about 2000 songs on my Zune HD 32 GB and even on the Zune 80GB finding stuff isn't horrific if not easy. The HD does have a much quicker way to at least find things the previous gen Zunes. On thing though that the Zune DOES search is the Marketplace and with a Zune Pass that is VERY COOL! Now yes its a bit lame to not have a local search but man that marketplace feature is extremely nice and makes it easy to dial up tunes on demand and find stuff you've never heard. Its so cool on its own that it partially makes up for missing the local search
 
Have you ever tried to search for a song on the Zune HD before? I have 3000+ songs on it. There is NO search feature (unlike the iPod Series) on the Zune.
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This is solved by having decent metadata tags. I had 112GB of MP3s on both an iPod Classic and a Zune 120 and was able to find the song I was looking for in seconds navigating Genre -> Artist -> Album (or directly to song if you don't have many albums by that artist). I've got a 30GB Zune filled with a wide selection of stuff (8560 songs) that I navigate the same way.
 
Arainach said:
This is solved by having decent metadata tags. I had 112GB of MP3s on both an iPod Classic and a Zune 120 and was able to find the song I was looking for in seconds navigating Genre -> Artist -> Album (or directly to song if you don't have many albums by that artist). I've got a 30GB Zune filled with a wide selection of stuff (8560 songs) that I navigate the same way.
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I totally agree. As said earlier its really easy to find stuff. That letter thing is very slick actually. This whole interface is just slick as hell. It's not very intuitive but when you figure it out it just amazing how neat it is.
 
Arainach said:
This is solved by having decent metadata tags. I had 112GB of MP3s on both an iPod Classic and a Zune 120 and was able to find the song I was looking for in seconds navigating Genre -> Artist -> Album (or directly to song if you don't have many albums by that artist). I've got a 30GB Zune filled with a wide selection of stuff (8560 songs) that I navigate the same way.
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Yea but I remember the name of the song -- and not the artist, this becomes a HUGE problem.
 
Search is still faster imo, not that I use it much on my iPod touch (I only upgraded to 3.1.1 last week, I had been on 2.x 'till then), but it's nice to have nonetheless.
 
How smooth is video playback on the new zunes? Also how is the quality of the videos and
the sound of the hd radio?
 
Impulse said:
Search is still faster imo, not that I use it much on my iPod touch (I only upgraded to 3.1.1 last week, I had been on 2.x 'till then), but it's nice to have nonetheless.
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I'd have to try it on the iTouch to truly compare; on my iPod Classic it's near-worthless with the click wheel. I personally agree with heatlesssun that the letter keys should be good enough for search, but to each their own.
 
The video playback is very smooth IMO. I took The Office on DVD and converted it to 272x480 or something close to it at 60% quality on HandBrake and it came out very good IMO at about 100mb.

The sound of the Zune's HD Radio function - I'm not completely sold on how good it is, mainly since I don't have another HD receiver to compare it to. It could be the station, or the device, but it sounds "muddy" or over-compressed or something. I'm having a tough time describing how it sounds bad.

edit: edited post to reflect I was referring to the "HD RADIO" and not the overall sound quality of the device.
 
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Ok, thanks for the info. I'm definitely gonna get one but I just wanted someone else's
opinion first.
 
I put another album on my zune today and now in album view I get those same bulleted letters as I do in the entire list of songs. I liked when album view was just the albums and no letter thumb nails to get in the way. Is there a way to turn that off in just album view?
 
Ihaveworms said:
I put another album on my zune today and now in album view I get those same bulleted letters as I do in the entire list of songs. I liked when album view was just the albums and no letter thumb nails to get in the way. Is there a way to turn that off in just album view?
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I don't think so, I've been going through HD pretty thoroughly and there's not a lot that can be customized. I don't know how much you have on your device but I've got about 2,000 songs on it and the letters really are cool once you get enough content on the device.
 
I like the letters on the list of songs, but on the album view they just make it look messy. It almost doubled the amount I have to scroll in the album view :\.
 
Arainach said:
This is solved by having decent metadata tags. I had 112GB of MP3s on both an iPod Classic and a Zune 120 and was able to find the song I was looking for in seconds navigating Genre -> Artist -> Album (or directly to song if you don't have many albums by that artist). I've got a 30GB Zune filled with a wide selection of stuff (8560 songs) that I navigate the same way.
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Wait, that's it? WTH would anyone put songs on a DAP without tags?

FYI, I still use the Rio Karma, and it wouldn't work without tags....but again, I don't understand why anyone wouldn't tag their music.
 
Ihaveworms said:
I like the letters on the list of songs, but on the album view they just make it look messy. It almost doubled the amount I have to scroll in the album view :\.
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I have about 200 albums on my HD and its not anywhere that bad. As I said, the more you put on your device, the nicer this feature is.
 
nilepez said:
Wait, that's it? WTH would anyone put songs on a DAP without tags?

FYI, I still use the Rio Karma, and it wouldn't work without tags....but again, I don't understand why anyone wouldn't tag their music.
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Because a lot of it is P2P stuff with garbage tags. Another great benefit of Zune Pass, I simply never need to even think about tagging anymore.
 
Anyone know when they're have a black color for the 32gig version? Zune Originals has other colors but they look ugly to me. I just need it in black!!
 
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