gHacks technology news » Zune

Ask the Readers: Which MP3 Player Should I Buy?

Cheryl — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:42:11 +0000

In today’s world, owning a cell phone and/or a portable media player has practically become a necessity. The thing is I don’t own either. No, I do not live in a cave, I just took a conscious decision not to own one.

Recently though, I’ve decided to invest in an mp3 player. I knew about the standard players available but after doing some more research, I’m more confused than ever. So I decided to ask the tech-savvy readers at Ghacks to help me make my decision.

Now I’m looking at hard-drive based players with a minimum capacity of 60 GB. Here are some of my thoughts on the different players so far:

Apple iPod Classic: Good battery life (30 hours for audio) and file storage capacity (120 GB). I’m not too keen on it though because it’s very restrictive as far as supported file formats are concerned. I don’t want to spend hours just converting my videos. Also, I’ve read that new versions of iTunes place a lot of restrictions on the machine.

Zune 80/120: This one is last on my list. Battery life is decent but that’s about it. Video format support is really poor.

Archos: Not bad but not great either. Battery life and file format support is just about okay. Storage capacity is good. The player itself is a little on the bulky side as well.

Creative Zen Vision W: The sort-of runner up. Creative had decent battery life (13.5 for audio and 5 for video) and supports a good-sized number of file formats. However, the player doesn’t seem to support videos encoded with the H.264 codec or those in the Mpeg-4 format. Also, at 60 GB, it’s the lowest in terms of storage capacity.

Cowon A3: If I had to choose a player based on features alone, this one would be it. The A3 has 80 GB of storage and plays virtually every audio and video file format you throw at it. In fact, the only format that it doesn’t play is AAC file with DRM and Quicktime movies, both of which I don’t use anyway. Besides this Cowon’s A3 can be connected directly to both standard and hi-definition TVs and can even record from the TV. It’s perfect. The only drawback is the battery life. The official site says that the A3 can play 7 hours of video and 10 hours of audio. In practice, I have no idea how long it lasts.

So now I’m stuck between the Creative Zen Vision W and the Cowon A3. They cost almost the same. Should I be concerned about the lesser battery life on the Cowan? I assume I can also hook it up to an adaptor and play it when I’m at home. If I do take my player out, it’s probably not going to be used for more than 5-6 hours.

Please help me out with this. What portable media player do you use? Are you happy with the storage capacity, file formats supported, and battery life/ Any advice for me? Let me know in the comments.

Tags: Archos, Cowon, creative, iPod, portable media players, Zune

The Zune: A Review

joshua — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:52:33 +0000

Yesterday I finally got my Zune 120, all the way to Australia from America through Ebay thanks to Microsoft’s failure to release the Zune internationally at this point.

All I can say is it was completely worth it.

The bad thing for Microsoft is it’s taken 3 years to get the Zune to meet it’s initial expectations, the good thing is that I really don’t care because it’s a fantastic product. I have to admit I have never wanted an iPod primarily for the reason that I don’t want what everyone else has, and also because I don’t like iTunes.

The Zune software is perhaps Microsoft’s most under-appreciated work. I’ve been using it for a few months now, ever since the 2.5 release, and like it a lot, but it wasn’t till I actually had a Zune myself that the whole experience opened up and I realised how great the software is. What I love most about it is that Microsoft has not taken the approach of meeting the iTunes head-on, feature for feature. Instead they’ve worked on creating a great experience, so that even if the Zune lacks something Apple provides, users are willing to make the compromise.

I had to find and download a hack from somewhere to get access to all the Zune features and online services, but everything is working perfectly now.

The Zune itself looks great, feels great and has a awesome navigation pad which I prefer to the ‘Click Wheel’. It’s not quite as good for scrolling long song lists, but much better for skipping up or down by a couple songs at a time, something I find the Click Wheel not so good at. The screen however is horrible for attracting smudges and finger prints. Also the provided headphones are pretty crap, I replaced them immediately.

Anyway, up to this point I would be hard pressed to name another product which really wasbetter than the iPod, although a few did come close (Creative Vision:M and Gigabeat S series). The Zune 3.0 however I can honestly say provides a better experience and product than Apple and the iPod (classic).

Also Microsoft’s strategy of providing updates and new features to all Zune owners, no matter how old the product is really fantastic.

Tags: microsoft, Zune

New Zune Won’t be an iPod Killer but it’s Just as Good

joshua — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:57:20 +0000

Microsoft announced it’s latest lineup of Zune products to a fairly underwhelming response, which was frankly also fairly well expected.

It’s easy to get cynical about the Zune, especially considering Microsoft’s promises about delivering an amazing iPod killing device three years back.

The original Zune was pretty ugly, far too bulky and came in an attractive poo-brown. It still sold a million units however and Microsoft stayed in the game to bring out the Zune 2. For me the problems with the original Zune where that it failed to deliver anything the iPod didn’t have and came with some hideous software which was one of the biggest issues.

The wifi connectivity was almost un-utilised when it could have been a fantastic addition to an mp3 player and instead Microsoft let Apple steal it’s thunder with the iPod touch.\

The Zune 2 however was actually good enough that the best most commentaries could come up with where that it still wasn’t a success. The Zune software had been rewritten from scratch, the Zune interface was new, unique and attractive and the devices themselves where slimmer and far better designed then the first generation.

When my friend bought one (over Ebay, the Zune still isn’t released in Australia) what I loved the most was the navigational trackpad. The iPod scroll wheel was always one of the devices greatest strengths and something other companies struggled to compete with in their own products. The Zune however introduces a trackpad which has the same strengths as the scrollwheel (quick navigation through long song lists) while having an additional strength – ability to click up and down like a normal 4 direction pad which makes it a whole lot easier for moving up and down a couple songs at a time.

The generation 3 Zune is an incremental upgrade and is mostly changes in the services, firmware and pricing of the product, but still worth purchasing, check out Paul Thurrot’s review. I’m looking forward to trying the new software, some great new changes there.

As Paul mentions, the Zune 3 update is available for all Zune owners, even the original Zune 30. This is a great move on Microsoft’s part and actually shows they care about customers more then pushing them into buying the latest and greatest version.

Tags: apple, iPod, microsoft, Zune

Complete Media Player Reviews (Part 4)

joshua — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:05:57 +0000

Joshua is a regular gHacks author, if you like the type of posts you see here then check out his own blog; Extendably – a site dedicated to everything extensions related.

So far in this series of posts I’ve taken a look at Windows Media Player, iTunes, Media Monkey and Helium Music Manager. Today I’m going to review Microsoft’s 3rd Media software offering; the Zune 2.5 Software:

Zune 2.5 Software

I realise the Zune software may not really be considered a serious music management alternative unless you actually have a Zune Mp3 Player, however like iTunes I think you’ll find there’s a lot of reasons to use this program.

The original Zune software was horribly bad, so the decision to start over from scratch was a good one. Unfortunately this meant the initial Zune 2 release lacked some of the functionality of Zune 1, but made up for it by actually being stable and reliable.

Comparisons to iTunes is inevitable, this is after all Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s product. Seemingly the design process for the software was, ‘lets look at iTunes, and do something completely different’, which is actually a good thing.

The result is a very usable and attractive application, in fact although its not designed for advanced users at all, I still enjoy using it just for the well designed UI and attractive theme. Actually what I like best is the playback visualisation. Rather then the usual clouds and swirls, the Zune software displays a full screen of tiled album art, which looks really good:

Tag management and album art retrieval is basic at best, but functional at least. The usual features are included such as smart-playlist creation, sorting by genres and a rating system. The rating system is unusual, simplified to just 3 ratings: ‘nothing’, ‘broken heart’ and ‘heart’. I actually like this because I really hate debating over wether or not a song deserves a 4.5 stars or just plain 4, however I know a lot of people won’t be happy with it.

Really I think Zune’s strength is in it’s interface. In fact I often do use it to browse my library and play songs, just because it does it so nicely. For anything more then that I would suggest the previously reviewed music managers such as Media Monkey.

Conclusion: Great design and UI but lacking in advanced features. Use in conjunction with another music manager or tagger.

Tags: manager, media, music, Zune

Share Unrestricted Music with your Zune

Martin — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 07:56:21 +0000

Did you know that the Zune, the mp3 player from Microsoft, has a filesharing feature that is probably one of the best ever implemented in mp3 players ? Did you also know that Microsoft restricted playback of song shared using that filesharing option to three playbacks in the new Zune players ? The old players had an even tougher restriction set in place, their restriction was three plays or three days.

Songs would expire when they reached either limit which made the wonderful filesharing function less attractive and more or less unusable. Users over at the Zune Scene website have found a way to bypass the 3 play rule limit of the Zune by changing the genre of the song to Podcast.

Yes, that is all, change it to Podcast, send it to another Zune and witness for yourself that music exchanged that way can be played indefinitely. It requires some work though because each and every song has to be declared a podcast. The user of the second Zune can naturally change the genre back without imposing the playback restrictions.

Tags: Zune, zune drm, zune tips

Bypass Zune Guest Syncing

Martin — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 08:47:07 +0000

If you want to connect a Zune to a computer that is not its home zone you receive a popup asking if you want to connect the Zune as a guest or “sync with your library on this pc.” The second option would remove all content on the Zune and sync it with the library on the new computer. I suppose this is another feature to please the Music Industry by making it harder to add music from your friends computer to your own Zune. This spells troubles. Imagine if you have purchase a new pc or something gets messed up on your old computer.

A user from Zuneboards created a hack to bypass guest syncing. Just download the following file and place it in the Zune directory which is usually program files \ zune and run it from there. Et voila, no more guest syncing when you connect a different Zune to your computer / your Zune to another computer.

Tags: bypass syncing zune, guest syncing, microsoft, Zune

Copy data from and to a Microsoft Zune

Martin — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 09:40:10 +0000

I do not own a Zune and will probably never own one but I know a few people who do own one, this article is for them. You can enable a hard drive mode in the Zune which is similar to the hard drive mode of the iPods. All you need to do is change some registry keys in windows which enables this.

Press Windows + R and enter regedit. Hit enter and go to the following registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ System \ ControlSet001 \ Enum \ USB \ . Search for “PortableDeviceNameSpace” and change the following registry keys to enable hard drive mode:

EnableLegacySupport to 1
PortableDeviceNameSpaceExcludeFromShell to 0
ShowInShell to 1

Plug in your Zune and make sure the Zune software starts. The Zune should now appear in My Computer

source: Phaleux

Tags: microsoft, Zune, zune hacks, zune tips

Zune does not allow to share all songs

Martin — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 07:58:40 +0000

Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s iPod is getting some bad feedback lately. It turned out some months ago that shared songs, e.g. songs that you send another Zune user to his Zune, would only be playable for 3 days / times before they became useless. It did not even matter if the song contained DRM or not, all songs, even your own produced ones, would be limited to this.

This was apparently not enough for the usual suspects. Sony, we do love Sony – don’t we, and Universal decided to prohibit even this type of sharing for more than 40% of the songs that one could buy on the Zune marketplace. The first question that comes to my mind is why Microsoft is paying Universal roughly $1 for every Zune sold if Universal does not even allow that some of their songs are shared with all the limitations of the Zune player ?

This is probably blown out of proportion by the blogging scene at the moment but I think Microsoft should at least have the courtesy to label songs that can’t be shared. Every user should now if it is possible to share a song that he has bought from the Zune marketplace.

Record Companies again show that they do not understand the market at all. What would another Zune owner do if I would send him a song which he likes ? The song becomes unplayable after a time. Would be buy it ? Probably ? Would that mean profit for the companies ? Yes it would.

You know why I bought some CD`s for the first time in years ? Because I was able to listen to the whole tune online (ripped it) and offline before I decided to make the purchase. I personally think that they lose money because of the restrictions that they impose on their customers.

Tags: drm, microsoft, share-songs, songs, sony, universal, Zune, zune-marketplace

Movie studios vs. their customers Part 2

Martin — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 20:03:22 +0000

Just a few weeks ago I was reporting that Universal Studios was receiving it’s share from every Zune player sold and asked my readers to consider this before buying a Zune player because it could very well be the precedent of something that Universal, and other movie studios, wanted: A share of every media player that is being sold. Apparently they were quick to act.

Reuters reports that Universal Group Chief Executive Doug Morris may want to fashion an iPod royalty fee with Apple Computer Inc. in the next round of negotiations in early 2007 which could mean that customers would have to pay a similar fee as the Zune’s for a newly purchased iPod to the music studios.

This basically means that customers are paying compensation fees in advance for something that they probably never do with their media players. It is also interesting to note that some customers seem to see this advanced piracy tax in a way that would allow them to copy media because they already payed for the privilege.

Movie Studios are also demanding that Apple reduces the number of devices that are allowed to play back a movie that has been purchased from iTunes.

I think it is really funny that they become more and more restrictive against the people that are buying their movies. Would not it be better for their business if they would actually listen to what their customers demanded instead of communicating the message that all their customers are movie pirates ?

Customers on the other hand have to take a stance against this, the earlier the better. I advise everyone to stay away from the Zune player and stay away from any other player the movie industry gets a share of. Don’t buy it, don’t buy their movies, let them bleed until they understand who is in charge..

Tags: apple, drm, iPod, miaa, movie-studio, piracy, riaa, tax, universal, Zune

How to bypass the DRM of Microsoft’s Zune

Martin — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 16:47:40 +0000

Every song that you send to someone else from your Zune is restricted to a limit number of plays before it becomes useless on the recipients Zune. This is really bad if you want to swap music files that you created on your own for example. There is however a (rather complicated) way to transfer files from one Zune to the other without those DRM restrictions. First you need to enable hard drive mode in your operating system.
To enable hard drive mode you need to change some registry settings. (without the Zune connected and the Zune software running)

Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ControlSet001\Enum\USB\
Search for “PortableDeviceNameSpace”. This should be contained in the Vid_####&Pid_####\########_-_########_-_########_-_########\Device Parameters within the above …\USB\ The ##’s listed here will be numbers and letters specific to your Zune
Change the following values:
EnableLegacySupport to 1
PortableDeviceNameSpaceExcludeFromShell to 0
ShowInShell to 1

This ensures that you can access the Zune from My Computer to drag and drop files to and from it.

The trick so send files without the DRM restrictions would be to rename those files to .jpg and send them to the other Zune with one valid jpg file.

Now, take your Zune and send the folder containing these files to your buddy along with a real photo. If you only send a fake photo, an error is thrown. The last step is to have your friend sync the Zune with their computer, open the “containing folder” where the files were downloaded, and rename the files back to their correct extension. (source)

If you do not apply the storage hack before and use the Zune software to rename the files an error will appear. This is only working with the hard drive hack.

Tags: drm, files, hard-drive, iPod, microsoft, music, storage-hack, Zune

Why you should not buy a Zune player

Martin — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 17:49:12 +0000

Before you judge the article by looking at the title read on and you might understand why I suggest that no one buys a Zune. It has nothing to do because it is produced by Microsoft – I really do not care about that. It also has nothing to do with the features or hardware that was built into the device – I do not care about that either.

The thing that I do not like about Zune is that record labels and artists do get a share for every Zune device that is sold. That is right folks, it does not matter if you buy music or videos to put on the Zune. They get their share even if you only use it for listening to your own music, your own movies and your own pictures. Why do they get paid for it, what is the reason behind this ?

“These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,” UMG chairman/CEO Doug Morris says. “So it’s time to get paid for it.”

Now isn’t that nice. EVERYONE is using devices like the Zune to steal music. It has no other reasons according to Doug Morris. Do you think it is fair that everyone has to pay for something that might happen ?

Please note that he is speaking about devices, not the Zune directly. This is an indication of what they want to achieve. They want to get their share of the price for every device that is like the Zune which means that they will try and push the companies who create such devices to pay them a fee as well.

Guess who is paying that bill in the long run ? Right, you and me.

The only way to stop this is to boycott the beginning – which is the Zune. Don’t buy it, show the greedy ones who is in charge.

Tags: microsoft, Zune, zune player

gHacks technology news » Zune

Ask the Readers: Which MP3 Player Should I Buy?

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