Good news for Zune fans. CNET spent a little time with the upcoming Zune HD and came away mighty impressed. Big points were awarded for the 3.3-inch screen, 720p video playback, audio quality, music playback features, and — gasp! — a great web browser?
“Speaking of Wi-Fi, the Zune’s new Web browser smokes. Not since first using the iPhone have I been this impressed with a mobile web browser. There’s no branding on the browser, but I was told it was cooked up by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team (makes sense). Page load was snappy, and pinching and reorienting pages work just like the iPhone and iPod Touch. You also get a fast on-screen keyboard with a nice little magnifier effect with each keystroke. The only bad news on the browser is that there’s no support for Flash audio and video content. So Pandora and YouTube are out, but I was able to get onto Facebook and Twitter.”
The actual music playback seems pretty cool as well, especially for anyone who likes a little substance to go along with whichever band is being played:
“The Zune’s coolest music trick, though, is that it automatically pulls in a gallery of band photos, biographical info, and similar artist recommendations for any currently playing song–regardless of whether the track is from Zune Marketplace or your friend’s hard drive or torrents. It’s feels a little more like digging through Last.fm now, instead of just a straight-up music directory. If the Zune’s connected up to Wi-Fi, listings of related artists will link though to the mobile version of Zune Marketplace, where tracks can be streamed and purchased directly.”
Another cool feature that people may appreciate is that video and audio content purchased via the Xbox 360 will show up in your recent purchases history on the Zune HD and can then be downloaded to the device itself.
The Zune HD will be available sometime this fall. Pricing hasn’t been announced yet.
720p on a 3.3 inch screen – why would I want that?
Apart from this it seems to be pretty much a 1:1 iPod touch copy.
… not that impressive. Well, at least it’s not butt ugly brown anymore like the first Zune.
The 720p isn’t on the device’s screen – it’s resolution is much lower than that. Rather, it outputs 720p via a mini-HDMI port.
Also does HD Radio, and (presumably) Ad-hoc WiFi music/picture sharing like it’s predecessors.
It’s going to be a tough decision between one of these, or a new smart phone for me this fall (Hero?).
I don’t see a big market for devices like this as a “VCR replacement”.
The next video player with a (proper) built-in video projector will rock the market. Until then products like this Zune will be just one of the many “kthxbye”-products. Apple’s position with the iPod is far too dominant to win any reasonable market share with minor upgrades/changes.
He’s right. It powered by Tegra so I’m puzzled as to why they haven’t incorporate Flash or at least Silverlight. That would have been big boost over the Touch in browsing arena.
Also what about Games? With XNA and XBL they need to turn this game friendly platform as well. Another thing going for them is the Zune software whihc is much better than iTunes for windows.
lots of games or no go.
zunephone here we go.
“Good news for Zune fans”
Zune Fans? Are there any?
I’ll be getting one
Wow! I ‘ll be getting one asap. It was so cool and lovely Zune HD !
WTFFFFFF
The main thing I was looking forward to would be flash content on the Mcfridgen browser this is bull crap. I might as well just get a fridgen iTouch now. Browser is just as fail as touch now. Horrible. I want Youtube, newgrounds, porn, and all that good crap. Now it if f’d up omfg I might not even get it now. Man this just adds to my horrible day dang it I was looking for good info. Not the same info with crappy info.