HiFi Blog: digital audio goodness

The new Zune MP3 player brought excitement to the MP3 player market. But apparently Zune sales are not so good, and the fact that iTunes was clogged with four times as many consumers this Christmas compared to last Christmas tells you something about who is going to be king for a while.

Consumers who buy a Zune will find new features that have not been on the market before Zune, but are they any good? Lets have a look…

Zune lets you play music, share photos and play videos, and the design is pretty slick. It’s not quite as cool as my proud Ipod though (you may disagree).

So what can you do with it? You can locate nearby Zune users using the “community” feature. Once you select “community” and then select “nearby,” you will see a list of other Zune users that are near you. You can then share photos, music, podcasts and videos through Zunes wireless WiFi feature.

You can turn your Zune presence to online if you wish other Zune users to locate you in their community, or you can set Zune to offline if you do not wish others to see you on their community screen. If you are online and wish to block someone from sending you files, you can easily block the user by using Zunes block feature.

This feature is not going to be well accepted in my opinion: If you receive songs from other Zune users, they are considered samples only and will expire in three days. This is a feature Zune has integrated to prevent copyright laws from being violated. The sample songs are full-length tracks that can be played up to three times within three days of you receiving them, and then you are directed to the Zune online music store. Once your samples have expired, they will be remembered by Zune to prevent you from receiving them again. If you want to hear the samples again after the expiration, you have to purchase the songs before listening to them again.

Zune also comes with a built in FM-tuner so that you can listen to local radio stations using your earphone wires as an antenna, and you can program preset radio stations so that you can locate them easily with the Zune player.

The new Zune MP3 player comes with a 3-inch display area, weighs just 5.6 ounces and measures 4.4 in x 2.4 in x .06 in. Zune has a 30 gig hard drive, and the battery life of the Zune will play up to 13 hours of music or up to 4 hours of video. It will play files in MP3, MP4, M4A, M4B, .wmv and .Mov formats. Photos must be in .jpeg formats to view them.

Zune syncs to your computer via Zune software. The Zune software lets you manage your songs, photos and videos. You can also use Zune software to create play lists and rip CD’s. You can also use Zune software to browse the Zune marketplace to purchase songs and albums by your favorite artists.

There many accessories that you can purchase for Zune from docking stations to car chargers. You can purchase cables to play your Zune through your television or Xbox 360, etc. etc.

The Zune MP3 player does not have a file storage system in place for other types of file formats, and you will not be able to listen to the Zune radio while viewing pictures as it does not have the capabilities to play the radio and display photos at the same time.