Even with the Zune vs. iPod Sizemodo, it still didn't sink in to us how similar in width the Zune was to the iPod. Maybe we're just idiots. In any case, you can imagine our surprise when we realized we didn't have to buy all new cupholder/music docks for our Zunes.
As you can see, the Belkin TuneDok for the iPod works just fine for the Zune. Suction cup holds nicely even on the rubberized plastic finish, and the iPod connector hole is big enough for the Brown Ninja—that's our Zune's name. – Jason Chen
Product Page [Belkin]

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
You may have heard a rumor floating about the internet that the Zune would adopt an incentive-based distribution system. The idea, supposedly, is that each song sent to your Zune-toting buddy that he/she decided to buy at your recommendation would earn you a small reward (think Zune Marketplace Points) for promoting and sharing legal digital music. Good Morning Silicon Valley revived the discussion on Wednesday, and points out that J Allard recently discussed the system at the Music Tech Summit in Seattle, but Microsoft has made no official remarks on the topic. Well we went digging through the US Patent and Trade Office site and came across a 2003 filing from Redmond that describes a very similar system that says "The first license also specifies the conditions upon which the content may be redistributed and licensed for use on a second device" and that "these conditions may specify a price for the second license, and/or a requi...

Microsoft marketing geniuses figured out that brown is the new black (or white), painting up the Zune in a color that a lot of people associate with a brick of shit. Now here come the second-guessing analysts, and one named Rob Enderle from the Enderle Group says that Microsoft stands alone in its edgy choice of brown as a hot new color. Is brown cool? "No other hardware company has come to that conclusion," he said, blaming the color for the player's somewhat slow intro.
So let's vote on it. In this exclusive Gizmodo poll, we put the question to you, dear readers:

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We've seen all three colors of the Zune, and I actually like the brown one best. With its painted-on-the-inside translucent weirdness, I only wish it were a bit more rounded and smaller, not a different color. – Charlie White
TechTrends: M...

You knew this was inevitable: a way to disavow any knowledge of a transferred song on the Microsoft Zune, circumventing that share-once restriction in the player's WiFi routine. It's just a matter of a little simple digital prestidigitation, digging into a certain file and removing the name of the person who sent it to you, while that person does the same. Share that song again and again with these five steps:


1. Make sure that your Zune is connected and the Zune Software is running.
2. Navigate to My Computer and click on your Zune's name.
3. Open "Storage"
4. Find the file that contains the name of the user who transferred songs to you in the file name, and delete all records with that title.
5. Get the other party to do the same and you can now transfer the same songs again!
Well, that was easy. Expect this hole to be plugged up, pronto. Next, somebody needs to figure out how to blow away that 3-play/3-day limit of a shared ...

Some people have way too much money, enough said…

Lots of comments on my video posts. Let me stipulate some things to respond to folks:
It would be better to never have to transcode, but you probably need to do it sometimes. it's just a matter of how often. Zune makes transcoding utterly automatic for the user; you add a supported file to the library, and if it needs transcoding it gets transcoded prior to sync. We do pre-transcode files for folks so they won't have to wait, but sometimes this doesn't work and users must transcode a lot during sync. Sorry. Go have dinner, maybe get a nap, then use your device. Or get a quad-dual-core machine. ;) The key phrase above? "supported file". The biggest crux in comments: DVR-MS files. The challenge with DVR-MS is that it's mpeg-2, which is cranky and possibly unreliable (if you use an existing codec) or expensive (if you build one in to the software). Let's agree DVR-MS and Divx support would be great . I wish we had it at launch. ...

Lots of folks are making the reasonable demand that they should escape transcoding and get perfect video device simplicity. In the past, devices have delivered this in several ways:
People have gotten used to effortless audio support - a promise devices deliver these days. mp3 and wma files all play on all devices that claim they will. DVD players do it by tightly scripting video format - DVDs must user mpeg-2 within a proscribed bitrate. The PC makes video look relatively easy - it can be made to play nearly any file, thanks to its open video codec architecture. The OS sniffs the file, looks for the right audio and video codec, and then plays the file. If you look hard enough, you can find any codec, install it, and it'll work. Modern PCs have insane amounts of horsepower, so I can routinely decode HD res/bitrate video files on my PC.Devices are different, for two key reasons.

Codecs are one issue. This morning I loaded a device that nominally supports divx up with som...

So, to start out on video conversion for Zune, let me lay out the video types that matter to me.
wmv videos (home videos, etc...) divx videos - encoded using a variety of encoders, especially doctor divx dvr-ms videos - tv recordings from my media center Right now, the Zune only supports the first natively, so I need to do some transcoding.
It's also important to remember that you not only need to make sure a video matches the codecs on a Zune, but also in resolution. So you'll need to transcode down to 320x240 for the device if it's a wmv even though the device supports the codec. So I typically need to transcode almost all of my videos.
Fortunately, I've found some really good tools.

Now that Zune is out, I'm going to spend some posts on "how tos" with Zune. First up? My method for getting my video collection onto my Zune. In the next few, I'll talk about getting wmv, mpeg-4, and Divx files onto my Zune at home and the tools I'm using to do it.

After a hiatus...my excuse? A combination of shipping Zune and Gears of War.

We're out on the market, availabile in lots of stores. The redmond/bellevue/seattle stores are all sold out; folks should post their experiences; are there lots of units in stores? Has everyone found one? Let me know here...