Second Time 'Round - the Zune Flash In-Depth

J Mallard writes "Ars Technica has an in-depth review of the new Zune Flash. The overall verdict? An improvement over the original, with some caveats. 'I suspect there's a special shotgun in Redmond passed around ceremonially to the different divisions so each can shoot itself in the foot. When the shotgun arrived at the Zune team HQ, it appears to have been directed squarely at one of the most promising new features the device has to offer: autosyncing of recorded TV content ... [Specifically,] DVR-MS support for unprotected standard definition TV recordings from Windows Media Center. HDTV and protected recordings are not supported.' Let me make sure I understand this: at this point, a consumer has purchased a PC, Vista, a tuner card, and a Zune, but still can't be trusted with high-def content? Nice.'"

Comments

Re:HD?

[DingerX]

Uh, the point was:

If you have a TV tuner, you can set it to auto-record shows, and the Zune software will transcode it (and presumably bust it down to 320x240) for the Zune, and wirelessly sync it up. If you have a HD tuner (or even just a digital one, on some reports), it won't work.

The "coolness factor" isn't in the HD, but that you can record your daily television shows (say last night's talk shows), and they'll be automatically put on your device for the morning commute. The "shotgun-to-foot factor" is that it doesn't work unless you have an analog tuner card, even though analog broadcasts are going to disappear.

Re:I think this is what is most bothersome

[Anonymous Coward]

Charlie Brown never kicks the football in a comic strip. He did kick it in a television special one time, where Snoopy had turned him invisible during a magic show and had forgotten to turn him back to normal. And in one strip, Lucy doesn't pull the ball away (he had been in the hospital and she made him a promise that she wouldn't), but he misses anyway and kicks her hand. That's the closest the strip ever came.

Zune Owner, HD Works Fine

[JonXP]

I'm a Zune owner, and I record Terrestrial Broadcast HD shows. My Zune syncs with them fine, after the software does its automatic (and transparent to the user) conversion for resolution and space. This is on my old Zune 30GB, even. I'm not sure why the article says that non-DRM'd HD doesn't work...perhaps they only tried a DRM'd video and assumed it all wouldn't work?