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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.'"
I think this is what is most bothersome, and tiresome, about the treadmill that is Microsoft's products, advertising, etc. From the article, yet again:
It's hard to imagine how this goes on and on, but it does. I don't know who it reflects more poorly on, Microsoft's disingenuousness (word?), or the public's collective willingness to be fooled again and again.
I've often referred to the Charlie Brown - Lucy tension as the perfect metaphor... Lucy promises to placehold the football so Charlie can kick it. He falls for it every time and she never fails to pull it away at the last second (I keep hoping there's one strip where she doesn't pull it away, but I never saw it.... anyone?). We, the public are Microsoft's Charlie Brown. Sigh.
HD content displayed at 320x240 on a device with an 8GB capacity? Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
No worse than iPod. Sounds like something you use to keep your prosthetic eye in. I mean if you are going to bash the Zune bash it for all one of the many logical reasons.
Lack of a wireless musical store. DRMed to Death. Doesn't support Microsoft's own Play for Sure content.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Heres another quote, from the conclusion:
We expect that the new lineup will help Microsoft become an established player in the PMP space over the next year. The updated devices should also put an end to the almost-endless set of Zune-related jokes, and they are an obvious choice for anyone who loves subscription music services.
You are mistaken in thinking the person who bought all that and wants to watch the TV program is the customer. Sorry. You are wrong. That person is the product. The advertisers and content owners who want to protect it using ever increasing amount of DRM is the customer. Got it? Now it all makes sense, doesn't it?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Content is content... if it's on your windows machine and a supported format, why can it NOT be played...especially if it was RECORDED on your machine!!!! By Windows... kinda dumb
Who the hell would need HD content on a 320x240 screen and with that small of a storage space?
Fix the horrible playlist support on the Zune first. That was the one thing i was hoping they'd fix this time around but instead it's still an epic fail.
What makes it all doubly stupid is that Microsoft is able to identify copyrighted files that aren't allowed to be shared (e.g. Frank Sinatra) through WiFi.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
if you have a digital tuner, its all technically hd, although some of it is just 480p streams. They seem t be indicating that you don't even have the option of shrinking it down, which makes no sense to me since I can do whatever I want with the digital tuner in my mac. I can take 1080i and shrink it to postage stamp iPod sizes, if I'm so inclined. I mainly encode to 480x320 for my iPhone.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
Why would anyone want it for HD content? The screen doesn't even support NTSC resolution. Starting out with HD won't make a noticeable difference when it has to be scaled down anyhow.
Simple - people don't want things because they are rational, they want them because they are spiffy.
And it saves the time to downconvert it by hand if it can be done on the fly (though if you have a transfer app, you should just use that).
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I think rumors of its DRMed death are grossly exaggerated. From the review, it looks like it will not only play DRM-free files, but you can also purchase a slew of DRM-free songs at whatever on-line service it (strongly) encourages you to use. There appear to be annoyances (you can't store DRMed video on it? that makes no sense - I'm assuming that's the reviewer's mistake. Likely you can't store DRMed video that the Zune application can't find a license for), but none of them are a deal breaker for someone who just wants to rip CDs or buy songs/videos on a website and play them on their portable player, which I'm assuming is the majority of the portable music/video player market. I also suspect you can easily put copyrighted, DRM-free video and music files downloaded via BitTorrent on it with ease - at least the same amount of ease as you have with the iPod.
Well, (as I understand it) the video is always transcoded when syncing occurs, to match the Zune's screen/performance.
This limitation means you can't sync certain shows you've recorded to your Zune, just because the channel/show happens to be in HD. Arbitrary annoyance, and kinda dumb, really.
They didn't fix that for the same reason they didn't completely fix piss poor standards support in IE7 and instead spent five years (or however long it took to get IE7 out the door) focused on making the "groundbreaking" tabs and worthless anti-phishing filter. That, and screwing with the placement of important stuff on the toolbar and menu.
MSFT focuses on stuff that is whizzbang and makes for good press releases instead of just making the damn thing work properly. Typical, and not surprising. Really, does anyone care about playlists? Well, maybe the people who have already bought the Zune, but these folks have already been parted with their money. Why should MSFT care about them?
blah blah blah
Wow...just....wow. They are copying the Apple business model of what, three years ago? Now that apple has moved onto miniscule Nanos and Touches, Microsoft comes up with a clone of the 1st Gen iPod Nano? What's next, Microsoft? Are you going to showcase a new "Shuffle"?