2006-11-25 21:20:03

Ok. This review covers Microsoft's zune mp3 player. I'm sorry if it's too long.... Please repost it to any forum that deals with blind technology.


ZUne review written by: Thomas Geczy

Hello people! This is Thomas Geczy / Tomi, and today, I will be reviewing Zune, Microsoft's approach to digital mp3 portable playback. It has been released on november 14, 2006.
I bought one of these players on BBlack friday, which is an event  in the US where  prices for things dramaticly get reduced. Since this zone is quite new, the lowest price  I could get it for is 239 dollars. Not bad.

First, let me compare the Zune and the commonly used apple IPod video / 5g.
The Ipod uses a click wheel, where you have to "scroll" with you're thumb on a wheel. So, to go forward, you would move you're thumb to the right a few times. The zune uses a circle. To go up, push the circle upward, to go forward  push the right side of the circle, etc.
The zune also includes a good quality fm radio. The Ipod dosen't.

However, the ipod supports many formats,  like Aif, snd, Aifc, mpg, mpa, avi, au. The zune only supports Mp3, wma, wmv, ogg, and mp4.

With the zune, you can upgrade it's fermware. This way you could get enhancements / bug fixes for free.

The  IPod is available in 60 gigabytes format, while the zune is only in 30 gig version so far.

The Ipod has 20 hours of batterry life for music playing, the zune has 13. The IPod only has 2 hours for video playback, but the zune has 4 hours.

The zune allows you to send files wirelessly from zune to zune. Songs that you receive this way can only be played 3 times, or 3 days, which ever comes first. After this, a "this song has expired" icon appears and ya can't play the song. Sad.

You can't use the zune as an external harddrive. It doesn't ever appear in "my computer" (or computer in vista).  To sync files, ya need to use the zune sync software.

so how does it look / feel like? The zune is made out of rubberised plastic. It is about 5 inches wide  and 3 inches across. As mentioned, the zune uses a circle navigation, up, left, right, down. To the left of this circle is a menu button, and to the right of it is a play/pause button.
In the middle of the circle is an enter button, used to enter menu items. This is seperated from the circle and can move back and forth.


The menu

To navigate, you use the down/up button. Pressing the button lists the following:
music
videos
pictures
fm radio
settings

To get into music, just press enter (it's selected by default). To get into fm radio, press 3 down.

Music

Pressing enter allows you to select  what kind of music ya wanna hear. By default, rock is selected. Going down you get into shuffle, where all songs are mixed up randomly.
Overall, the quality of the songs is great.
Fm  radio

Wen you start the radio, you asked for "european" or "american" radio allocation. By default, american is selected, but one down you can select the european.

Turning the thing off:
To turn you're zune off,  hold the play / pause button. Then you can put it in hold by switching the hold switch. If ya plug in a headphone, though, the machine comes back to life. Switching hold off results in the same action.

Software:

By default, the zune comes with a cd that contains the sync software / fermware update.

Installation:
The install window is  kind of like a website, there's links for next, cancel, back. The program installs msxml6 if ya don't have it.
Warning!!! This software cannot be installed in vista! You get a "msxml6" is already installed" error and the thing can't run. If you want to use vista and zune, perform an upgrade from xp (install the software beforehand).  After you got everything running, go to program files\zune, select zune.exe, press alt enter, and check the compatibility mode thing. Run it in "windows xp with sp2" mode.

So, the install is straight forward.  You are asked to reboot at the end of setup. After the reboot, you are returned to setup, and asked for you're zune name. This is name is used to identify you're zune on the wireless community feature and in the sync window. Right after this is done, you  are asked to upgrade you're firmware. This only takes about 4 minutes. (for those who want to know, Zune uses windows CE technology, and  the firmware update uses nk.bin, eboot.bin, and recovery.bin.)
Next you setup the library, and select the folders you want to sync automatically. You have the option to not synchronize the my music folder, though this is turned on by default. 
Then you need to synchronize you're time with the internet. This also synchronizes the clock in you're zune, so when you sync, the song's date won't be wrong.

Zune will synchronize the files in the "my music" folder, (if you unchecked this, it will not do it.) So the sample windows xp / vista songs are put on there.

JAWS and the zune software:
Overall, it's not bad. Microsoft made the sync window controlls like in windows media player: There's a play/pause/stop/shuffle button, a "sync now" option, sync options option, and some weird-labeled buttons. You add files to the library in the context menu, which opens when pressing alt, and selecting add folder  to library. By default, you're my documents/my music folder is synced automatically.
There's a treeview catagorizing Song, album, artist, genre, and other options which depend on the level of the tree you're on. For instance, "recently added" appears under the "library" section only, while "sync results" only appears in the "xname" section (where xname is the name you gave to you're zune). If you tab over, there's a list containing information relevant to the item of the tree you were on (if you were on sync results, this tells you if a file has been synced successfully or is already on the device". If you want to delete a file from zune, simply press delete on the item you want to erase (you must be in the "sync results" branch of the tree view.)


Scripts are not needed, though they would be nice. It's pritty easy to manage, the moment you connect you're zune all files in my music are synced (again, this won't happen if you deselected this), so if you have little knowledge on computing this won't be an issue.

Conclusions:

I think that the Zune is the most accessible portable digital player out there now. Yes, there's no "zunereader" to read the menu, but you can memorize it quickly. Takes a few days to get used to it. I will be adding a list of the menu items / subitems soon, in a seperate post. I think microsoft did a great job on this new product.

Regards:

tomi

2006-11-27 21:07:17 (edited by tomi 2006-11-27 21:14:36)

hi,

ok, the menus, as promised:

the main menu: If you just turned on the zune, you are placed in this menu. If you have been listening to music, press the menu button three times with slight 1 second pauses between each press.

music

videos

pictures

community (firmware 1.1>)

settings


music subMenu:
Imagine this menu as tabs. Like in controll panel / system, you navigate between these with ctrl tab. With zune, you use the lef/right arrows (the circle is you're arrow pad)

albums

ahrtists

playlists

songs

genres

albums/ahrtists/songs all contain a shuffle all option, which is selected by default. Once you pressed enter on an option, move between ahrtists/albums/songs/playlists, use up/down arrows. Press enter on an album/song/ahrtist, and hit play to play everything from that album/ahrtist/playlist/song.  everything is listed in alphabetical order.

music/genres submenu:

shuffle all

children

christian

classical

dance

electronic/dance

jazz

other

pop

religious

rock

unknown genre

Navigate between the genre type with up/down arrows.

main menu/video:

all video tab

music videos tab

movies tab

Use left / right arrows to navigate between the tab controls. Cycle between the videos/movies/music videos with up/down arrow keys. once you pressed enter on the desired video type, Press enter on a video, and hit play to play that video.

During video playback, up/down arrows seek forward / back in a video, and lef/right arrows turn the volume down/up.

main menu/ picture

view by folder tab

view by date tab

Navigation between pictures is the same as with video/music files.


main menu/radio

If you have set up the radio, you are automatically taken to the last station you were listening to. If you have not, then you are asked to select a region. (europe/america)
Main menu/community:

inbox

me

nearby

This is not accessible at all for the blind. Selecting nearby lists nearby zune devices you can connect to.

To be continued in the nex post...

Regards:

tomi

2006-11-27 21:32:18

settings menu

wireless: on / off toggle

music

pictures

display


sound: on/off (toggle, press enter to switch)

radio

online status: detailed/ basic (toggle, press enter to switch)

about

settings/music:

shuffle: on/off (toggle)

repeat: on/off (toggle)

equalizer: none/acoustic/classical/electronic/hip hop/jazz/pop/rock (toggle

settings/pictures

transition: 3 seconds/5 sec/7 sec/ 10 sec/15 sec/30 sec (toggle )

shuffle: on/off



display menu:

themes: haze/night/amber (toggle)

backlight: 1 second/5 sec/ 15 sec/ 30 sec/ 1 min/ always on (toggle)

brightness: low/medium/high (toggle)

tv out: on/off (toggle)

tv system: ntsc/pal

settings/radio

north america/europe/japan (toggle)

about:

zune

storage

legal

Use up/down arrows to move between the setting option






Thats it. No more items. I hope that this zune guide was usefull...

Regards:

tomi

2007-01-13 22:25:44

Ok forum, I have not touched on the zune for a while. Here are some updates. I hope that this will help someone, and please repost it on any freelist that deals with mp3 players. Thanks!

on dec 20, Microsoft released firmware update 1.2 to the zune. This update fixed performance issues and made the player a bit faster. And with that firmware, they released a zune software update which supports vista. So disregard any information on Vista and Zune in my previous review. Microsoft is planning to make the zune usable as an external hard-drive in the near future. Podcasting (protected) support is also planned in the next firmware update (1.3)

Also note that the zune does not support books downloaded from audible. One disadvantage from the IPod.

If you're zune stops responding, or you're lost in the menus (it happened to me a few times), simply press the back and up arrow buttons at once to reset it. This will return you to the main menu, and puts the cursor to what ever item you were in before reset (if you were listening to a video, this will put the cursor on video, and pressing enter will open the menu).

That's it for now, as more news comes I'll post it on here. So check back often!

Regards:

tomi

2007-01-14 17:19:04

cool review.

I hope the Zune catches on, because it sounds like a good DAP.  I love my iPod, but I think Apple neds some good competition because that only makes all the players better.

2007-01-15 16:31:48

There's plenty of competition in the portable  player market, in fact I think there are so many being manufactured many compnnies will probably not make it. I don't see the stand alone MP3 player lasting though, they are more likely to be integrated into other devices in my opinion.MP3

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2007-01-17 02:43:59

Yes, the zune I think will win over apple some day. Many people are having problems with they're IPod and want something that never crashes or gets scratched too easily.  The zune is perfect for that ; it does not crash (if it does, a reset does the trick), and it's not too easy to scratch. The hard-drive is great, and can indure lots of shaking while walking or on a roler coaster ride. Battery is one issue in that the capacity seems to degrade fast (now it seems to only hold 8 out of 13 hours) and this is 2 months after purchase. I would like to see a pmp device that can have removable batterries, as this would save the consumer lots of hastle. But, it would also make the devices much heavier. Or if you could by a zune batterry off the store shelf and manually put it in.

Otherwise, no other problems so far.

Regards:

tomi

2007-01-17 19:59:31

Well if I were sighted I'd personally avoided Apple and Microsoft, going for maybe a known electronics brand like Phillips or just any player that seemed reasonable enough and wasn't super cheap. Far less expensive, and often run on AA or triple A batteriesso you could potentially carry a spare set assuming they use flash memory inside them.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2007-01-18 02:01:41

I think if the Zune wants to make a name for itself, it has to change a few things.  Although, I'm just going off reviews I've read...haven't been able to play with one yet.

I think the Zune should've come out with multiple capacities, not just a 30GB version.  Especially for those people who like to load up their players with music and movies and TV shows although I don't really see what the point is of loading a whole movie onto one in most situations.

I also think Microsoft shot itself in the foot by only making the Zune compadible with songs purchased from the Zune Marketplace, especially after they set up that whole plays for sure thing.  And, their way to purchase songs seems a bit weird if I understand it right...it costs 79 points to buy a song which equals $0.99.  I heard that you have to buy points in $5 increments.  I could be wrong, though.

Good point about the user replaceable battery.  That would be nice sometimes.  As for having a small flash based mp3 player, I wouldn't do that again until flash capacity gets alot higher for a reasonable price.  I like my iPod because I can cary all my music around in my pocket.  No more trying to decide what songs to put on there, or let it randomly put songs on...they're all there all the time.

I think the Zune sounds like a good player for blind people to consider, although at the same time I think alot of people criticize the iPod without even trying it...I know I did.  I was convinced I wouldn't be able to use it.  I had rockbox on there for awhile but I got rid of it because I hate the interface it uses, and didn't like having to switch back to the normal firmware to play protected content.

I think we need a good mp3 player built specifically for the blind that is hard disk based, and is also DRM compadible.  Although the problem with that is if you make it compadible with one type of DRM someone else won't like that it won't work with another one.

>/rant>

2007-01-18 08:44:59

Well if you aren't happy with 1gb flash based players you must have a *lot* of music.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2007-01-29 00:15:15

Comments from me.

This player, compared to my own, is...crap. Sorry. I have an IAudio X5L, which is rockbox-enabled, which is awesome. 30 gb, 30 hour battery, light and compact, customizable harddrive, external drive capabilities. Speech, recording, support for ogg, mp3, wav, m4a, flac, and other formats are just some of the great things about this player. What's more, no additional software is needed.

Discord: clemchowder633

2010-08-04 09:47:38

Lacking of codec support and not having the ability to do basic surround sound are the two biggest limitations for Apple TV. Audio Video Interleaved (AVI) are often containers, and can contain audio/video compressed using varying different codecs. So if you want to play your avi videos on apple tv,  you have to convert avi to apple tv first. Here,  this
avi to apple tv converter for Mac can give you a helper hand. Free Download avi to apple tv converter. Import AVI files to avi to apple tv converter mac, and set the output format from the pull-down menu. MP4 is the recommended video format to be converted from avi to apple tv. Click the button. After the process of converting avi to apple tv compatible formats, you can import your avi to apple tv successfully.

2010-08-04 13:40:31

I see your point simongbo. I was wondering why the Ipod nano fourth or fifth wasn't talked about in this topic, but I looked at the date and this topic is dated 2006 and 2007.  The last post before your's was jan 28, 2007. It's amazing how these stay around. Anyway, the Ipod touch 3g and later iphone 3gs and later, along with the IPod nano fourth and fift gen is accessible to the blind. I think if you buy a zone today, I think you need to make shure that it has buttons.

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
DropBox Referral

2010-08-04 14:50:16

Even if a Zoom had buttons instead of the now popular touch interface, you still wouldn't see me going for that. What I should have in a player is the ability to know what I'm selecting, with no matter of guessing, which is what would result with all buttons and no speech. Seeing as now I have an iPhone with 13GB of space to spare, it would be extremely hard for something to top that. I can even tell the iPod what to play, which from what I know so far about other players, that can't be done! Also, what swayed me to huge effect is the fact that it would read what I'm touching, right down to the punctuation if needed. This is my first, and so far only, portable player other than one of CD. For years, that was the only thing I had in the way of mobile music, and the same reasoning even went to phones, with none able to contact me on the road as a result of my steadfast refusal to pay for functions I couldn't use. However, I had a phone before an iPhone, but the day the 3GS was shown to me found me finding one for an upgrade to contract.

2010-08-04 15:48:03

Yeh. I also want to know, down to the smallest detail when needed, where I'm at. so far I haven't seen any other player (unless it was aim for the blind) That was at the same level of accessibility without loading a different OS on to the player wich I wasn't  really wanting to do. I have used other players, and every one had a different way of doing things, and on everyone I had to ask where things were. This is a big headake. the zone that was talked about in this topic sounds nice, and I think I seen one that a friend had, but don't think I really want one do to the stated reasons. Also, why do I want to share music with those turms atached and not seeing what I'm sharing? I don't mean to trash the zone, because it does look like a nice player, but it isn't for me. I guess I want to much...

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
DropBox Referral

2010-08-04 23:53:42

To ask for accessibility isn't too much. Of touch interfaces can have it in a more complete form than on any other mainstream device, why mot a button-centric system?

2010-08-05 02:18:26

One thing that apple did by putting accessivility in a major part of their product line is really making me question why others are not. I owna IPod touch, and have owned a fourth gen nano and known that they are useable  to the blind and they seemed to have got it mostly right. I'm not saying that they are perfict, but having a device like the IPod touch accessible soon out of the box without installing anything to the device goes a long ways. As for having a device that uses buttons instead of a touch screen should be accessible without a dout. I would like to play around with a zone, but the device just doesn't have any audio feed back for what navigation I'm doing as far as I know. I'm not saying that I don't use devices without speech output, because I do, but I am really picky. My hand held ham radio (other wise known as a ht) has audio feed back and the menu is easy enough to under stand. As for a music player, how am I going to find a song on it if the player doesn't clue me in? I had own an archos 20 GB jukebox for my first MP3 player, and the main thing about it was the fact that I could arange music on it in such away that I could find it easyly. Folder navigation was so easy. So you can see how mad I was when the next player I got aranged songs by artist, alvim, and song title. Maybe someone could find out how to pack the zune so that we can gain speech output?

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
DropBox Referral