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Zune HD Hands on Demo and Impressions

milo said:
Joking about what? And yes, it's reportedly 480 x 272 - they made it widescreen by giving it fewer pixels.
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This could be a real annoyance. The iPhone screen is just wide enough for a reasonable keyboard in portrait, and in landscape there is precious little room for text.

It's the smallest dimension that matters, and it's only films in such widescreen.
Imagine sudoku.


I can see that they wouldn't want to just copy iPhone specs, but making the screen smaller is not an improvement.
 
Journojulz said:
I can see that they wouldn't want to just copy iPhone specs, but making the screen smaller is not an improvement.
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And if they really wanted widescreen for video watching, they could have added more pixels to do it, something like 540x320 (although I assume that would probably be an odd custom resolution).
 
Anyone know what kind of aspect ratio videos would have to be on this thing?
 
milo said:
And if they really wanted widescreen for video watching, they could have added more pixels to do it, something like 540x320 (although I assume that would probably be an odd custom resolution).
Click to expand...
I'm all for more pixels but you do run into weird resolutions. You're pretty much limited to 480 x 272 or 848 x 480 for a 16:9 mobile device.
 
Eidorian said:
I'm all for more pixels but you do run into weird resolutions. You're pretty much limited to 480 x 272 or 848 x 480 for a 16:9 mobile device.
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Why? 16:9 is a ratio. To get 320 wide like the iPhone it would be 569 high wouldn't it?

All you need is a 'fit to screen' mode which iTunes has (but zune pc software doesn't)
 
Journojulz said:
This could be a real annoyance. The iPhone screen is just wide enough for a reasonable keyboard in portrait, and in landscape there is precious little room for text.

It's the smallest dimension that matters, and it's only films in such widescreen.
Imagine sudoku.


I can see that they wouldn't want to just copy iPhone specs, but making the screen smaller is not an improvement.
Click to expand...

I agree with this. Although I think the device and UI look pretty slick, I don't see why it was necessary to make the screen 16:9 by reducing the vertical resolution. They're going for different look I guess, marginally sleeker, like a mini HDTV, but that's not going to work as well for games, photos, keyboards, and web. On the iPhone/Touch you can just zoom out on widescreen movies (which are usually actually 1.85:1 or 2.39:1 for full theater aspect anyway). Essentially all they did was chop off screen real estate.
 
AidenShaw said:
It's a prototype, of course.
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That would explain it and hopefully MS gets that ironed out by release.

One of my biggest pet peeves with touch screens--and I'm betting I'm not alone--is the frequency which with I have to repeat a tap or gesture. The iPhone falls just below my threshold of annoyance for that. Seeing it happen so many times in a 1 minute video actually put me on edge a little. MS should hold off on previewing things until they work well enough to make a good first impression because this doesn't (at least for me.)
 
This was a status update I received on my facebook:

"Zune HD = Ipod Touch Killer....makes that media player from the queers at Apple look so 1999"

I guess we'll have to see about that lol. Methinks probably not.
 
20090529.jpg
 
vipergts2207 said:
This was a status update I received on my facebook:

"Zune HD = Ipod Touch Killer....makes that media player from the queers at Apple look so 1999"

I guess we'll have to see about that lol. Methinks probably not.
Click to expand...

I think that it has been scientifically proven that people who use an allegation of homosexuality in the derogatory sense are consistently unreliable in other forms of rational discrimination.
 
I'd really like to see one of these, I'd never buy one most likely, as all my music has been purchased through iTunes, but it'd still be cool to look at and play around with.
 
Eidorian said:
Which is fine as well but awkward.
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only awkward for the maths - which is what computers are made for, and designers - who are paid to make the awkward comfortable.

the final arbiter must surely be the ergonomics of the human hand - not whether it makes a neat round number?
 
The source I read it from the first time was wrong. Here is the proper definition.
The term iPod (according to Apple) simply stands for Internet POD. The POD in the name stands for "Portable Open Database" which is basically the software used to power the iPod.
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Citation
 
Prof. said:
iPod literally means: I (me) Portable On Demand
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When me and some school friends got wasted on southern comfort in a forest after o-levels (16+), we decided to pick a name for our gang.

In the morning we woke up rather bleary and found one of us had carved GDVA on a tree.

We liked the sound of it, and later decided it should to mean Grand Day of Video and Alcohol

I believe 'iPod' was similarly 'post-rationalised' :D
 
surferfromuk said:
So the worlds richest and largest computer company comes up with a second rate Touch clone two years later.

Quite embarrassing really.
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Second rate...?

OLED, HDMI connection, 120 GB version, radio and wireless sync... and it will probably play DivX movies natively like Windows 7 does, so people can drop their movies onto it directly without Apple-fying them first.

if this is a carbon copy of the iPod Touch, tell me where I can get a Touch with radio, wireless sync, the 120 GB micro drive from the Classic, OLED screen and HDMI out? Is there some invisible switch on the back of my iPod Touch where I can activate all this?

Microsoft deserved all the flak they got for the underwhelming brown turd that was the original Zune, but automatically dissing an obviously impressive product like the Zune HD just because it's Microsoft is quite pathetic.
 
This is only a prototype, so this little demo does not mean too much. You cannot really see the quality of the screen from this clip. I am positive that the Itouch will have a better browser.

My only question is, what is the Sound quality like?

I so hope that Apple finally gets thier act together and improves the SQ across the range.

Take the new sony x series, crap attempt at a touch ( functionality) but damn it sounds so good.
 
Journojulz said:
only awkward for the maths - which is what computers are made for, and designers - who are paid to make the awkward comfortable.

the final arbiter must surely be the ergonomics of the human hand - not whether it makes a neat round number?
Click to expand...
Alright ignore precedent with resolution and displays.
 
ddTaylor said:
You do realize that those two sites mentioned are NOT fans of Apple OR MS, right? What reason would they say what they said? Did they all get free ZuneHD's? Did Ballmer offer them a free person chair massage in order to grease the initial posting on the HD?
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Gizmodo probably loved the zunes because they got free ones, like what they were like after they all got free Macbooks
 
cycomiko said:
Gizmodo probably loved the zunes because they got free ones, like what they were like after they all got free Macbooks
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Gizmodo deffinatly has a pro apple slant depending one which editor is posting. From all accounts so far this is deffinatly going to be a nice gadget.

Note that there are many other great devices that haven't had the success of the ipod in the past as well.
 
Anuba said:
Second rate...?

OLED, HDMI connection, 120 GB version, radio and wireless sync... and it will probably play DivX movies natively like Windows 7 does, so people can drop their movies onto it directly without Apple-fying them first.

if this is a carbon copy of the iPod Touch, tell me where I can get a Touch with radio, wireless sync, the 120 GB micro drive from the Classic, OLED screen and HDMI out? Is there some invisible switch on the back of my iPod Touch where I can activate all this?

Microsoft deserved all the flak they got for the underwhelming brown turd that was the original Zune, but automatically dissing an obviously impressive product like the Zune HD just because it's Microsoft is quite pathetic.
Click to expand...

You are right that it may not be second rate. But It's not obviously impressive either. We'll see when it comes out. It's like the Blackberry Storm... everybody thought it was going to be an amazing new smart phone, but when it came out, people hated it for the click screen.
We'll just have to wait and see.
 
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