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Zune HD Hands on Demo and Impressions

Say it aint so

trekkie604 said:
Sedulous said:
I don't understand why the top 15% of the screen always has the menu section title in a huge font that is mostly cut off. Why bother taking up the top 15% so that you can see the bottom half of the menu section title?
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obviously a stylistic choice.
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Choice? Yes. Stylistic? Oh brother.

You can crop an image and retain a sense of impact, but cropping text to make it illegible is just daft.

I do like the screen transitions (ie 3d menu revolving in/out). Looks smooth and very futuristic. And like someone mentioned earlier, whoever did the video recording really should have captured a focused shot of the zune screen.
 
DHarrisDBS34 said:
I love when things like the Zune HD and Palm Pre come out. They force Apple to pump up the iPhone and iPod Touch. We may not see it this year, but within a year or so the iPhone/iPod Touch will have an OLED screen,
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or at WWDC we get an announcement that in two weeks a new phone will be out that has an OLED screen and the touch will come out in the fall. because Apple was already working on it.
 
Sedulous said:
I don't understand why the top 15% of the screen always has the menu section title in a huge font that is mostly cut off. Why bother taking up the top 15% so that you can see the bottom half of the menu section title?
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Possibly replicating the Windows7 experience? Large icons with little text....
While I agree it takes up screen space, I dont think thats necessarily bad. It helps to make things clearly by focusing on the current selection and its "cool". But forget about usability.


I am glad to see that MS is going after Apple's strongpoint. I just hope they dont make a ZunePhone. That would be ridiculous and pointless.

What I want to see is what they will hook this thing to and in how many iterations. It took Apple 2, possibly 3 iterations to create an ecosystem and now they are growing it with possible video downloads (??). Apple got it right becoz they could use iTunes. Is this thing going to use WMP or Zune software separately? Many, many questions to answer on how MS is going with this......
 
villageindian said:
Possibly replicating the Windows7 experience? Large icons with little text....
While I agree it takes up screen space, I dont think thats necessarily bad. It helps to make things clearly by focusing on the current selection.


I am glad to see that MS is going after Apple's strongpoint. I just hope they dont make a ZunePhone. That would be ridiculous and pointless.

What I want to see is what they will hook this thing to and in how many iterations. It took Apple 2, possibly 3 iterations to create an ecosystem and now they are growing it with possible video downloads (??). Apple got it right becoz they could use iTunes. Is this thing going to use WMP or Zune software separately? Many, many questions to answer on how MS is going with this......
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Plus, we all know how MS likes to change their brand of format/DRM every 3 weeks.
 
notjustjay said:
How many times did the guy tap on the screen, and nothing happened, and he had to tap again to make it work?
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To be fair, I use to do that on my iPhone when I first got it. It might just take some getting use to


So Microsoft makes their rotation animation speed a little higher, and that's all it takes for people to say "Wow, that's fast!"? Yet it took a good second or two lag to get to the radio screen, with no indication that it's doing something.
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I can say the same thing about loading apps on the iPhone...
 
Wow this is pretty exciting, competition in the Mp3 market again :cool: Apple better be on their toes, I bet Microsoft is going to have their gaming studios start cranking out quality games for this thing. I think things are going to start getting interesting, it will be good to put some pressure on Apple, they have been too comfy raking in all those billions its time for them to step it up :D
 
I've only seen one person make the valid point that it can't really be an iPod (in particular iPod Touch) "killer" because it doesn't have the App Store...one's a music/video player and the other is much more of a full fledged multimedia device.

Although, it might take some of the customers away from the iPod line who are dissatisfied with the iPod Touch's focus on apps/games over music/video.
 
Treq said:
It looks like an ipod touch with an fm tuner. And two major drawbacks. No app store, and... it's a zune.
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It's HD with HDMI out. No Apple device (not even computers has this).

HDMI has been mainstream in the PC market for over 2 years.

Let me pay Apple for my 19 adapters to hook it up HDMI to my TV's.

None of my HD Sony TV's have DVI.
 
Treq said:
And two major drawbacks. No app store, and... no native OS X support.
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Fixed. The fact that its a Zune isn't a drawback. The Zune that I own is a great device, it just lacks OS X integration that would make it an iPod replacement for me.

So far the Zune HD looks like the Zune UI goes between music and photos (between apps) faster than my iPhone. I'll delay judgments until I see transitions from all apps (e.g. like from the mobile browser back to music or vice versa).

Since I use an iPhone I wouldn't really see a need for the Zune HD beyond the video out, but it looks like a solid and sexy device.
 
months said:
I have a macbook and love apple, but I can't lie, this thing looks amazing! The only thing that the ipod touch has over this is the apps and the internet browser, as I'm assuming Microsoft's won't be as good judging from what I've seen of IE mobile.
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Probably the two biggest features that have pushed the iPod/iPhone ecosystem beyond all the media-player basics and left all competitors trying to catch up.

The thought of mobile IE does make me queasy though. Google are showing off their new HTML5 features that even IE8 for the desktop is unable to render yet the iPhone has done so for some time.
 
The Zune looks absolutely incredible! I love the animation and interface, and the OLED screen looks amazing.
 
Treq said:
Really? This is a big deal? They just copied the ipod touch. Ant that's what? 2 years old now?
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Although this is an obviously partisan forum membership, can people give Microsoft a little bit of credit? It will take years before we see OLED tech on an iphone or ipod touch...

If MS prices this along with the touch, it will take a lot of of sales away, and the OLED screen itself might push it past the ipod touch.

Does that mean you'll claim Apple copied MS when they get OLED screens for the iphone/touch???? :rolleyes:
 
Treq said:
Really? This is a big deal? They just copied the ipod touch. Ant that's what? 2 years old now?
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The market is going touch screen, it isn't copying Apple, its going along with the market. The Zune HD also has notable features that the iPod touch does not have: OLED screen, FM Tuner, and HDMI out (with accessory). The FM tuner is of no use to me because I don't listen to the radio, but its still 1+ feature on the Touch. The only thing the Touch really has going for it above the Zune HD is the App store, which while offering endless possibilities development-wise, doesn't match some of the hardware in the Zune HD.
 
Seahawk Fan said:
It's HD with HDMI out. No Apple device (not even computers has this).

HDMI has been mainstream in the PC market for over 2 years.

Let me pay Apple for my 19 adapters to hook it up HDMI to my TV's.

None of my HD Sony TV's have DVI.
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It's not HD. it's 480x272. Not even SD.
 
As for being able to play back 720p through an hdmi cable? Who really wants to waste 2GB per hour of video for the off chance that they might play it on a big screen?
 
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