Zune experience

So I’ve been playing around with my new Zune player.

I’ve listened to a ton of music, converted and watched movies on it and I’ve shown pictures of my family to grandmothers and other relatives. I love my Zune player, seriously!

Yesterday I was at Patrick Bes who has one of the many different iPod versions. He told me he couldn’t just download MP3s from internet and upload them to his iPod. The problem is, he has many MP3s that aren’t available at iTunes, like old C64 chiptunes and other stuff that’s not commercially sold. Not being able to upload these just plain sucks. I’ve been able to upload everything I want to my Zune player.

I’ve also converted some movies I own to my Zune player. Some great pixar videos that are available on the internet, as well as Star Wars Episode III for example. The quality is great. You can choose to convert them 19:6 as they’re originally, or use pan&scan which results in a full-screen movie, which is highly preferable. And with 30GB on board you can upload all 6 episodes! 😉
The only problem is that the screen just isn’t all that to really watch movies on. Someone suggested to use it to watch webcasts or such. I’ll have to try and see if those can be converted. It would be a great service by Microsoft if they’d offer them in MP4 Zune format by default!

The device itself is very solid. Besides the movies, the screen is great to show info on the song it’s playing including album art. It’s also good enough to show photos. The menu is also really easy to understand. However I already miss the menu from before the 1.2 firmware upgrade. The new menu doesn’t show all options in a list, but flips between the available options on the same screen with other options. They must’ve changed it because of the extra push of the button.

Talking about the buttons, there are enough to work with the device. I think it could’ve used some more buttons just to get more functionality out of the menu. But as iPod doesn’t have the extra buttons my Zune has, I can’t complain!

Although it’s not really large, you’ll probably have difficulties dragging it around, especially during the summer while walking or riding a bike. My problem is, there aren’t any accessories coming to Europe until the end of 2007.So I can’t get a cord for around the neck or something. Also adapters aren’t available, I can only charge the battery using a USB port.

It’s definitely a keeper for now! I’m happy!