Zune HD to get Xvid, Smart DJ (on Device), and Facebook this spring!

[JoshRead]

Very cool stuff. Kind of surprised about Xvid. I'm excited.

[CrowdAds]

[grommet]

Originally Posted by lip

I am actually quite shocked about xvid...I guess MS might be following Sony in this regard by not trying to force people to use standards set by them that have not panned out in real life.

As I stated, the Xbox 360 has supported Xvid for a long time... and so does Windows Media Player 12 (Windows 7)... out of the box. Why is this shocking? Also, the Zune has supported H.264 from day one, as well as WMV/VC-1. I see no "forcing."

[Nightstar]

Originally Posted by DaveMac-MS

Hey guys:

I'm gonna be self-indulgent here. And since none of you have raised this, I will.

When Zune HD came out, there was a ton of praise on ABI. Then within days it was drowned out by complaints. "It should support Xvid", "where's AVI?", "SmartDJ is great but sucks that it isn't on the device", "why no apps?", "where's the SDK", etc...

And my response was - we're a team of finite resources, we're doing as much as we can, and we're listening to the feedback. Sometimes we'll act on it, sometimes we can't (or won't), but we're listening.

There were whole threads dedicated to how much we suck because Xvid was a "defacto standard" and how MS was just not supporting it because it was open-source and "MS hates open source".

I begged folks to be patient and suggested we were FAR from done with the device. And while today's news is only incremental - I hope folks recognize that 1) I can't always tell you everything I want to, 2) I don't always disagree with your rants, 3) we are FAR from being done with the device and more is to come.

So, enjoy Xvid/AVI support, enjoy on-device SmartDJ, and enjoy the Facebook app when it officially launches. And please remember - the Zune team is actually in your camp, on your side. We just can't talk too much in advance about what we're working on, and we definitely can't do everything - even as much as we'd love to!



Actually, you lot are pretty far from easy to please - but that's a separate discussion.

I haven't been to the booth, I'm holed up in partner meetings over at our suite at the Palms Hotel - so I'm not sure. I'll ping the team over there now and see if I can get something for ya.

Cheers, Dave.

Than you and the crew... ^_^

[lip]

Originally Posted by grommet

As I stated, the Xbox 360 has supported Xvid for a long time... and so does Windows Media Player 12 (Windows 7)... out of the box. Why is this shocking? Also, the Zune has supported H.264 from day one, as well as WMV/VC-1. I see no "forcing."

I was unaware that wmp 12 supports it (I don't use it any longer)...in the past I needed a plug in.
I forgot about xvid and xbox360...I have one but don't use it at all for media (I have an htpc for that)...
Isn't WMV from MS?
My point is that MS seems to be giving up on their own formats that do not seem to have caught on and are not trying to be silly and force it down our throats like Sony tried with their formats (memory stick, their mp3 competitor format atrac or whatever, etc...).

LIP

[JoshRead]

Originally Posted by grommet

As I stated, the Xbox 360 has supported Xvid for a long time... and so does Windows Media Player 12 (Windows 7)... out of the box. Why is this shocking? Also, the Zune has supported H.264 from day one, as well as WMV/VC-1. I see no "forcing."

Not every Microsoft division or product is the same. For Zune, it's pretty surprising.

[Angelix]

Damn it, and I just bought the Cowon S9 too. This has made the Zune much, much more appealing.

[joyounghoon]

Thanks dave, we really appreciate it.

I loved the ZHD from the start, and I wanted to see if the ZHD will develop. At times, I did have some doubts, but I knew the ZHD would eventually be the perfect audio player I've been looking for.

I gave in and purchased the 16 gig right before Christmas, but now with the Xvid support, I need to get the 32 gig

[judymd]

and while that all sounds great, i STILL after owning this since lauch day, cannot connect to my home network or my office network or my sister's home network because we all use Verizon FIOS and apparently it is not supported. i would rather get these kinds of kinks worked out, or at least on the radar than get new functionality that is not really functional to me at all since i can't use the wireless part of the device. what good is twitter and facebook to me? i'm very disappointed.

[alexiznumber1]

i still want youtube lol

[arcmx]

All I can say is please don't waste time trying to put some sort of pandora app on this device, because with the combination of needing wifi connection, and the terrible quality of pandora, it just isn't worth it. Not saying this was suggested, but hoping I can save you guys some wasted resources. I have pandora for my HTC Droid Eris...the quality is worse than FM radio, I don't understand how anyone listens to it.

[lip]

Originally Posted by arcmx

All I can say is please don't waste time trying to put some sort of pandora app on this device, because with the combination of needing wifi connection, and the terrible quality of pandora, it just isn't worth it. Not saying this was suggested, but hoping I can save you guys some wasted resources. I have pandora for my HTC Droid Eris...the quality is worse than FM radio, I don't understand how anyone listens to it.

I kind of agree but more from the perspective that MS has the zune pass

[lip]

Originally Posted by alexiznumber1

i still want youtube lol

I agree...I guess I'm stupid but I still don't understand how I can have a youtube app on my windows mobile phone but not on my zune hd...although I could live with podcasts and video being available on zune marketplace on the device

[Jacob]

Haven't read the thread yet, but this is really good. These are things I would love on the device, and know I will. Congratulations to you and your team, Dave. Keep up the good work.

I know you probably can't confirm this, but it said "better playlists"; will I be able to move songs around without shuffling till the one I want is next?

Thanks.

Originally Posted by lip

I agree...I guess I'm stupid but I still don't understand how I can have a youtube app on my windows mobile phone but not on my zune hd...although I could live with podcasts and video being available on zune marketplace on the device

Because Windows Mobile is much older and has a lot of third-party apps.

[gamersat678]

Originally Posted by arcmx

All I can say is please don't waste time trying to put some sort of pandora app on this device, because with the combination of needing wifi connection, and the terrible quality of pandora, it just isn't worth it. Not saying this was suggested, but hoping I can save you guys some wasted resources. I have pandora for my HTC Droid Eris...the quality is worse than FM radio, I don't understand how anyone listens to it.

I couldn't care less about pandora (don't use it, that's why)(btw maybe your listening to a low quality stream on ur eris) but I want shoutcast. I always seem to be around wifi so I would like to use it.

[bla8291]

Originally Posted by arcmx

All I can say is please don't waste time trying to put some sort of pandora app on this device, because with the combination of needing wifi connection, and the terrible quality of pandora, it just isn't worth it. Not saying this was suggested, but hoping I can save you guys some wasted resources. I have pandora for my HTC Droid Eris...the quality is worse than FM radio, I don't understand how anyone listens to it.

I disagree - Pandora would be a great app for this device. I'm almost always in a wi-fi area, so it works for me. And plus, pandora has excellent quality, both on the desktop and on mobile devices. I've used their iPhone/iPod Touch app, and it sounded pretty good, before I turned on "high-quality" mode. As for zune pass, even though I couldn't care less for it (because I don't use it), I do know that what can be done with it to discover music is no match for what pandora can do. Pandora would also give a lot of people one more reason to get a Zune HD.

And besides - how can you complain about its need for wifi when you have apps like Twitter and soon Facebook, as well as MSN weather? Most people aren't in your shoes...

[jhaks]

Awesome additions. I just received my Zune yesterday! Very impressed!

As for all the whiners I agree completely that they need to be more constructive and less emotional. If a manufacturer or company shows no respect for their costumers then I can completely understand a disgruntled attitude but Microsoft is far from that these days; just look at the Windows, Xbox, Zune and Office teams.

[Klazio]

Great news. Plus it keeps everybody happy for now. In a couple of months most people will be complaining that the update hasn't come yet.

I am a new member on ABI but I've been reading a lot before and especially around the Zune. Dave might remember me for asking him if you can play music on the Zune HD on the day it came out (because everybody ws only concerned with apps and extra's)

I am glad Microsoft keeps the focus on the media player capabilities and doesn't come up with more useless apps. I am most excited about having Smart DJ on the device, even though the scope of songs that Smart DJ comes up with is a bit small. It often contains only a couple of different artists and I hardly ever discover any relatively unknown artists.

I think there are some more minor things in the software that would be relatively easy for Microsoft to improve (not sure, I'm not that technical )

• The options for discovering music in the marketplace could be more extensice and up to date. The 'new releases' tab for example still contains albums that came out in November, while some really good music came out in in the meantime that is not listed. It's not even possible to find this by a search per artist because new albums are not directly included there. Maybe there could be a complete list of new albums or a little explanation by an expert on what comes out every week (like you have with the movies on some airlines). It will give people a better view of new music is there and give a bit of a feel of a music community.
• It would be great if you can search for and download podcasts on the device. Not sure why this is not possible.
• The channels are a really great idea, but most of them contain mostly the same songs for 5 weeks in a row.
• Auto playlists are not live on the device (tell me if I'm wrong here)
• Online radio would be amazing but that's mainly because I'm from abroad and I love American radiostations .

I think the Zune is an amazing device. It's absolutely the best media device out there! I think Microsoft is doing really well but I don't really get the 'we can't give any information away' attitude. This is probably from the times that Microsoft was the market leader in everything they did. Now, I don't think any competitor could care less if Microsoft brings out a facebook app and on what date. Why not keep a blog with stuff that is being worked on to get more consumer awareness and understanding. It works well for a lot of companies!

Klazio

[arcmx]

Originally Posted by gamersat678

I couldn't care less about pandora (don't use it, that's why)(btw maybe your listening to a low quality stream on ur eris) but I want shoutcast. I always seem to be around wifi so I would like to use it.

Maybe I'm a snob for sound quality, but streaming audio on pandora (regardless of setting) is always highly disappointing. Try listening to something you have in 192kbps-320kbps on mp3, but the same song on pandora...always missing pieces.

[bla8291]

Originally Posted by arcmx

Maybe I'm a snob for sound quality, but streaming audio on pandora (regardless of setting) is always highly disappointing. Try listening to something you have in 192kbps-320kbps on mp3, but the same song on pandora...always missing pieces.

I hope that you've actually tried that comparison yourself, because I use pandora a lot (desktop), and not only is the stream crystal clear, but when I switch to music in my library, I don't notice a quality change. Pandora is one of the best out there in terms of quality (comparing my experience with Rhapsody, which has terrible quality, at least for the free service). Maybe on your device the quality might be inferior, but anyone here who has ever used the iPod pandora app can tell you otherwise. And that's the app.

[baylorbear134]

@davemac... I think most of the criticism on here was about the long delay on the facebook and twitter apps. or at least that was where the criticism was most harsh.

Also, can we expect that fact sheet that this info was found on to be updated and provide us with release information about other projects down the road?


Guys, the Zune team is handling the device the way you should. Release the device, and keep updated and adding onto it to increase customer satisfaction...its just been kinda slow because they obviously have a small work force.

Is microsoft providing adequate funding for the Zune?

Keep up the Great work guys