The article is here.
Basically, 30GB, supports h.264, MP3, AAC, and WMA. No word on pricing, and you can wirelessly transfer tracks to your Zuneified buddies with a 3-play limited license.
Personally, I’d want at least a 60GB drive, and solid podcast support before considering a switch from iPod. No idea what it syncs with, if it’s WMP11 or a newly designed player, and that’s about as important as the device itself.
Wow, when can I preorder my [edit] ugly brown design mockup?!
I… like the brown one. It’s a retro color.
Any word ojn what the battery life is supposed to be? And only 30 gig? What the hell? When I finally upgrade from my 20 gig iPod I’m gonna want a hell of a lot more space than 30 gigs.
I actually like the brown colour too.
I also heard on the news today that it was supposed to retail for $300. A bit more than I was expecting.
Since the new iPod 30GB is $250, I guess that’s not such a good price point, if true.
Interested but hoping a 60gig version will soon be announced.
I’d be interested if I could just copy a video file to it, without having to go through a conversion program–with encrypted DVDs being the exception.
That 3-play limited license for wi-fi tracks is a bigger deal than I first expected. What it means is that the Zune will wrap every song you send in proprietary DRM, regardless of the license of that original song. If you send a song you have recorded to a friend it will still expire after three days. If you send a song under Creative Commons license, it will still expire after three days. Considering that lending your music CD to a friend so he can burn a copy is perfectly legal in most of the world, falling under fair-use, this policy is just draconian.
I don’t see any upside to the consumer here. Just more and more restrictions.
Zune not able to play Microsoft’s own DMRed Windows Media: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004910.php
So I guess Microsoft Media Plays For Sure, unless you use the Microsoft media player.
Is this actually true? I’m not trying to start a fight, just I always thought that licenses prohibited lending.
Yup.
Here in Denmark as in most of the EU borrowing a cd from a friend or the library (and our libraries offer vast collections) and then copying it for your own personal use was legal.
They ammended the law in 2003 making digital copies illegal, but analogue copying was still within fair use. But the newest addition to the law has made it illegal to break copyprotection of any sorts making analogue copying illegal too in most cases.
Sigh. Shit like this makes me despair at politicians. They are going to enforce this new law how exactly? In purely practical terms, this is just impossible. Makes me wonder how the decisionmaking process worked, and what opinions got aired.
I understand that the Zune allows you to share music between players for “three days and three plays”, presumably that’s enabled using some kind of DRM. But what about music that isn’t DRM-enabled, like something you’ve ripped from a CD? Will you be able to share a permanent copy of that, or does the Zune somehow DRM the shared copy so as to still prevent its permanent use?
I imagine it’ll work your way, otherwise I’d expect the RIAA to really hyperventilate.
Whitta, scroll up five posts. kthxbye
Oops, thanks!
That pretty much has fucked the Zune for me. No interest in it now.
Can’t see why people would be surpised at this. If you could freely transfer music say you ripped from your own CD to a friend they could keep it and then keep sharing it to others. Thats essentially turning the Zune to a handheld filesharing(for music anyways) platform. The RIAA would go nuts over that.
As opposed to people just connecting their Zune’s to a friend’s computer and transferring the songs?
A handheld filesharing platform that is limited to sharing music to people in your physical vicinity over a wireless connection doesn’t sound like much of a threat to music sales. Certainly no more than people borrowing cd’s from their friends which is perfectly legal. That the RIAA would go nuts isn’t surprising, but they aren’t exactly the voice of reason either.
Then the RIAA probably shouldn’t buy me one. The thing that pisses me off the most about this DRM shit is that we’re paying for it. If I buy an mp3 player, I want to be able to use it for whatever I want.
And this activity is actually illegal under a CC license! Woot!