It can download stuff through your 360 as well, apparently. Zune Marketplace on the 360… Touchscreen and everything.
I’m cautiously optimistic.
I’ve been very underwhelmed by the Zune. It’s very “ok”, the only good thing is the subscription music service. Not much desire to go back to another piece of MS hardware, however.
Touchscreen, Marketplace integration, and HD Radio out of the box? Yup. I’m getting one.
I love my little 30GB old-timer. This looks like a great upgrade.
My poop brown 30GB continues to plug away, but I might consider an upgrade to one of these.
Pretty disappointing, IMO. I was hoping they would buck the “touch and only touch” trend and put a DS style D-Pad and a couple of nicely sized hardware buttons on the next Zune. Hopefully they have something really special up their sleeve to announce at E3, otherwise it seems way too samey (but 2 years late to the party) to iPod Touch/iPhone for me to bother buying one.
I love my 120 GB Zune. I’ll have to con my little bro into buying it so I can upgrade.
FWIW, I’ve got an 8gb Zune and I like it very much for what I use it for (basically as an mp3 player/radio for running and working out, a niche my iPhone doesn’t fit very well in due to form factor). I’m not anti-Zune by any means… I just wish they put a proper controller on the new Zunes because without one it is going to suck for tons of game genres that I enjoy just like the iPhone does and if it doesn’t offer me a more rounded gaming experience than my iPhone there’s no reason for me to buy it.
I’ve already got more mp3 players than I need and the iPhone platform for gaming is so large and the Zune control system appears to be so similar to the existing iPhone that I can’t imagine there will be many games for the Zune that aren’t just ports of iPhone games… Unless Microsoft has some super secret feature they haven’t talked about yet in this I’d just never be able to justify buying it.
It’ll be funny if they announce a separate SKU during E3 that adds additional controls to make it more like a portable gaming device.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
That’s exactly the sentiment I had when I heard the announcement. Those are some key selling features, and certainly reason enough to upgrade from Ol’ Brownie.
My sentiments exactly. With the Xbox being my primary entertainment device now (gaming and netflix) this is almost a no brainer for me.
if that’s what you call it.
Advice: Get a toothpick to use with that.
Sounds okay. The big differentiator seems to be HD radio which isn’t a huge deal to me (or really, anyone I know, especially given all of the radio apps on iPhone).
The IE-powered browser concerns me, as well as the fact that the iPhone OS is already about 30,000 apps ahead. Don’t really see why you would choose thing for an iPod Touch or iPhone at this point.
The hardware looks nice.
Can someone explain the appeal of having a radio receiver? I bought an iPod to get away from radio.
HD Radio sounds intriguing but last I checked, in my area it was ten channels of NPR and not much else. Maybe it is finally catching on? I wouldn’t mind a device that pulls in CD quality audio off the air.
Can someone explain the appeal of having a radio receiver? I bought an iPod to get away from radio.
I can, actually. One use is that at the gym they have a bunch of TVs running with radio station numbers stuck on them. If you tune to that station, you can hear what’s happening on that screen. For people who like to watch TV while they bike/run, it would actually be a useful feature that an iPod can’t match.
Plus, even though I also like that I can get away from the radio, there are times I’m tired of my podcasts and all my own music, and I like to be surprised by what the radio can throw at me.
EpicBoy’s right about the gym use, though I always avoid watching anything cuz it slows me down. However, the best thing about a radio is definitely your local classical station! Wooh!
What are you talking about? It’s not a touch-screen like Windows Moblie phones (resistive). It’s a multitouch capacitive screen (like the iPhone/iPod Touch). Only it’s OLED for maximum purty.
I kinda feel the same way. I never use my Zune’s FM radio, but apparently people commonly do. A really large percentage of Zune users use the radio several times a week.
I’m assuming that radio remains a mainstay due to talk radio programs and stuff. Podcasts haven’t totally supplanted those, yet.
The neat trick the Zune does is that it pulls the metadata from radio stations that support it, which most major markets do. So if you’re listening to the radio and hear a song you like, you can immediately and easily tag it to download it next time you sync up. HD Radio is a novel idea - it’s much higher quality than FM - but I’m not sure how much I really care, personally.
It’s a self-selecting audience though, isn’t it, since probably the radio functionality played a role in them choosing Zune over iPod?