Zune Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"Zune Pass is just such a subscription service, and it's a pretty good one… but lately, Zune Pass subscribers have been seeing their music collections just disappear into thin air. This can be a single song, an entire album or even whole artists' collections. Disappearing acts included, but weren't limited to, popular artists like Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend and Spoon. Now, when stuff like this happens, the usual culprit is that the record industry has re-negotiated its licensing deals with the service… which seems to be exactly what occurred. Microsoft has responded to customers' complaints by saying that their music has disappeared because record labels have pulled them."

This story's been making the rounds on the internet as of late. It appears that music from a number of artists is no longer available for Zune Pass download in the marketpace, and has been subsequently stopped working in Zune Pass holders' collections. Though Microsoft has stated that this decision is left up to the labels, there seems to be no larger reasoning behind what content has been pulled. For their part Microsoft has acknowledged the issue and promised to investigate. They are asking affected users to report missing music in the Zune.net forum thread.

Looking at the price in our affiliate Amazon.com, the price on the Zune HD 32 GB has dropped to $249 USD, and the 16 GB Zune HD is $189.99 USD. Not bad!

"Windows Home Server was a large part of CES this year. I was pleasantly embraced by all you fellow Windows Home Server users and I joyfully shared the new features sets that Power Pack 3 empowered your home server with. The beautiful thing about our booth is the ability to walk everyone step by step, on how to take advantage of these new features. For those of you who were not at CES, I'd like to take the time to share with you those steps that I shared with CES attendees. One of the key scenarios that got a lot of interest at the show was how a Zune music player can benefit from having a Windows Home Server around as well. This post goes into more detail about why and how it all works together."

When Microsoft released Power Pack 3 for Windows Home Server, there were a number of new features added that perhaps not everyone realised was included. This article from The Windows Home Server blog, explains how to make full use of one of those features if you have a Media Center PC, a Windows Home Server and a media player such as the Zune. The ability to access your music, videos and pictures on both your Media Center PC and your Zune is nice, but to be able to record your TV shows and automatically create a copy compressed especially for the Zune so you can watch them on the go is brilliant. No more having to encode the TV shows specifically for the Zune, just record your show on the Media Center as normal and one extra copy encoded correctly for the Zune or other media player of your choice will be made. If you didn't know about this, then take a read and see how easy it is.

That's the kind of thing I've been seeing for about a month now from the Zune desktop software when I try to sync the College Humor video podcast. A couple of months back, it would only happen every few videos, but in December it turned into a problem with every single entry. When I click on the yellow exclamation mark, here's the error I get:

The Web Help link doesn't provide much in the way of useful information. The problem is that the files are MP4 in format, and I kind of doubt that the College Humor people decided to change their format recently (though I suppose anything is possible). So what's going on? I have no idea. I'm not the only one complaining about this issue, but so far there seems to be no fix. I tried un-subscribing to the podcast, and re-subscribing, but that didn't help. A podcast directory is only as good as the content in it, and if Microsoft doesn't have some way of tracking podcasts that are tossing errors into user's faces, it's going to be hard for them to grow the service as a reliable method of subscribing to podcasts. Any ideas?

"In the New World, computers are task-centric. We are reading email, browsing the web, playing a game, but not all at once. Applications are sandboxed, then moats dug around the sandboxes, and then barbed wire placed around the moats. As a direct result, New World computers do not need virus scanners, their batteries last longer, and they rarely crash, but their users have lost a degree of freedom. New World computers have unprecedented ease of use, and benefit from decades of research into human-computer interaction. They are immediately understandable, fast, stable, and laser-focused on the 80% of the famous 80/20 rule. Is the New World better than the Old World? Nothing's ever simply black or white."

This is a really great "think piece" that's well worth reading if you're the kind of person that likes to think about where computers - and that includes mobile devices - are going to be moving in the next decade. As such, I'm posting it across all our sites to get the widest possible take on the topic. I want to hear from you! Read more...

"Coinciding with the scheduled Zune.net maintenance today, a new Zune software update was also released (version 4.2.202.0 for those playing along at home). What might appear as just a regular software update is actually hiding a very big secret. The elusive 'Zune Phone' is pretty much confirmed... there are three unique class IDs and specifically Product IDs (PID) that identify three potential “Zune Phone” models (not storage capacities) off the bat. My bet is that they’re not just capacity variants (since various Zune capacities are all grouped under the same PID), but three actual hardware SKUs."

Long Zhen never fails to disappoint. The amateur coder and proprietor of istartedsomething.com cracked open the new Zune 4.2 software to reveal driver support for three upcoming phone models. Though the hardware ID listed shows Microsoft as the manufacturer there's no indication that they're the rumored Zune phone (which Microsoft has gone on record several times to deny.) So they could just be generic Windows Mobile 7 phones, right? Well not exactly. As we learned from the Palm Pre-masquerading as an iPod so it could sync with iTunes debacle a few months back, the USB-IF doesn't allow hardware vendors to mask their associations with the drivers, meaning that it looks like Microsoft is planning to release a hardware device afterall.

ZuneBoards seems to think these unnamed devices have something to do with Project Pink, specifically the Premium Mobile eXperiences division (PMX) and two Danger-designed devices, Pure and Turtle--a story first broke by Microsoft Watch's Mary Jo Foley. Refrences in a Zune library function pointing to a type of device called PmxPure and PmxTurtle seem to support this theory as well. Right now Microsoft is remaining fairly tight-lipped about their phone plans. Hopefully we'll see the strategy begin to coalesce around next month's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The Zune HD is one of the gadgets up for Engadget's "Gadget of the Year" award - jump over to the voting page and cast your vote. We can't let the iPhone 3GS win! ;-)

"Xbox Live deserves praise as a service, but being the standard for which other online gaming services are judged means its flaws come under repeated scrutiny -- for good reason. It's why I always find myself asking Microsoft executives a couple of the same questions whenever I'm given the opportunity to sit down with them: why is there a friends cap on Xbox Live and when will the entire service allow me to pay for content in real-world dollar amounts, rather than confusing Microsoft Points?"

Where do you guys stand on the issue of points? I'm not as negative on them as some people - I'm fine paying 800 points for an Xbox Arcade game, largely because I have no frame of reference for the cost. Interestingly, I found points to be very frustrating when deciding to rent SD and HD video downloads - I know how much a DVD or Blu-ray rental costs at my local video store, so having to fire up a Web browser to calculate how much a video downloads costs ticked me off. I like the idea of micro-transactions for game content, but think that it could co-exist alongside all the other content (songs, videos, games) being in dollar amounts. Any changes made to Xbox Live would rippled down to the Zune Marketplace. What's your take?

"Zune Nation is excited about the Zune 4.2 Software update. What was labeled as a maintenance update has turned out to provide more than expected as many websites are reporting on new features and future possibilities that arise from this update. While it is not my goal to cite every article on the subject, I did try to get the originator. Overall, I wanted to give you a rundown of what has changed in this update as seen through the websites of Zune Nation."

My man Neville at Inside the Circle has rounded up and broken down some of the major changes we got as a result of the recently-launched 4.2 update. New in this version are support for Windows 7 podcasts Libraries, in-software playback of AVI video, black-tinted playlist tiles (saywha?), and some tantilizing hints of an upcoming phone device. Some users are reporting the ability to use the Zune interface in several other languages, including German. Unfortuantely, it looks like some of the international hacks have taken a step back to requiring the user to switch their Windows locale to US/English to access the Marketplace and Social. Hopefully this will be remedied soon with a launch in a a few international countries (as My Microsoft Life seems to think.)

"We know many of you are anxiously waiting for the Facebook for Zune HD app, and have been very patient. Thank you. However, we need to ask a small favor... just hold on a little longer. I know we said by the end of January, but we want to deliver the best app to you and it is going to take a little bit more time. Again thanks for understanding."

There's something kind of problematic about the Zune app story when it takes Microsoft months and months to release Twitter and Facebook apps for the Zune HD. They need to open up the Zune Marketplace to outside developers - Microsoft is neither fast nor agile when it comes to software development, and speed is what the Zune HD needs to start picking up if it's going to thrive. I really hope the Zune Facebook app is better on the Zune HD than it is on Windows Mobile - that's one sad app. I actually prefer using the Facebook mobile site designed for the iPod Touch rather than the Windows Mobile app because it's so much faster and functional. And when a Web interface is faster and more functional than a local app, you've really gone wrong with your app development...