Friday, February 1, 2008
Zune Podcast Download Mystery Solved Shocking Revelation!
Posted by Rocco Augusto in "Zune Talk" @ 05:34 PM
"I have been getting reports from listeners saying they have been able to download my show in the Zune MarketPlace, but it absolutely refused to synchronize the media it had just downloaded to their Zune media player. I fired off a message to Rob at Zune to find out what the story was. The responding answer completely blew me away. This is the first negative thing I am going to say about the Zune MarketPlace. In fact I told Rob he needed to smack the Engineers that did this, because it is obvious that the engineering team did not read the RSS specification. Here is the deal. If you have a RSS feed with only Audio or Video Enclosures you are fine. But mix Video and Audio Enclosures together in the same RSS feed and the Zune Marketplace looses its mind! The software makes a decision on which media type is going to be allowed to be synchronized to the Zune Player."
I have to fully agree, this is one of the stupidest problems that use Zune users have had to deal with. Though in Microsoft's defense, as of this moment in time, I haven't experienced this problem as a majority of the podcasts that I listen to have one standard format that they use — either audio or video. There are some podcasts that I listen to that are primarily video podcasts but they have an audio feed for individuals that do not have time to watch, but none that have both in one feed. Now while Zune Marketplace shouldn't have a problem (in theory) with differentiating with synchronizing audio as well as video from the same podcast feed... isn't it more tidy, and less lazy-like, to separate your feeds? Why include both audio and video in one feed? That is just asking for confusion when a user is expecting a video podcast and only audio plays. I myself would most likely spend hours fiddling with the item and trying to figure out why it is "broken" even though it was perfectly fine. It's like turning on your TV and expecting to watch a new episode of "Lost" but you find out that the new episode you were all excited to watch is read in audiobook format that week. Don't screw with your users like this and for the love of all things digital and entertaining, just practice some consistency!
I have to fully agree, this is one of the stupidest problems that use Zune users have had to deal with. Though in Microsoft's defense, as of this moment in time, I haven't experienced this problem as a majority of the podcasts that I listen to have one standard format that they use — either audio or video. There are some podcasts that I listen to that are primarily video podcasts but they have an audio feed for individuals that do not have time to watch, but none that have both in one feed. Now while Zune Marketplace shouldn't have a problem (in theory) with differentiating with synchronizing audio as well as video from the same podcast feed... isn't it more tidy, and less lazy-like, to separate your feeds? Why include both audio and video in one feed? That is just asking for confusion when a user is expecting a video podcast and only audio plays. I myself would most likely spend hours fiddling with the item and trying to figure out why it is "broken" even though it was perfectly fine. It's like turning on your TV and expecting to watch a new episode of "Lost" but you find out that the new episode you were all excited to watch is read in audiobook format that week. Don't screw with your users like this and for the love of all things digital and entertaining, just practice some consistency!
