Zune Thoughts: Visiting Zune HQ for the Zune 3.0 Briefing

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Thursday, September 11, 2008

Visiting Zune HQ for the Zune 3.0 Briefing

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Zune Events" @ 01:10 PM

Zune Firmware UpdatesMegan Tedesco, Lead Program Manager on Zune Devices, was the first official Zune employee and she came in to brief us some of the new firmware features that will be available to all Zune owners come September 16th. Yes, that includes Zune 30 owners - so that means the Zune some of you bought back in 2006 will get some extremely cool new features, for free. You've got to hand it to the Zune team for taking care of all Zune owners, not just the latest generation. First off, there's a clock! Yes, a clock - the feature I've been asking for since 2006. The clock is only visible on the home screen, and not in the Now Playing mode, but hey, they need room for improving it later, right?

I took a bunch of photos (I apologize that the quality isn't better), so let's start the walk-through...

Figure 10: Megan Tedesco walking us through the new 3.0 firmware features.

Figure Figure 11: Buy from FM is one of the big new features. This feature will work as well as the local radio station's data, meaning that if they provide poor RDS data, the Zune might have trouble figuring out the name of the song. Zune 3.0 supports RT+, which is a new standard that contains more information.

The Zune can connect to secure or unsecure networks. There's an on-screen keyboard that allows you to enter WEP keys, WPA passwords, etc. It will not work with any WiFi service that requires a Web browser for authentication.

Figure 12: To purchase tracks from the Zune Marketplace, you'll first select the Marketplace menu item.

Figure 13: Rather than starting from only a search box, when you connect to the Marketplace you'll get options for viewing Top Songs, Top Albums, and New Releases.

Figure 14: If you looking for something in particular, you can use the search function. You move from one letter to another by clicking up and down on the Zune pad, or sweeping up and down if you want it to go faster.

Figure 15: The search results.

Figure 16: Looking at the results of a different search - all the albums by Bloc Party.

Figure 17: If you have a Zune Pass, you can stream music. If you don't have a Zune Pass, you'll get the 30 second sample clip like you'd get on the desktop.


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