My wife gave me the 30 gig with car pack for anniversary. I don't know much about it and have not even taken it out of the box. http://www.zune.net/en-us/meetzune/device.htm - I've done a "search" on previous posts about it, but have seen nothing from those who actually have one. Does anyone have a zune and can you offer any advice on it?
Just got one for my fiancee on saturday. She wanted to watch videos on it, and since the ipod screen is so small, we narrowed it down to the Zen or the Zune. Ultimately she decided on the Zune, though I'm not exactly sure why. The unit itself is great. Very easy to use, good quality on both audio and viedo. I'm extremely impressed with the unit. The software is a bit difficult to figure out and there isn't much in the way of an instruction manual. Now that I have it down, its not too bad, but not as easy as the iPod software. I'm sure that they'll update the software pretty quick though and make some changes. There are only two things I don't like so far about it other than the PC side software usability: 1) Unlike the iPod, Zen, my cell phone, and just about every other device out there with a drive in it, you can't just open up the drive in your 'my computer' and copy stuff on and off. It doesn't appear. I'm sure some hacker will figure that out soon enough, but given the problems with the PC side software, it's an annoyance 2) While it will accept MP4, MV4 and WMV video files, it really seems to only play WMV. It will convert the MP4 and MV4 files to WMV when you 'sync' it to load it onto the Zune. The good news is that it does the conversion without seeming to lose any quality. The bad news for me is that we have a bunch of TV shows we've recorded via Tivo and converted them down to DivX or AVI. I've tried a couple of programs to convert them directly to WMV, but it always makes them 4:3 (even though the originals are widescreen) and the quality looks like crap. So far I've converted them from DivX/Avi to MP4 then synced them into the Zune and it's worked great, but it doubles the amount of time to get it on the unit. I'm going to keep looking for a program to convert it directly to WMV. All-in-all, I think they have a very good piece of techonolgy, just some of the software aspects could use some tweeking.
Thanks HR97 - Most of my downloaded music is from shareware type sites like Limewire. Can I still load these files onto the zune or do I have to use zune marketplace or other subscription service?
It will grab any MP3's and associated playlists. I've read that it will actually convert Itunes, but I haven't had a chance to test that yet.
