AllThingsD » Zune Pass

Microsoft Packs The New Zune HD With Bells, Whistles And Plenty of Style

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:58:03 +0000

At long last, Microsoft has made a portable media player that you can be proud to carry around: the Zune HD.

This fourth-generation Zune (Zune.net) is ultra thin and has a stunningly vivid 3.3-inch touch screen that covers most of its surface, doing away with the old device’s touchpad. It comes in one small size rather than the older large and small versions, and has capacities of 16 and 32 gigabytes for $220 and $290, respectively.

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The Zune HD does a nice job of integrating and artistically displaying content about an artist, song or album whenever possible. It has an acceptable built-in browser that surfs the Web using a Wi-Fi connection, and a customizable Quickplay menu on the home screen that displays your content using tiny, stylish tiles. The corresponding Zune Marketplace finally offers movies—about 500 for renting or buying, half of which have HD resolution. And a $90 docking station works with the device to display its HD content on your HDTV.

Given all the improvements of this new Zune, it’s a shame that this makeover stopped short of revamping its commerce system, which is still too confusing. Rather than inviting newcomers to the Zune and its online store by allowing them to use real money to buy content, it is still tied to the points system made popular by Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox gaming console. In this gamer-friendly system, the cost of one song is 79 points, roughly the equivalent of a dollar, and users must buy points in buckets ranging from 400 for $5 to 5,000 for $62.50. People who are trying to watch their budgets don’t need the hassle of calculating points per purchase. And Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle e-reader and Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes Store have proved that using dollars and an uncomplicated one-click system is a successful strategy.

The way I prefer to get the most out of the Zune system is by using the Zune Pass for $15 monthly. This charge allows free continuous streaming of music from any computer’s browser as long as you log in, and includes 10 free MP3 downloads a month that are yours to keep even if you bail on using the Zune software. The Zune Pass lets you listen to Smart DJ playlists that can be built in one of three ways: using your own library; using a mix of Marketplace content and music from your library; or using only songs from the Marketplace. These also can be set to last for a certain amount of time—say for a 30-minute jog or a two-hour party.

I created several Smart DJ playlists including one using Dierks Bentley as the seed artist from which other suggestions were generated. This country singer was a good test for the Zune software because Mr. Bentley’s music blends new and old country sounds. I set the Smart DJ to produce a mix using only content from Marketplace and it returned a great list that included songs from newer group, Little Big Town, as well as older stuff like Joe Diffie’s “John Deere Green.” Any Smart DJ list can be dragged onto the Zune HD.

Apple’s iPod Touch is the Zune HD’s biggest rival and its iTunes Store has much more content in all categories compared with Zune Marketplace. But let’s put music, movies, TV shows, podcasts and music videos aside and say we’re satisfied with the amount of content offered by Zune Marketplace.

One of the iPod Touch’s best features is its ability to access Apple’s App Store, a catalog of 75,000 applications. The Zune HD only dips its pinky toe into a pool where Apple is already swimming laps: Only nine apps can be downloaded from the Zune Marketplace (all are free). They’re colorful and simple to use, but nine apps won’t be enough to compete head on with the iPod Touch.

The Zune HD uses Quickplay (shown on second player from left) to instantly display certain content.

It would be a real boon to Zune if it somehow inherited the gaming genes of Microsoft’s already-established Xbox, especially considering how Apple has heavily marketed the iPod Touch as a portable gaming system. Microsoft will only say that later this year Zune will offer apps for Twitter and Facebook as well as 3-D games like “Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition.”

The only same-capacity model in the Zune HD and iPod Touch is the 32-gigabyte, which costs $290 and $299, respectively. The Zune HD is smaller than the iPod Touch so its organic light-emitting-diode touch screen is 3.3 inches compared with the Touch’s 3.5-inch screen. The Zune fits easily in any pocket and is just 0.35-inch thick. A thin horizontal button on the face of the device takes you to the home screen, and a hidden button on the left side pulls up an on-screen menu for volume and playback controls—or just tap the screen when content is playing. It doesn’t have a speaker like the iPod Touch, so you’ll always need earbuds to hear anything that’s playing.

Quickplay is one of my favorite features on the Zune HD. It uses tiny tiles to visually represent your content in four categories: currently playing; anything pinned (or labeled with a shortcut tile) to Quickplay; a history of recently opened content; and anything that’s new to the player. This includes all of your photos, videos, music, Web pages and apps. I easily pinned AllThingsD.com, a “Saturday Night Live” video and a favorite photo to the Quickplay menu. Clever animation sends this menu to the background of the home screen or swiftly pulls it into the foreground when needed.

I rented and downloaded the movie “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and opted to pay 360 points for the HD version rather than paying 240 points for the standard-definition version. A helpful on-screen explanation described the advantages of each according to where it would be played. Movie rentals last for 14 days or 24 hours after you first press play.

Listening to music on the Zune HD is a lot of fun—and even educational. Whenever the screen goes idle while playing a song, large images of the artist and album cover fill the entire screen while text—album name, artist name, song name—scrolls across these images. With one touch, I saw a list of other albums and songs by that artist, an artist biography, related artists, and pictures of the artist. This is a lot more interesting than staring at one image on the screen, and I learned a lot of new information about musicians I’ve been listening to for years.

The newly added Web browser on the Zune HD gets the job done, but has downsides. Its on-screen keyboard for entering names of Web pages has very small keys and doesn’t use predictive typing to fix your mistakes. Some Web pages rendered normally on the browser, but a couple—like Georgetown.edu—looked normal only when I turned the Zune HD horizontally.

As with other Zunes, this Zune HD has a radio receiver and now uses HD radio for finding more stations with clearer signals. If you like a song, an on-screen button tags it for buying and downloading immediately or later.

The Zune HD is a great-looking little player, and users will especially appreciate its Quickplay menu, rich collection of artist information and mesmerizing screen. If its points system was scrapped and its Zune Marketplace was filled with more content, I’d like it better.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Fresh 'Discoveries' from iPod, Zune

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:16:02 +0000

Amid a speech by its CEO and a musical performance, Apple last week unveiled a new version of its iTunes software and some new iPods.

Meanwhile, Microsoft‘s Zune announced via press release that new players in different capacities and colors would be available this week, along with a software update.

Despite their different approaches, these two announcements shared a notable common thread: integrated music discovery. Each company’s new software features ways for users to find automatically generated suggestions of music they might like, the way Pandora Media Inc.’s popular personalized music lists do. Of course, music discovery also encourages users to buy more.

Apple’s new iPods include a thinner Nano with an accelerometer, which senses the direction a screen is being held in a user’s hands and flips the display horizontally or vertically. These Nanos come in eight- or 16-gigabyte versions for $149 or $199 and are available in nine bright colors. A new, thinner iPod Touch with a built-in speaker was also unveiled, and it comes in eight-, 16- or 32-gigabyte versions for $229, $299 or $399.

Microsoft’s two new Zune players come in 16- and 120-gigabyte capacities for $200 and $250, respectively. All Zunes have built-in FM tuners and wireless capability, but the new upgrade allows users to buy and download songs they hear on their Zunes’ radios via Wi-Fi, when available.

While Apple’s iPod has been a snowballing success for the company, its companion iTunes software is no slouch. To date, 65 million iTunes store accounts with associated credit cards have been set up on Macs and Windows PCs. But iTunes has always been weak on music discovery and community.

Apple (AAPL) calls iTunes 8′s ability to make smart music recommendations the “Genius” feature. The tool can automatically do two things after analyzing a selected song from your music library. First, it can generate a playlist of songs from tunes you own. Second, it can generate a list of songs you don’t own but might want to buy from the iTunes store.

MicrosoftZune’s Mixview feature displays content related to an artist with an explanation of the relationship.

Microsoft’s Zune software discovers and recommends music using categories called “Picks,” “Channels” and “Mixview.” The last of the three, Mixview, generates recommendations for other musicians and albums, as well as other Zune users with whom you might like to connect. The suggestions are based on the artist of the song you’re playing and are displayed in an interactive graphic that explains how each is linked — for instance, if your artist was influenced by a band or if a member of Zune’s social network is a top listener of the artist you’re playing.

After using the music-discovery software from Apple and Microsoft (MSFT), I felt like Apple’s Genius tool still had a lot to learn, though the company says it will improve over time as more people start using it. Zune’s software had some similar issues, but it offered recommendations in a richer, more engaging manner, encouraging me to keep digging around and learn more about my music. Though I didn’t happen to have as much time to use Zune’s software as I did Apple’s Genius, I got more out of my Zune experience.

Apple offers much more content at its iTunes store than Zune. In all categories, iTunes takes the lead: in songs, 8.5 million songs to Zune’s 4 million; in music videos, 10,000 versus 8,500; in television episodes, 30,000 versus 3,000; and in audio and video podcasts, 125,000 versus 6,000.

To analyze and learn from your music, Apple scans the contents of your music library, which may raise privacy concerns for some people. Apple says that the information it collects is completely anonymous, and that it does not and will not associate this information on its servers with you or your account.

Some of my Genius playlists were well-crafted, including songs that meshed well with one another. But outliers cropped up, such as when “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by the Clash was stuck in the middle of a list generated from Coldplay’s gentler ballad, “Green Eyes.” Some songs won’t generate playlists if you don’t have enough related songs in your library; this happened to me with the pop hit “Apologize” by Timbaland, featuring OneRepublic.

Songs from artists whose content isn’t sold in iTunes, such as The Beatles, won’t generate Genius lists, because Genius makes suggestions based only on what it sells in its iTunes catalog. Genius will soon work with songs beyond those sold in iTunes.

Genius has a bigger problem. If you hit “Play” in iTunes, a Genius sidebar appears to offer content related to a selected song. But as play continues, Genius doesn’t continuously generate new recommendations; instead, it’s stuck on the very first song that was selected — which you might have chosen two hours ago. This means music discovery must be a manual process, rather than an as-you-listen convenience.

Genius playlists can be made on a computer or iPod and sync back and forth. I synced Genius lists on two iPod touches, but this didn’t work in one test with an iPhone. Apple said it couldn’t replicate this problem and hadn’t had other reports of it.

Zune software never scans your music collection. Instead, it knows only the number of times you played a song and how you may have rated a song.

Zune’s Mixview adds a real zing to the discovery process. It is a kaleidoscope-like graphic that appears on the screen when a song, artist, album or friend’s Zune Card is selected. The selected item is surrounded by eight to 10 floating squares filled with graphics and text, each holding a related song, album, artist or graphic representation of a Zune listener who’s considered an “expert” on the selection.

Each of these related squares includes a line of text explaining its relationship to the center item. For example, as I played “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones, Cyril Davies appeared as a related artist; an image of Arthur Alexander appeared as an influencer of the Stones; a Zune community member with the tag “Rreynoso” appeared as the top listener for the band and other Stones albums were displayed.

Mixview changes as you explore it. When one of its recommendations is selected, a new Mixview is created around that selection, encouraging discovery. But Mixview has the same problem as Apple’s Genius: When one song ends and another begins, the Mixview graphic doesn’t automatically change; you must manually start Mixview for a new song. Zune says it doesn’t want to change the graphic in case a user is in mid-exploration.

Unlike Genius, Mixview shows songs and artists beyond what Zune sells online. But the company says Mixview does “favor” Zune content, and Zune Picks are limited to items sold by Zune.

Zune Picks and Channels are more passive ways of discovering music: Picks are generated for you in Zune Marketplace according to your listening habits. Zune Channels bring collections of music to Zune devices and software, but these are useful only for Zune Pass members who pay $15 monthly.

Apple’s Genius is a helpful tool when it comes to quickly making a playlist, and its iTunes sidebar might reveal fresh related content. But the Zune software truly allows people to discover more about their own music and that of others.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com