A little personal history

A few days back, I downloaded the latest update for the Zune software. I presently own two Zunes:

• The first one was a brown 30GB 1st Gen (1G) Zune bought for $99 on a sale.
• The second Zune was a more extravagant 120GB Black 2G Zune with custom Artist Design on the back.

I’ve had my fair share of experience with PMPs, most notably with Apple’s iPods (iPod Mini, iPod Video, iPod Touch) and Microsoft’s Zunes. I think it’s fair to say that I’ve played around with both the Zune Software and iTunes extensively, and I can present a fair, non-biased opinion about the two.

What’s new on the Zune Software?

The Zune 4.0 Software raises it’s game a bit. In my opinion, the new Quickplay screen is really cool, and highly usable! I generally listen to either smooth, slow Jazz and R&B music or Techno/Electronica or Hip-Hop or Hindi Songs. I can set up the Quickplay screen to focus on the Smart DJ panel where I’ve selected an artist who belongs to each genre. All I have to do is simply click on the ‘play’ button for that Smart DJ panel and the Zune Software immediately generates a playlist of related artists/genres based on the focussed artist. This is a very intuitive method of assembling all the best songs from your collection together.

Zune Quickplay - SmartDJ

If you are anything like me, you’ll probably have thousands of songs in your collection that you probably never get around to listening. Well, the Smart DJ takes away the effort of thinking about which songs you want to play next off your shoulders! In my experience, the Smart DJ always picked the best selection of songs to keep the mood and tempo flowing! It worked well enough for me even if I picked up an Indian Pop Artist! It found Hindi songs that were related to the current song/artist/album in one way or the other, and added them to the current playlist! Pretty cool!

In addition to the Smart DJ panel, the Zune Software also has panels for “Pins”, “New” and “History”.

Zune Quickplay - Pins, History, New

“Pins” allows you to literally ‘pin’ content to the Quickplay screen. So if you have a playlist or artist or album or podcast that you listen or watch very often, just pin it to the Quickplay screen for quick access when the Software loads.

“New” and “History” are pretty self-explanatory, and allow you to explore content that belongs in those categories.

The Zune Software also gets a new Mini-mode. It’s essentially the same as the Mini-mode on iTunes and Windows Media Player, and it’s easy to work with! What else do you need the mini-mode to do anyway?

Old Stuff done better

One of my personal favorite featues, as an owner of a HDTV connected to a computer, was the Music Wall. This was a wall that was displayed that contained randomly re-arranging album art from your computer. If you are playing music from an artist featured on the Zune Marketplace, then you got an awesome animated slide-show like backdrop. It looked pretty cool, and worthy of being displayed on an HDTV.

Zune Wall

The downside for this was the album-art wall. In this mode, the text displaying the current track information almost always merged with the background too much, leaving the text illegible! But not any more! The new Zune Music Wall overlays a darker color layer over the album art and essentially improved the legibility of the text. They’ve also increased the font-size on the playlist, making it more usable on an HDTV running at 1080p.

Zune Wall - Album Art

I’ve always loved the Zune’s ability to keep scanning a specific folder for new content. It allowed me to just drop content into a specific folder/drive and the Zune would do the rest. This feature was always a bit… unreliable, to put it mildly. On a number of occasions, the Zune never picked up the new music I added. Also, I really wish the Zune had a screen where I could see which new files were added to the library! That way, at least I don’t have to hunt through the album/artist screen to check whether the new songs were added properly!

The developers seem to have resolved some of those issues, but I can’t say how much of it has been successful in alleviating my gripes. I haven’t added any new albums/tracks recently, so I’ll know when I do some more testing on it.

I’ve always been a fan of the Zune Marketplace and it’s Zune Pass feature. With v4.0 the Zune Marketplace interface has just become cleaner and easier to use. With the Zune Pass, you essentially have an infinite playlist when using Smart DJ. The Smart DJ picks up songs from the Marketplace that you would like, and streams them right off the Internet.

Some things are just plain rotten!

While I admire the Zune for what it is, and I love a lot of those features the Software and the Hardware provide, the most important thing I loved about the Zune was that when the Software jumped from v2.0 to v3.0, all existing hardware got those new features! The Zune became a beacon of hope among those users who hate the fact that for a software upgrade, they have to essentially buy new hardware, every time! Apple, are you listening?

With v4.0, I’m sad to report that the Zune has gone the Apple way! I understand that the firmware on the ZuneHD is touchscreen-optimized and thus they can’t just port it to the older non-touchscreen devices. But, you would expect them to at least provide a watered down version of the firmware for the older Zunes! Sure, don’t give us all the fancy 3D effects and animations that the Tegra processor in the ZuneHD eats for breakfast, and which the older Zune hardware can’t handle, but at least give us the usable features like:

• The new Marketplace
• Some simple version of the web-browser to take advantage of the Wireless hardware
• Simple apps and games like those already available on the older hardware. Keep a separate section for the ZuneHD Software and the legacy Zune hardware

Network playback is also an issue. I have a 1TB Network Storage drive that serves as my source for media for all my computers at home. Switching between songs always causes the Zune software to lock up for a few seconds before it comes back to normal. Now, if the lockup period was a couple of seconds, I wouldn’t mind so much (well, maybe I would), but it takes anywhere between 5-10 seconds to respond to a click on a button! Now, that’s just not right! I think the developers really need to look into this. For the record, I’m connected over a 802.11n WLAN network with a 216-270Mbps connection to the router. The Network Storage Drive has a physical connection to the router via a 100Mbps cable.

I really wish I had more options in terms of skins to choose from! The Quickplay screen’s black look is really awesome! I wish that color could be extended to the other sections of the software as well! The whole experience would just be a lot nicer! Better yet, if Microsoft really wants to push envelope, they could release a theme creator tool that would allow people to skin the software as per their wishes and convenience! They could also have a section in the marketplace for premium themes and skins! You heard it here first, and if Microsoft or anyone actually ends up doing that for the Zune, I want some monetary credit!

Conclusion

In my opinion, the Zune 4.0 Software is really an awesome piece of work! It’s easy to use, simple and straight, and extremely flexible and powerful! If you own an HDTV and have a home theater connected to it along with a computer, you just gotta have the Zune software on it! Trust me, it’ll be really awesome for you to show off that HDTV with those cools slideshow-like visuals flowing across the screen!

There’s a lot of people who’re divided between the Zune and iTunes, but in my personal opinion, both Softwares have their own major advantages and disadvantages! My advice would be to try both, and see which one you like better!

For me, it’s the Zune all the way! Except when it comes to syncing my iPod and iPhone!