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zune hd posts

Filed under: Games, Microsoft, Mobile

Zune HD software update brings 3D games, widescreen keyboard

Zune HD 3D games
The Microsoft Zune HD is an intriguing device. It's a pretty good portable media player. It can handle 720p HD video in WMV and H.264 formats, and it has excellent audio quality. It even packs an HD radio tuner. And the NVIDIA Tegra chipset enable some pretty flashy (but still useful) graphics in the user interface.

And the Tegra procesor means the Zune HD can also handle some pretty slick games and other applications. Up until now, that meant a few games, a calculator, and a weather application. But now Microsoft has added a few new 3D games to the Zune Marketplace: Audio Surf: Tilt, PGR: Ferrari Edition, Checkers, Lucky Lanes Bowling, and Vans sk8: Pool Service. There's also a new Piano application.

The new games are pretty slick and really help demonstrate the power of the Zune HD platform. Unfortunately, it's still not much of a platform. There are over 100,000 apps in the iPhone app store. There are 15 in the Zune Marketplace.

Granted, all of the Zune apps are free (although you have to put up with a brief add for the Zune Pass music subscription before they start). But where are the third party apps? Where are the chat, Twitter, and Facebook clients? Or calendar and contacts applications? Heck, with the graphics capabilities on the Zune HD, where's Virtual Earth?

Anyway, the new applications should be available to anyone who updated their Zune HD to run version 4.3 of the Zune software. The update also brings a few other changes, including support for a larger virtual keyboard in landscape mode and an auto-suggest feature for text input.

You can check out my brief hands-on video with the new games after the break.

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Filed under: Audio, Windows, Microsoft

Zune 4.0 now available - existing Zune owners, get your update!


Despite the Zune not being available in Europe, I confess to having owned a Zune 30, Zune 80 and a Zune 8GB... all devices i've been very happy with. One thing I particularly like about the Zune experience is how Microsoft continue to update the software and extend the featureset (where possible) for all the devices, ensuring that even those with the oldest Zunes enjoy the latest developments... for free. I'm pretty sure I can think of another music player company that could take a leaf out of Microsoft's book.

In keeping with that tradition, Microsoft have just released version 4.0 of the Zune software (in line with the Zune HD launch) and it's available to download now, free, for all Zune owners.

The new software release adds 'quickplay' - instant access shortcuts to your recently downloaded or played music, videos and more, 'smart dj' - an automatically generated playlist of relevant music from both your own collection and the whole Zune marketplace, 'mini mode' - a small size, unintrusive view of the player and 'mixview' - a way to discover a 'mosaic of connections to other artists, albums, and fans'.

An interesting feature of the new update is that Mac or PC users can leverage their $14.99 per month Zune pass in a new way, by streaming any of the Zune Marketplace's huge catalogue direct to their machine. Who needs Spotify you might argue?

Sadly there is still no way to actually SYNC your Zune with a Mac... version 5.0 perhaps Microsoft?

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