Some folks have all the luck I tell ya. The folks at Gear Live managed to get into a low keyed Zune launch party and as a result, they shot some great video footage of the upcoming Zune player. Go to Gear Live to check out the video clip or download the clip in MPEG-4 here. Here are my notes after watching the clip:

  • Something we know already - you can customize the background with whatever picture you want
  • The front is not a scroll wheel - it’s simply buttons going up, down, left and right
  • When you select media to play back, you can select play all, create a quick list, or send the file to a person via WiFi
  • It takes about 3-4 seconds to send a single track to someone
  • File formats supported include MP3, AIFF, WAV, WMA
  • Definitely no PlaysForSure support ALTHOUGH Microsoft is looking into possibly changing - so if all of you rant enough, I’m sure they will take that into account
  • The Zune team is very keen on getting information from the community on how to make the player better. They know it’s not a perfect device and thus they are leaning on all of us to provide feedback on how to make it better

For those of you who own a Toshiba Gigabeat S device, make sure you take a good look at the video clip - especially the raw clips near the middle to the end. The clips show the user interface in full detail and you’ll notice STRIKING similarities between the Zune UI and the current version 2.0 Portable Media Center UI. There are a ton of similarities - from the way albums are displayed to the way you search through differnet albums, artists via the horizontal menu selections, to the way the wait icon looks (a circular ring). One can’t help but wonder if the Zune is really just running a variant of the Portable Media Center system or if it just stole the guts of the UI. Without knowing for sure, I can’t help but conjecture that the Zune is in fact a modified PMC system - any other thoughts on this? I’m working on getting my Toshiba Gigabeat S review finished but once it’s finished, I’ll be happy to post some comparisons up with what we know of the Zune.

In the meantime, check out the video clip at GearLive!

 

[Check it out]

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