Microsoft Announces New Zunes

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007

Microsoft has announced upgrades to its Zune line of portable media players that will be available in November:

We’re expanding our family of devices with the addition of three new digital media players: Zune 4GB, Zune 8GB and Zune 80GB. The sleek, black Zune 80GB hard-drive model has a bright 3.2-inch screen and comes with new Zune Premium Headphones; the ultraportable Zune 4GB and Zune 8GB flash models are both available in pink, green, black and glossy red.

This is the first major upgrade, aside from new colors, that the Zune has received since it first launched in November 2006. The new Zunes include several interesting new features:

• Wireless syncing. This allows you to connect to your Wi-Fi network to sync your Zune with your computer. To do so, the device must be connected to an AC adapter or powered dock, presumably because the battery would not last long enough to sync a very large library over Wi-Fi.
• “Extended” wireless sharing. I’m not quite sure what Microsoft means by “extended”. I assume this means that you can connect to a Wi-Fi network to share with other Zunes that are also on the network (as opposed to only Zunes that are close to your device). The 3×3 rule still applies to shared files.
• “Innovative” touch controls. That’s interesting, a media player with touch controls. What a wonderful idea!
• Recorded television content to go. I assume this means it syncs your content recorded with Windows Media Center.

Another new feature, not mentioned in the article, but apparent in the photo of the new Zunes, is podcast support. Interesting that they’ve decided to use the term podcast, instead of coining their own new word such as zunecast.

A new online community, called “Zune Social,” will be launched alongside the new Zunes:

Launching this November, Zune Social is a beta online community that’ll give members a place to share their music tastes with others.

Sounds to me like a last.fm-esque service.

Owners of first generation Zunes can expect some updates as well:

Current Zune users will be able to upgrade and enjoy the new Zune software and Zune Marketplace on their PCs, plus new firmware for their devices as well. We will notify users in November that they’re in need of an upgrade.

It is unknown which, if any, of the new features will be included in the firmware update.