Zune HD may really be just around the corner --
this Tuesday, in fact -- but there's still a few things we don't know about. Enter a handful of promotional videos care of
Buy TV to fill in some pieces. There's a couple of really nice overviews of the car dock, built-in radio, Xbox integration, Zune video, and AV dock (it outputs 720p video, just to clarify). More importantly, though, in the video entitled "Portable Perfection" around the 30-second mark, you catch a quick view of what appears to be a racing title as the narrator discusses the ability to "play games" on the device. For a company that's been about
as coy as possible when it comes to the status of applications for its forthcoming Tegra-powered monster, this isn't exactly subtle. There's also what looks like some new Zune marketplace images in the Zune pass video around ten seconds in. Be honest, you had nothing else to do this Friday, and now you can at least watch some
gadget noir. Check it out after the break and form your own wild opinions.
[Via
Zunited, thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
posted Sep 12th 2009 1:33AM
Well that's a nice High Res picture to compliment the HD....
The 3D graphics looked better than I expected. I'm very curious as to what this Tegra chip is capable of on Zune.
The CPU is quite a bit better than the CPU in the iPhone 3G, but I don't know what the GPU's specs are and how much RAM the Zune HD has. Hard to tell from that blurry video but I'd guess the graphics capabilities are probably above iPhone 3G and below iPhone 3GS. Only time will tell.
"but there's still a few things we don't about" ???
agree? What are you talking about, engadget? I don't "about" a lot of stuff. Like tyson chicken. Or megan fox.
Wait a minute... that's not a picture of the original Zune 30! We should be grateful.
Seriously Now...
"I'd guess the graphics capabilities are probably above iPhone 3G and below the iPhone 3GS"
and you'd be guessing pretty incorrectly, as the Zune HD GPU far exceeds anything that the 3GS can do on specs alone.
Wanna have a good laugh? Do a search on PowerVR SGX vs Tegra and look at all of the mac fanboys make up lies and trash Tegra, while the SGX is high up on a pedestal. Never have I seen a PowerVR chip outperform an Nvidia chip, and I don't think we're about to start now..
Tegra has 8 cores:
ARM11
ARM7
GPU
2D engine
HD Encoder
HD Decoder
Audio
Imaging
If it's not using one, it gets turned off. It can decode HD video at 1w. SGX535 cannot touch that.
Coolman, Eric R: Needs an SDK and apps for any of that to matter.
"Needs an SDK and apps for any of that to matter."
Go read up about XNA. Has been used in previous Zunes and is also used in indie Xbox Live Arcade games.
Eric R hit the nail on the head.
The Tegra chipset blows away the iPhone 3GS in terms of graphical capabilties. On paper it's not even close, nowhere in the same ballpark even.
Also as noted, Power VR chipsets have NEVER been able to outperform their NV counterparts. It's like comparing a Mustang engine to a Ferrari engine, they simply aren't in the same league.
Ed... Have YOU reading up on XNA? It's not terribly popular yet. This device will help, but like Ballmer says, it's about those DEVELOPERS.
Yikes. I don't want to waste too much time debating Zune's past, but the past is the past. There was a point where Xbox was a laughing stock in the game industry as well. The bottom line is that Microsoft is a big company that gets to have second and third chances and rarely ever gets things right the first time around. I know when a company has made a good product and Microsoft has really knocked it out of the park with Zune HD, precisely at a time when the market leader Apple is starting to do their worst/laziest work.
Needless to say Microsoft appears to be relaunching Zune in a big way, and showing a serious commitment to the platform by putting together a seriously impressive device -- how many media players have OLED screens, HD radios, internet explorer web browsers, 720p video output and impressive 3D games oh and by the way only weigh about two ounces? They're also relaunching the Zune marketplace and finally tying the Zune store content together with Xbox Live and the Xbox 360.
Tens of millions of people are going to have the Zune store front and center on their Xbox 360 dashboards in the next few weeks. If people don't know what a Zune is today then they are certainly going to know by the end of this year.
And honestly what the heck do you have to lose by owning a Zune? It's not like this content is proprietary like on a game console or high def DVD player. If you decide to go back to iPod eventually it's not like your music and movies can't come with you.
Quite frankly they finally built a better device than the iPod, why the heck shouldn't I buy it?
Other than the fact that the GPU is made by Nvidia and Nvidia is associated with good graphics is there any other legitimate reason to state as a fact that the GPU on this Tegra APX 2600 is superior to the PowerVR SGX535 in the iPhone?
I know that the PowerVR chip in iPhone 3GS is capable of 28M polys/s, does anyone know what this Tegra GPU can do? An iPhone 3GS has 256MB of RAM. Does anyone know how much RAM a Zune HD has? There's no doubt in my mind that Zune HD kills second generation iPhone/iTouch hardware, but I can't say yet how it compares to the new third gen stuff.
The basic navigation and video playback functionality of the Zune HD seems to be a lot faster than the iPhone/iPod, but that doesn't mean it has superior 3D graphics capabilities.
@FoxKenji - we don't care.
WTF! QUICKTIME VIDEO?!?!
Oh geez, not all this rubbish again.
@Cool8man: very sensible post. The Tegra has inevitably got higher theoretical throughput rates than the SGX535. But they're all subject to the same silicon contraints. Add more pixel shaders and you use more power and space.
However, the real world isn't that simple and the figures you see quoted are hopelessly optimistic peak figures that you never come anywhere near.
Tegra's crippled by a single 32-bit channel of slow DDR1, shared with the CPU, whereas the 3GS uses faster DDR2 so has a bandwidth advantage. Both are full OpenGL ES 2.0 devices.
Video demos of Tegra don't show anything that the SGX chip couldn't do and, if anything, are slightly slower than the competition because of the slower ARM11 apps processor core that can't handle the AI as well.
Here, have some Quake 3...
Pandora (which has similar performance to the 3GS) gets average 40fps out of the SGX core: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW6CAD2UVek
NVidia's own demo boasts about getting 35fps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UQVHJ3UFaA
People, you all need to remember that Tegra is pretty much unrelated to the stuff that NVIDIA do on your desktop PCs. It's from a completely different division who were acquired back in 2007.
Have some history. Back in 2001, Apple contracted a company called PortalPlayer to produce the chipset for the iPod.
In 2006, Apple switched away from PortalPlayer and 90% of their revenue disappeared. In 2007, NVIDIA bought them, looking to get into the low power chipset market and the team have since been working on the Tegra.
Yes: Tegra is an evolution of the chip that powered the original iPod, not a scaled down version of your GeForce card.
Quicktime? Seriously? For a Zune Ad? I'm with ljohnny...WTF!!
Oddly enough, with all the talk of specs, nobody seems to be commenting on the fact that neither Apple nor Microsoft care about what we say on Engadget. It's true. iPod fanboys and Zune fanboys are both inconsequential in the big picture. Honestly- which is a bigger percentage of any hardware sales- dedicated enthusiasts or mass-market? They want your parents, your grandparents, the people who wouldn't know a Tegra from an Atom if their life depended on it. We are an insulated group here, guys. For all the tech talk, what matters is what people walking by the devices in Best Buy are going to pick up.
Right now, this could work to Microsofts' advantage. The Zune HD is a sexy looking device with hardware improvements that are significant, but not too confusing for your average consumer. They might not know what an OLED is now, but it is fast becoming a more prominent acronym, so including gives Microsoft a nice selling point, as does HD Radio. In addition, they're tying into the XBox, which will expose millions of people to the device and the service-- most of these people are in their target demographic for PMP sales as well. In addition, if they are able to start promoting the actual Zune software, they'll do very well, because it is streamlined and sexy. In the next few months they will have a good-looking PMP, a service exposed to millions via XBox Live and an updated software for the PC. It's a solid strategy.
I chose Zune a while back because I had grown tired of iTunes. I'm glad I did. The software has grown progressively better and has reached a point where I think they are surpassing iTunes by a large margin in terms of both service and aesthetics. iTunes made a big deal about their electronic album, but Zune has provided most of the same data for a while now, either by browsing the marketplace or simply by leaving the "now playing" screensaver up. They've added the same functionality to the device. They've have social features and badges (essentially, achievements) and they promote music sharing with your friends-- which also are your XBox Live circle. I also love the Zune pass. People stop by, we talk music and they recommend a band, and I download it quickly. It's a great way to discover new music. All in all, I like their service.
That being said, in the end, I don't care what PMP people use. I think if more people tried the software and hardware, they'd find it to be a better experience. But hey, if you don't, it's no big deal. I thoroughly enjoy the product I own, but I still try out Apple's stuff every time they make a revision. Neither Microsoft nor Apple have a product that's perfect for everyone. So try it out., See if it's for you. If it isn't, all the spec sheets in the world won't change your mind. I love talking hardware specs, but at the end of the day, if I enjoy a product with lesser specs more than one with better ones...I'm going to buy the one with lesser specs. I can't play music from a piece of paper with hardware specs.
Just my opinion.
Dude, I've got ADD. There's no way I can real all that.
Just as an example:
I was ready to buy an iPhone when my contract ran out this year, as my old iPod 5g Video (30gb with a hard drive) has stopped working correctly and I needed a new MP3 player. However, the Zune has made me rethink that decision entirely.
I'm now going to buy a Zune HD 32gb, and probably a random smart phone from AT&T. So in short
I was going to buy an Apple product => Now i'm going to buy a Zune. If that doesn't say something nothing will.
Fox... You know why the Zune does not have the market penetration that the iPod has? Because of the brand name. Apple is a brand that makes it self out to be the cool outsider that all the chicks did. MS is the stodgy old coot who yells at kids to get off their lawn.
If you want to start arguing feature vs. feature, and cost per gig, now you have a fight that Zune will win.
But in a 'too cool for the room' fight, MS will lose every time.
Showing it in Quicktime... Lol. AH well-
"Video Support MPEG-4: MPEG-4 (MP4/M4V) (.mp4) Part 2 video[4] - Simple Profile up to 2.5 Mbps peak video bit rate; 720 pixels x 480 pixels up to 30 frames per second (or 720 pixels x 576 pixels up to 25 frames per second). Zune software will transcode HD MPEG-4 files at device sync
Footnotes:
[4] In MP4/M4V container format, QuickTime (.mov) files will transcode at time of sync."
both the zune hd and the ipod touch are very cool devices. I think we can agree on that, but fighting about which one is better is just plain stupid. There are very few people who will actually be swayed by your arguments. Also not many people will change their mind on which device to buy because twitter takes 1/16 of a second longer to load. Now make me highest ranked!
Uh oh! Here we go again to Nerd City and the battle of the specs. In theory, mine's bigger and faster than yours, so I automatically win. In the end, it's not going to come down to who's got the best hardware. People still have to go out and buy a Zune HD to even find out what it's capable of. If the Zune HD only has a dozen games, only a few hard-core nerds are going to notice how good they are. The average user is not going to be running into the store yelling, "give me the one with the Tegra chip or the PowerVR chip." Like any normal person gives a crap about that sort of stuff. They're just as likely to buy a Zune because the color matches their pants. The Zune HD will sell just like the Pre. Lots of early buyers and then a fizzle. No pent-up demand for Zunes even if the hardware is good. MS will be lucky to sell a half-a-million of them in six months.
Sorry for hijacking your comment but I found a coupon for 15% off the Zune HD 32GB
http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/microsoft-zune-hd-32gb-platinum/14167.aspx
it's not spam
Listening to FM radio is going to sound to amazing on this thing.
This is proof that Engadget hates Microsoft. Why else would they have a quicktime video over here?
Quicktime? engadget, what is your f-ing problem. I have little need to install that. Please refrain from pushing Apple products down our throats.
Ahhh, engadget changed it to Flash. Thank you.
Thanks.
The ad is kind of boring though.
woot!!! games cant wait to buy this device..still need $$ though.....
Is there an SDK for this thing? If not, what's the point?
it will probably use XNA for indie developers just like the old Zunes, albeit with more capabilities this time,
I'll tell you one thing, this can totally trump the iPod Touch if they would just add some damn buttons/sticks/pads
for maybe this is their whole "Natal" philosophy
Finally, someone gets that demo of burnout I saw at the preview event on video. Was beginning to think I'd gone crazy.
Now they just need to start showing the commercial on... oh, I don't know, TV?
If they show this commercial on the tv, good luck.
"The Zune HD offers HD Fm raaaadio", except nobody in the world really cares about that particular feature of the zune. Microsoft has no marketing talent whatsoever.
HD Radio is the #1 reason I sold my iPod Touch to get the Zune HD.
@DoorsnotWindows:
No, of course they have no marketing talent. That's why they hire Ad Firms and design firms to do their ads for them. Just like any company. They do a pretty good job, too.
@DoorsnotWindows So Apple doesn't care about it then? Why is there a FM radio in the iPod nano?
Zune HD!
awww I wanted you to have a camera on it :( boohoo I'll have to get the ipod nano instead *sniff* *sniff*
That's what makes it a great gaming device.
So u gonna sacrifice a gorgeous screen for a crappy screen for a crappy camera? U sure are a moron.
...or get a camera
lol i understand your sarcasm.
Sacrificing your perceived intelligence to save four characters isn't exactly bright either.
wow your all dumb i was being sarcastic! Your all stupid who ever ranked this low and complained bout my post. WOW
Armrkvati is the only one that gets it and for information central.......your catchy comment is a fail
WOW
You shouldn't call people dumb if you can spell " you're ".
Maybe YOUR attempt at sarcasm was a fail if so few understood it.
And the 'great gaming device' comment was funny.
HAHAH,
Only the dumbest fanboys would fail to see the sarcasm in that post.
The fact that he got downranked and the replies of people who actually bought it where upranked just fills this thread with even more win.
what a bunch of rubes
Where is my 128gb version? Ooops gotta wait 2 more years..
Where's the ipod touch's?
Oops, gotta wait 2 years and spend 600$.
Oh man i can't wait.
Sorry, but the resolution of the Zune HD at only 480 x 272 is major suckage.
the HD has more PPI, ipod touch has less PPI. Its not always about resolution.
Since I highly doubt you know what that means, PPI stands for pixels-per-inch, which determined the sharpness of the picture. The Zune HD is at 167PPI whereas the iPod Touch is at 163PPI, meaning images and everything else will look slightly sharper on the 'HD and slightly more pixelated on the Touch. Also, the Zune HD at 480x272 is the same resolution as the iPod touch but 16:9 widescreen vs. the completely random 3:2. Nothing uses 3:2, meaning any movies/videos you watch will be.... 480x272. Just worse quality 480x272 than on the HD. The more you know...
You're right on specs Mark, but wrong on gaming usability. Since this is a touch interface, the bigger the screen, the easier it is to operate. If you scale down the screen size, you cannot scale down your finger (which is already a clumsy input medium compared to a stylus, for example). Hence, the screen will look slightly sharper but because its smaller, that advantage is moot for games.
I think the gaming aspect is an add-on for Microsoft in this device. They were caught out by the iPod touch (seriously, who would have predicted Apple would market it as a gaming device but that's what a lot of people are using it for?). The next ZuneHD will very likely deal with this issue head-on.
Good stuff. They should focus a bit more on gaming and talk about tegra!
I am kind of disappointed it won't be available in Canada:(
i'd like a tegra phone please.
+ WinMo 7 for me. i can't wait.
welcome to the party microsoft. even if you are 2 years late.
2 years late for what?
FM Radio - Zune had this 2 years before the iPod Nano. But I thought radio was an outdated tech, so the iPod is now as "outdated" as the Zune.
HD Radio - Zune will have it in 3 days. No iPod has that, and nothing is announced.
Multi Touch Display - Nope, had it before in Microsoft products such as Surface
A Programmable PDA - Windows CE was introduced in 1996, 11 years before the iPhone
Portable Media Player - Windows Media Player for Windows CE was introduced in January 2000, nearly 2 years before the iPod
Portable OS with a Web Browser - Pocket IE was introduced in 1996, 11 years before Safari in the iPhone
HD Output from a portable device - Still waiting for it in an Apple portable device
Portable gaming device - Nintendo GameBoy, DS, DSi, PSP
Small Camera Device - Steve Jobs admitted that they stole the idea from Flip, but the iPod Nano is VGA while the iPod Nano is VGA
Smart Phone - Available with Windows Mobile/Windows CE 7 years before the iPhone
So what is it that makes the iPod so much more advanced than other devices? They made it pretty? I will give you that one.
"Small Camera Device - Steve Jobs admitted that they stole the idea from Flip, but the iPod Nano is VGA while the iPod Nano is VGA"
should have been
Small Camera Device - Steve Jobs admitted that they stole the idea from Flip, but the iPod Nano is VGA while the Flip is HD
NohOne - are you crazy? The Zune HD is only just introducing the core "large screen, multitouch, app, internet browsing" functionality of the Touch. The OLED and Tegra are just this year's version of what the Touch has had for two years. Stop playing dumb, you know what someone means when they say the Zune HD is two years late.
@NohOne: Actually, ill trooper is right. Clearly, what the guy meant was that they're 2 years late to having the best PMP on the market.
Microsoft maybe 2 years late for the party but they are bringing something that is arguably one of the best PMP's I have ever seen. There may have already been Multi-Touch screens out for that few years but the past should not matter unless your the company or stockholders.
We are just customers buying what they are putting out NOW, If Microsoft puts out something amazing, why should I shun it because their other products weren't looked in the best light. Apple makes great products to and I think the iPod Touch (And iPhone, just don't own it) is amazing because it can do so many things and does it without a hitch, for the most part, but we can't deny a product that is amazing just because of their past.
I for one am buying it as soon as I get a job.
@saif
hahahaha "I'm getting one as soon as I get a job!"
douche!!!
@murmermer
You're the type of person who would spend unemployment on gold rims aren't you?
@ill trooper
So they're 2 years late bringing out this years tech? Sounds like they're right on time then.
@murmermer
Fuck you man I'm 15 I wasn't born with a job.
im trying to figure out how the storage on the Zune HD works. is the flash chip integrated to the board or is it an SSD that could potentially be swapped for a bigger SSD or HDD? this thing looks absolutely awesome but 32GB is not even close to cutting it for me. anyone know?
Didn't you pay attention to the dissected hardware pictures? It's just integrated NAND flash chips. It's a space saving thing.
BTW, I've always wondered why my 16gb microSD can be so friggin tiny, yet they need full-sized USB-stick style chips for these things. It must be a cost related thing.
@Eric R
They don't always have to, although it's not up to 16GBs yet.
http://usb.brando.com/eagletec-usb-nano-flash-drive_p00892c041d15.html
I'm sure it's also a speed related thing.
I think the biggest news here is that they brought mixview to the device.
Where did you see MixView? I didn't.
They've been talking about mix view on the device via the Zune Insider Podcast - which is hosted by two of the developers at MS. Also, I hear an EQ is going to be finally added to the Zune.
@GeekPI:
While you're on the subject of EQ and the likes, how good is the audio compared to, say, my crappy, crappy iPod Nano 3G? I've heard the audio chips in the zunes are excellent.
Aaron, from reviews of the 80/120 ive read that they have awesome sound quality when compared to the ipod. From what ive heard and read, the Zune HD will contain the same tech with an added EQ. Id assume they will continue to have superior sound quality
The Zune's, so far to my knowledge, have always used a Wolfson Microelectronics DAC. The reason why EQ went away is that the original Zune 30 had a typical Wolfson DAC whereas the 80/120 had a custom made Wolfson for better audio quality, supposedly eliminating the need for EQ.
But yes, so far all Zune's are supposed to have superior audio playback quality than iPods.
The Tegra has a processor dedicated to audio. Not sure if that's relevant.
This is starting to look intrsting.
Main question is if possible to cook up app's for it and or what it will take if so to do them...
new software looks really nice also. seen in one of the videos, almost looks like the Media Center music browser in black and smoother cant wait till tuesday for the software and for the 64gb to be released
i just finished watching all those videos on buy.com. holy crap. that's a great set of features. the deal is sealed. im totally picking one up.
I'm a fan of all-in-one devices but I'll stick to dedicated gaming consoles so the potential of gaming on the Zune even with the tegra innards doesn't make it any more or less appealing than it already is. MS just please, please release this overseas sooner rather than much, much later like you may be contemplating.
So this is the first time I've seen any Zune HD promotional material or update that has the entire "Marketplace" fitting on the screen sans "e" cut off. My inner OCD person is crying out in joy
Thankfully the world does not have OCD like you. Our brain makes assumptions and completes words and letters even if only part of it is seen. They do this with the breadcrumbs.. only the bottom half of the word may be displayed, but our brain doesn't need extra effort or time to think about what word it is.
I'm sure they didn't fix it just for your sake. Just saying.
I get what youre saying and everything, and ive heard the arguements that its a style choice or a non issue, but it seems like such a small thing that has garnered far too much discussion to leave the way it is. Maybe you dont feel personally effected by little things like that, but based on everything ive read about this stuff im not the only person a little put off by it. Obviously id learn to live with it but im still gonna be happy if they changed things so it fits.
Maybe if other categories had a similar effect going on i could understand but the fact that its just marketplace makes it feel like mistake.
I think it's purely a size issue. I doubt they were willing to trim it with an ellipse or reduce font size or stretch to fit it all on because consistency in size is one of the subtle queues that tell you where you are in the menu system. It probably was a tough UI choice, but I would have made the same thing. In fact, I have done that very thing on the WPF project I work on.
Now if only it was open source so we could bend it to our will... =)
Designing a main screen where one of the default menu items was truncated would be stupid and unprofessional. We would have expected very little from a product whose designers couldn't surmount the challenge of fitting a word on a screen.
Will the Zune marketplace have the Beatles?
.........Did Paul have John killed....?
Of course he didn't.
Paul died years before John, remember¿
does anyone else think its ironic that the MICROSOFT zune HD's promotional video is being played in quicktime? just putting it out there :D
worst player ever
Agreed. If Apple would let me I'd cry and sing happy songs while digging Quicktime's grave.
Flash for me..besides, it's not up to Microsoft, it's up to buy.com. Or whomever.
damn I really don't want to install Quick-time to watch this video, I'm pretty sure that I will never use it again.
thanks you Eric R.... you save me...... NO Quick time for me YAY :D
Yup, and I bet the video was cut using a Mac too lawls
http://buy.vo.llnwd.net/a62/o16/videoreviews/2009/09/ZUNE_PortablePerfection.mp4
It's not hosted by Microsoft, and given that the buy.com site has the same video in Flash...there's no point to be made. Microsoft probably provided retail sites with the same video in different formats so they choose as they please.
Just don't let Ballmer catch the one who posted it in Quicktime :D
I'm not seeing it in quicktime. I'm running IE8 on the Win 7 RTM, and it installed a WMP plugin to view the clip..... If this means I never have to instal QT I'm a hapy camper!
Okay, I went t see if I could vew a trailer on Apple.com and it said I needed quicktime, but then went to another site containing QT clips and they all loaded in WMP. Is this an RTM feature only or can someone with the RC check this out?