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blog Microsoft Zune Zune hardware

New firmware for the Zune 120

Well I installed the new firmware on my Zune 120 today & it installed without any issues. I will say this in Microsoft’s defense they didn’t change my setting for the wireless like they did with all previous firmware updates. Previous versions enabled the wireless without even asking for permission, they just told you that was how they were going to do it, so I was surprised that they allowed my setting to stay.

Ok that’s all I have to say good about it. They didn’t make certain changes that I wanted like adding Unicode support & the music, pictures, & videos are always present even if you don’t have any of or all of those categories on your Zune. I mean they were able to figure out how to do that with podcasts, audio books, & games why can’t they do it with the others. I would also like to be able to remove the marketplace option from the Zune if I so choose to.

If Microsoft would make a Zune HD with a decent amount of space & have no limits on the number of files along with fixing any other issues I’ve mentioned I might buy one but as it is I can’t see a use for it other than a really expensive door stop, wait it wouldn’t weigh enough to do that job I guess a paper weight is all I can think of.

I guess Microsoft didn’t really put a lot of thought into the idea that HD means it will need more storage space. So I really don’t get why they want to drop the storage size allowed to something so small with only 16 GB & 32 GB options. I guess some people like having that little data but I like having tons of options which means I need more space.

Which reminds me I haven’t tested yet if the firmware will allow me to increase the total number of files on my Zune. I hope that they finally fixed that issue as you should not have a file limit in this day & age. Or was it the software that was the cause of the issue I really don’t know. Oh well if they fixed that I’ll be happier.

I’m just glad that the Zune 4.0 software still doesn’t eat up tons of CPU time unlike a certain piece of software that was written by a competitor. Yes I mean iTunes & you apple fan boys &  fan girls can keep on claiming how wonderful everything Apple is & does, but you are going to have a very hard time of converting me to “The Church of Steve” (AKA a worshiper of Steve Jobs & all that he is & does).

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blog Microsoft Zune

Another issue with the marketplace

Well yesterday Zune said “We have great freebies this week! TV: 30 Rock and Psych. MP3s: Simian Mobile Disco and Mayer Hawthorne. Grab them at Zune Marketplace now!” yesterday on twitter but for the life of me I can’t tell what is free with the new & “improved” marketplace. If anyone figures out how to tell what is the free content I’d be glad to find out how to know what exactly is free.

I have found that for the music at least I’m able to find it, but for Psych I haven’t been able to find anything. On thing I did notice is they changed it from “Free” to “No Charge” if that helps anyone else out.

Well after further investigation it turns out that it was the first episode on the first season of both 30 Rock & Psych that is free. I didn’t check there because they normally only do an episode on the most current season of a show when they release one for free.

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blog Microsoft Zune

Another issue with the Zune software

Well I just remembered another issue that I’ve been having with the Zune software & apparently the 4.0 version didn’t fix it either. I have episodes from my podcasts showing up in my music & video collections. Obviously the audio podcasts are showing up as music & the video podcasts are showing up with the videos.

Above you see an example of the issue that I’m talking about. This is one of the reasons I want to be able to have the podcasts outside the audio folder. Also it makes more sense to have the pictures from the Zune sent to a folder other than audio. Last time I checked a picture was not an audio file. Also most of the stuff in the audio folder other than podcasts is music & most of my podcasts as not music.

I was really hoping that they would see reason. I was also hoping with this release that would release a firmware for the 120 GB Zune & older models that gave us Unicode support so that the music I have from Japan can actually use & display it in the native language. I say that because trying to guess who “□□□□” is really hard to tell if it is “新居昭乃”, “岩本正樹”, or some other artist that happens to have four Japanese characters for their name. I don’t see why I should have to update my entire collection to match the complete & total lack of Unicode support on the Zune. I know that the Zune HD is supposed to have Unicode support but that doesn’t help me as I have a Zune 120 & the Zune HD does not have anywhere near enough storage space for my needs to even think of buying one. If Microsoft would release one that is 120+ GB in size I might consider buying one, but otherwise I will not purchase one as it won’t meet my needs.

That reminds me of another issue I have with the software Podcasts like “The Bungie Studios Podcast” is listed under the “t’s” in the software but on the device in the “b’s”. Its inconsistencies like that I don’t understand that they miss. I also noticed in the music section they ignore the word “the” if it is the first word for sorting titles in the software & on the device. For example you will find “The Beatles” under the “b’s” in both the software & on the Zune itself. So to fix that one the easiest way would be to just fix this issue.

Edit September 17th 2009 or 2009-09-17 I updated the blog to support UTF-8 which I had forgotten that I didn’t add this post made me realize that issue so I corrected it, but I had to put the “□’s” & Japanese characters back as they all became “?’s”.

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blog Microsoft Zune Zune software

More on the Zune 4.0

As I expected the Zune marketplace is having major issues today. You learn to expect this when they release software for both the website & the clients on the same day. Also when they said they had free content on twitter on the same day that they release a major overhaul for both the website & the client software.

Anyways on to the new issue I found in the migration to the 4.0 software that they call an upgrade. I had several podcasts that were set to “Sync only the first unplayed episode” they somehow all were changed to “Sync all unplayed and partially played episodes”. which obviously increased the number of files & the size of the space used by the podcasts on my Zune & that happened without my consent.

Another issue I had marked several videos in my collection to “Never sync with Joecr-120” before the “upgrade”. After installing the 4.0 software they no longer had that tag. So now I have to go through my collection & set that again so that only stuff I want is synced to my Zune.

Please Microsoft learn from your mistakes & don’t try to do so much all at the same time. You are running faster than you are able to maintain when you do stuff like this. I really think you would have had a better launch if you had spaced everything out more & also I would have liked it if the marketplace didn’t keep crashing on me.

As I said earlier you brought back an old bug. I guess those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it & I guess that means the Zune team has not learned from history.

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blog Microsoft Zune Zune software

Zune 4.0 software & issues

Well today Microsoft released the version 4.0 Zune software. I had been excited about it until after I downgraded to it. they brought back an issue that I had dealt with in version 2.5 which was later fixed. When they did the upgrade they lacked any finesse in the software while zune.net was down for the day before. (The should have sent me to zune.net instead of to a broken URL that was supposed to be about the new TOS so that I’d know that they took the marketplace down & everything else. They also could have done a temporary redirect for everything on zune.net to the page that said all of the Zune services was down for the upgrade, but no that would make too much sense.)

On to the issue I have back on the 2.5 software that seems to have come back in the 4.0 software.

This was all on the zune.net forums I’ve skipped posts that had nothing to do with the issue I was dealing with. Also any grammar errors or spelling errors have been left intact so as to keep this as accurate as possible.

On page 10 of this thread

2008-05-27, 9:39 AM
re: Version 2.5 problems **POST HERE**

Well I’ve got a problem with the versions 2.5 that is just somewhat annoying. When I have it downloading podcasts if the file is in a format that the Zune can’t deal with it will keep trying to download the file. For example the make podcast includes PDF files which the Zune can’t play, now it won’t stop downloading them. Back in 2.0 & 2.3 I could tell it that it was already played & it wouldn’t keep trying to download the files, now with version 2.5 I can’t seem to convince the software that it is not supposed to keep download stuff it can’t use.

2008-05-27, 1:04 PM was the first reply by Psalm107 on page 11 of the thread

I bet I know which podcast it is… I had the same problem. My solution… plug the podcast addy into Juice and download there. Then it shows up as music instead of a podcast. Set up an auto playlist for it and you’re good to go.

If someone has a real fix for this please post. 🙂

2008-06-03, 2:57 PM was replied to by Solar257 on page 11 still

What podcast is this? Could you please post the XML link?

I replied at 2008-06-03, 4:01 PM on page 12 (at the time I didn’t know the properties of an episode would include the URL)

Here are most of them. Some include pdf files which I would like to be downloaded & most of them have one or more file that the zune software chokes on, I’ve even seen it not like a mp3 file on at least one of them. The first one is the one with the most pdf files attached.

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/make_podcast/index.xml

http://feeds.pbs.org/pbs/oceanadventures-video

http://feeds.pbs.org/pbs/wnet/nature-video

http://feeds.pbs.org/pbs/wgbh/nova-audio

http://feeds.pbs.org/pbs/science-video

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/naked_scientists_enhanced_podcast.xml

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/naked_scientists_podcast.xml

http://www.discovery.com/radio/xml/news_video.xml

Not sure on the feed address on this one as I found it in the zune marketplace & I can’t seem to find it on their site

http://japancast.net

2008-06-03, 7:39 PM was replied to by Solar257 on page 12 still

Thanks for the links, lets see if we can get somewhere with this. So I tried the fist three links above. Attached are a description of my results along with pictures:

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/make_podcast/index.xml

* Told the software to download the first 10 episodes, so as to get 2 PDF ‘episodes’ (picture)
* PDF episodes were not downloaded, instead they showed an error message when I clicked the yellow icons (picture)
o I tried closing & reopening the software twice to see if they would redownload, they did not.
o Marking one as played did cause the other to redownload but not continually (picture)

http://feeds.pbs.org/pbs/oceanadventures-video

* Told the software to download the first 6 episodes
* All except the most recent episode (5/7 – Kelp Forest) look to be in playable order (picture)
o I made sure to play two episodes through the software (4/10 & 3/26) (picture)

http://feeds.pbs.org/pbs/wnet/nature-video

* Told the software to download the first 6 episodes
* All episodes were playable
o I made sure to play two episodes through the software (5/29 & 5/1) (picture)

All the other settings were as follows:

* Playback order: newest episodes first
* Syncing: sync all unplayed and partially played episodes (I did not sync any of these three podcasts to my Zune)

So I’m guessing that what happens, at least with the Make Magazine Podcast, is that when a new episode comes along the software forgets that you’ve already marked the previous undownloadable episodes as played? If that is not the case, then what is? Do you have different playback and download settings, at least for the first three?

Helpful tip:
To get the XML URL of an already downloaded podcast, right click on one of the podcast episodes and select the ‘properties’ option. The URL should be the second line in the Porperties dialog box. (picture)

at 2008-06-04, 3:39 PM I replied still on page 12

Man I wish I knew the easy way to find those URLs earlier oh well. For the Nature podcast the files are near the bottom. one is titled “Diamond Dust” & the other one is titled “Behind the scenes with filmmaker Allison Argo”. They are both m4v files that the Zune software chokes on. I’ll see about getting screen shots of it doing it as I know it will do it again.

Well that is the end of the conversation on the Zune forums about that issue

Some time later they released an update that resolved that issue as I kept having it doing the same thing downloading stuff I told the software not to. now the 4.0 software is doing the same thing. Please when you test it have someone actually do some tests with podcasts like this.

My next issue with the new software is I don’t see a way to clear what is listed as downloaded. In all prior versions leaving the downloads in the marketplace & coming back would resolve that but they are still listed & I can’t find a way to clear it.

Next why in the world does it list the video or music file that I have finished playing as being currently played. I liked it better when it stopped telling me about a video I just finished watching.

This one really confused me I couldn’t play back any video until after I downloaded the latest driver for my video card unless I like watching a green screen with just audio. Why did they not warn us that the new version may require updated video card drivers? I was lucky that my guess was that I needed to update them & then reboot. I say that because I’ve seen weird things like that from other products & they had the same resolution update & reboot.

I also noticed no one has yet replied to a possible bug I found in the 3.1 software but because I have implemented a workaround for the issue I don’t know if it happens with the 4.0 software as of yet.