Microsoft Zune HD: Under the hood
iFixt in short order has done a tear-down of the Microsoft Zune HD media player, which hit retail Tuesday.
The core silicon in the Zune HD is an Nvidia Tegra processor (see photo) based on the power-frugal ARM chip design. The system-on-chip uses less than 0.5 watts of power. Tegra's defining feature is the integrated Nvidia GeForce graphics chip, which gives the Zune its graphics processing oomph.
(Credit:
iFixit)
The Zune HD also uses a SiPORT HD radio chip and an SDRAM chip from Hynix, according to iFixit. The accelerometer, for automatically orienting the display between portrait and landscape modes, is from Kionix.
Probably the most conspicuous feature of the Microsoft media player is a 3.3 inch OLED display capacitive touch screen. OLED screens draw significantly less power than a traditional LCD. "This isn't the first product with an OLED, but it's certainly cutting-edge technology, and something we haven't seen in any Apple devices yet," iFixit said.
Microsoft Zune features Nvidia Tegra ARM processor
(Credit: iFixit)The Zune also offers HD (720p) video out, Wi-Fi, a Web browser (with tap-to-zoom technology), built-in accelerometer, and a touch-screen QWERTY keyboard.
Microsoft claims the Zune's battery provides 8.5 hours video playback.
Brooke Crothers has served as an editor at large at CNET News, an editor at Dow Jones' Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, and a senior editor at InfoWorld. His CNET blog covers chip technology and computer systems, and how they define the computing experience. He also contributes to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. Follow Brooke on Twitter @mbrookec. 
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/09/14/from-oled-to-tegra-five-myths-of-the-zune-hd/
While your obviously a bit biased, that article you reference is actually a bit disappointing to me since I have been oggling the Zune HD for quite some time and the article has me a bit disappointed.
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/09/14/from-oled-to-tegra-five-myths-of-the-zune-hd/
There are a couple of points in it I don't agree with though. It rants about HD radio being a crappy non standard and not HD, etc. but the fact is that HD radio adds lot's of new stations, they do sound noticeably better than FM, and it adds cool digital radio stuff like artist name and track information.
One thing I know from my car radio is that HD radio requires a more powerful antenna, so I am hopeful that it is actually useful on the Zune, because if it works well it is a definite plus regardless of how much people complain about it.
The article also bashesd OLED. I was a bit surprised to learn that it can and does require more power in many situations, but I have seen OLED in person, and it is stunning. I admittedly never used it day to day, so I have no idea if it does have problems in bright light, but indoors, even in well lit rooms it's almost surreal.
The parts of the article that I agree with is the non issue of outputting HD. I've read similar articles about people playing 1080p video on the iPhone, and I'm pretty sure that most of the current hardware could output 720p and even 1080p depending on the bitrate and encoding, but it's such a niche area that I wouldn't do it with any product anyway.
The one that surprised me the most is that the hardware isn't as powerful as I thought. Again, not a terribly important issue, but one that I guess I bought the hype about. Tegra sounded so amazing, I guess it's just marketing hype.
And for the record, my iphone 3Gs get's WAY too hot when doing anything hardware intensive as it is. I would assume that anything that ran any faster using similar technology would need some seriously better heat dispersion, but in my opinion it's at a point where I would not be surprised at all if the iPhone 3Gs suffers from massive RROD type hardware failures over it's lifetime, so I wouldn't exactly be pushing for even faster hardware in the current generation anyway, so I don't knock the Zune Hd for this either.
This product is only interesting unless it: 1) Creates an ecosystem (music/app store, other connections, devices, etc.) with a user base to support it, and 2) makes a lot of profit.
Neither of those two things will have anything to do with technical advantages. A lot of it will have to do with whether folks will like using it enough to dump or convert everything they have invested in other platforms (namely iTunes, obviously).
How much money Microsoft will be willing to dump into this Zune ecosystem will be pretty critical, as well. You don't overcome tens of billions of dollars of sales over several years to a competitor with a couple of hundred million dollars. It will take tens of billions of dollars on Microsoft's part to get substantially into this game.
Chabig I agree with you, those screws on the back was one of the first things I noticed; not attractive at all.
Whether you hate the Zune because its from Microsoft or not, you have to admit that competition is good.
? Movies + TV Shows
? 14,000 songs
? 80 hours of video
? 90,000 photos
? Voice Control
? Voice Memos
? App Store
? Photos
? Mail
? Maps
? YouTube
? Nike + iPod
? Peer-to-Peer Gaming
? Genius Recommendations For Apps
? Genius Mixes
? Spotlight Search
? Stereo Bluetooth
? Automatic Wi-Fi Login
? Parental Controls
? Accessibility
? Calendar
? Contacts
? Notes
? Stocks
? Weather
? Calculator
? Clock/Alarm/Stopwatch/Timer
? Up to 30 hours of music playback
? Up to 6 hours of video playback
? iPod touch 3.1 software
? Wi-Fi
? Bluetooth
? Nike + iPod support built in
? Built-in speaker
? Earphones with Remote and Mic
? 8.5 mm thin
? optical glass front
? 3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen
? 480-by-320-pixel resolution at 163 pixels per inch
? Size and weight
? Height:4.3 inches (110 mm)
? Width:2.4 inches (61.8 mm)
? Depth:0.33 inch (8.5 mm)
? Weight:4.05 ounces (115 grams)1
? Bluetooth
? 802.11b/g
? Accelerometer
? Multi-Touch
? Arsenic-free display glass
? BFR-free
? Mercury-free LED-backlit display
? PVC-free
? Highly recyclable stainless steel enclosure
? Language support for English (U.S.), English (UK), French (France), German, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Arabic, Thai, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malay, Romanian, Slovak, and Croatian
? Keyboard support for English (U.S.), English (UK), French (France), French (Canadian), French (Switzerland), German, Traditional Chinese (Handwriting, Pinyin, Zhuyin), Simplified Chinese (Handwriting, Pinyin), Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Korean, Japanese (QWERTY), Japanese (Kana), Russian, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Estonian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Latvian, Flemish, Arabic, Thai, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malay, Romanian, Slovak, Croatian, Bulgarian, and Serbian
? Dictionary support (enables predictive text and autocorrect) for English (U.S.), English (UK), French, German, Traditional Chinese (Handwriting, Pinyin, Zhuyin), Simplified Chinese (Handwriting, Pinyin), Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Korean, Japanese (QWERTY), Japanese (Kana), Russian, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Arabic, Thai, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, and Croatian
? Support for 480p and 576p component TV out
? H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
? Movies + TV Shows
? 14,000 songs
? 80 hours of video
? 90,000 photos
? Voice Control
? Voice Memos
? App Store - Over 70,000 so far
? Photos
? Mail
? Maps
? YouTube
? Nike + iPod
? Peer-to-Peer Gaming
? Genius Recommendations For Apps
? Genius Mixes
? Spotlight Search
? Stereo Bluetooth
? Automatic Wi-Fi Login
? Parental Controls
? Accessibility
? Calendar
? Contacts
? Notes
? Stocks
? Weather
? Calculator
? Clock/Alarm/Stopwatch/Timer
? Up to 30 hours of music playback
? Up to 6 hours of video playback
? iPod touch 3.1 software
? Wi-Fi
? Bluetooth
? Nike + iPod support built in
? Built-in speaker
? Earphones with Remote and Mic
? 8.5 mm thin
? optical glass front
? 3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen
? 480-by-320-pixel resolution at 163 pixels per inch
? Size and weight
? Height:4.3 inches (110 mm)
? Width:2.4 inches (61.8 mm)
? Depth:0.33 inch (8.5 mm)
? Weight:4.05 ounces (115 grams)1
? Bluetooth
? 802.11b/g
? Accelerometer
? Multi-Touch
? Arsenic-free display glass
? BFR-free
? Mercury-free LED-backlit display
? PVC-free
? Highly recyclable stainless steel enclosure
? Language support for English (U.S.), English (UK), French (France), German, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Arabic, Thai, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malay, Romanian, Slovak, and Croatian
? Keyboard support for English (U.S.), English (UK), French (France), French (Canadian), French (Switzerland), German, Traditional Chinese (Handwriting, Pinyin, Zhuyin), Simplified Chinese (Handwriting, Pinyin), Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Korean, Japanese (QWERTY), Japanese (Kana), Russian, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Estonian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Latvian, Flemish, Arabic, Thai, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malay, Romanian, Slovak, Croatian, Bulgarian, and Serbian
? Dictionary support (enables predictive text and autocorrect) for English (U.S.), English (UK), French, German, Traditional Chinese (Handwriting, Pinyin, Zhuyin), Simplified Chinese (Handwriting, Pinyin), Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Korean, Japanese (QWERTY), Japanese (Kana), Russian, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Arabic, Thai, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, and Croatian
? Support for 480p and 576p component TV out
? H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 3.0 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
Under the hood, what you got is, full of ****
LOL
PS i've never had much luck with my ipod screen in the sunlight :p
Continue.......
Yes.. it would have the same features. Apple competes against itself in this market. There are no real competitors for the iPhone or iPod touch (yet).
> There are no real competitors for the iPhone or iPod touch (yet).
Correction: yesterday there were no real competitors to iPod Touch. Unless you are a lemming that decides what to buy based on what everyone else is buying, you now have a legitimate choice of which touchscreen MP3 player you wish to buy. That's competition.
Though you're right: Apple mostly competes with ennui in their new iPod product launches these days: shame about the failure of the recent announcement in that regard.
As far as the display...wow, very disappointing. The demo of it was awesome, but in practical use OLED is not for mobile devices yet (if ever).
In the end, this is just an anti-iPod device, which may be fine, but you're still dealing with all of the Apple issues you'd object to, but with the Zune, the issues come from Microsoft...and Microsoft's ecosystem is far from being fleshed out.
LOL Apple users should feel threatened by SmartDJ alone haha.
That`s like unlimited streaming for $5/month !
And did I mention it runs on the Mac ?!!!
I am surprised that with all the muscle that Microsoft has STILL they can't compete. This Zune is not even out yet and it already feels obsolete. Give it a year and you will find it in eBay for pennies on the dollar.
I would consider the product for the following:
Easier access for those who want to replace the battery.
HD Radio
Auto-orientation of the screen.
The NVida processor is a solid choice.
Even sudo HD playback is a plus.
The product appears solid, and can fill a nitch where the IPod will not. If it works for you... great. If not, and you buy an IPod... that's good too. Choice is a good thing.
And just like the **Grownup** IPOD, it doesn't have a camera. That may be a good thing too! Cameras should be good cameras, and those are stand alone.
I look forward to this product. It's a welcome refresh to the entire market.
I go walking and watch a video while I walk.
In sunlight:
The netbook on full brightness doesn't work well (although it looks OK)
PSP is not usable (PSP 1000, haven't tried the recent ones)
DVD players can barely be seen
iPod can be seen a little but you have to tilt it into the sunlight and even then the colors are washed out
Zune has a similar result to the iPod but the screen reflects too much light to be usable (haven't tried the HD)
Creative Labs Zen Vision M worked fairly well in sunlight at 100% brightness, but how hard is it to get good videos on that device without using WMP?
Bottom line is that few video playback devices look good outside. I bought Myvu video glasses and they work fine, but you need to use tape to block the outside of the viewport and you still need a sunguard on top of it. Basically, I covered it with black duct tape and then created a 1.5 inch shield using another piece of black duct tape and I can see the video very well. Sometimes you have to tilt your head to block the glare, but it's still possible.
If you want to watch videos outside, get enclosed video goggles otherwise I wouldn't try it outside. You can't fault that from the device standpoint unless it was the only device that had that issue. It caught me as mildly amusing because if you can't use a portable DVD player outside and have to be inside, you're reducing the portability of it (unless you're in a car, but even then you still get some of that).
- by laurenglenn September 20, 2009 6:20 PM PDT
- As far as the comment where someone said that if Apple's not doing it why is anyone else, you could say the same thing about the FM radio. Zune made that useful by taking the text information transmitted by the FM station and then adding it to your marketplace cart so you can download the song with your Zune pass. Everyone said the same thing that it wasn't important because Apple wasn't doing it.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(50 Comments)Well now they are with the Nano. Apple couldn't make a good sounding music player with the Wolfson chipset (5G) and now they took Cirrus Logic and made music play through that. Cirrus Logic and Jaton are two companies known in the PC world for being less than stellar in quality.
One thing I can say about Apple is that they make better software than hardware. It's useable and does what you want it to do (or what Steve Jobs wants it to do). Zune works for me and I love it because the sound quality is superb (not as good as my PSP, but still up there in quality). The software could be better, but it works for some. They may only have a small percentage of the market, but then Apple only has a small percentage of the market in OS sales. Most people would stand by their Macs as others would with the Zune. It's a good competitor to the iPod/iPhone/Touch lines, but Microsoft seems to be handling it slightly better than Atari did with things in the 90's. They put out some great hardware, but they couldn't sell water to someone dying of thirst in the desert. They were one of the first computers to have a DSP work as a secondary processor that I've seen. It could decode MPEG-1 very smoothly well before a PC could that was affordable. Too bad it was badly marketed and was crushed by the PC market.
Just because they have an uphill battle doesn't mean they should give up. One day, people will get tired of the bad sound quality. It probably won't be for a while, but I bet you that if you put a Zune up against an iPod and played back some classical or complex progressive rock like Dream Theater, you'd see what sounds better. It's not important to some, but it is to others. Keep the competition because apparently Apple needs more ideas as they don't even add new features to the Classic line anymore. At least nothing earth shattering as much as they did when they made the 5G.