Zune HD accessory roundup

Need to charge your Zune HD in the car and transmit to your FM radio? The Zune Car Pack has you covered.

(Credit: Microsoft)

The Zune HD represents a big step forward in Microsoft's war against the iPod, but when it comes to accessories, there's just no catching up to Apple. Step inside any local electronics store and you'll find yourself wading through a swamp of speaker docks, cases, cables, chargers, in-car FM transmitters, and alarm clocks, all made for the iPod. Try looking for the Zune section, though, and you'll be sorely disappointed.

Fortunately, the handful of accessories made for the Zune are all surprisingly high in quality. The iHome ZN9 alarm clock, for instance, is one of the better bedside speaker systems we've tested, regardless of what MP3 player you plug into it. Same goes for the Kicker ZK500--the thing is a first-rate, floor-shaking speaker dock that any Zune owner should count themselves lucky to have.

Some accessories are uniquely Zune, though. The HD AV dock, for example, has no equal in the iPod world. With it, you can output 720p video from your Zune HD to your TV, as well as show off your music collection, flip through photos, and tune in to HD Radio channels.

To see our full list of Zune HD accessories, check out this CNET photo gallery.

Accessories for the Microsoft Zune HD

I just wanted to say that the Kicker zk500 and the Zune HD arent perfectly compatible.

The Kicker does not include a dock adapter for the Zune HD. Therefore, its somewhat risky to use the two together. That being said, the Kicker does actually play music with the Zune HD. Its just that without an adapter, its not really a true accessory for the Zune hd

[audiodonald]

Is it just that the fit isn't snug, or does it not fit at all?

[GSOgymrat]

I have the Kicker for my Zune 120 and love it. Unfortunately my Zune 120 just died. I was going to get the Zune HD but if it won't work I may consider other options. What exactly is the risk you spoke of? Does it work with the HD? I emailed Kicker but have not received a response.

[unfactor]

Just because it doesn't include a dock adapter doesn't mean it's risky or won't work. I have a Zune HD and it works perfectly fine even without a dock adapter on my ZK500. FYI. I heard that the ZK500 will be made compatible for the Zune HD. That would be sweet!

[tellesal]

Kicker iK501 Digital Stereo System for the ipod is the exact same thing and iHome (funny, buying a Zune accessory that was named after the ipod moniker) is virtually identical to the ipod version also. For this reviewer to say how great they are compared to their ipod counterpart is a joke. Again they are just retrofitted ipod accessories and nothing more. As for HD resolution as mentioned by many reviewers, the quality of 720p when bought online is compressed too much and doesn't really resemble 720p resolution (720p which is already the low-end of HD), whereas the ipod with a $5.00 cable from ebay shows at a real 576p compared to the $99.00 and to be truthful, if you tried to put more than a couple of true HD movies on your 32GB Zune HD, you wouldn't have any room left for anything else.

[audiodonald]

Where exactly did I say that the Kicker or iHome speakers are better than their iPod equivalent? In fact, I'm pretty sure I said that the HD AV dock was the only "uniquely Zune" accessory on the list. And for the millionth time, the $89 (not $99) dock does much more than video output--it actually shows you menus, your music collection, a photo browser, HD radio tuner, and even has a screensaver optimized for 720p resolution (plus it charges your Zune and includes a remote control and digital audio output). All that $5 iPod cable will get you is some blurry composite video that you'll have to control directly from the iPod.

A better argument would have been for the iPod-compatible DLO HomeDock HD--the only accessory that comes close to duplicating what the Zune HD AV dock accomplishes. The problem is, it's a $250 product, the menus are ugly, the video is upscaled, there's no HD radio option, and the performance is flakey. I didn't say it was a good argument, but at least it has legs.

[tellesal]

No you did not make that claim, but by omitting that the same product is available for the ipod leads people to believe that they are getting something the other doesn't. The cable for the ipod at least makes it a truly portable movie player, whereas the Zune dock is too big to move around or take with you everywhere. The claim of blurry composite, you may as well slam everyone that still doesn't have a HD TVs in every room and may want to watch something from their bedroom or to take on vacation and let their kids watch their favorite movies on the TV in the hotel or in the car. If you have to have a special dock to do that and leave it on one TV, you may as well buy an Apple TV which is now letting people rent and view HD movies and have the disk space to really keep higher resolution movies on it and do it right. I see the Zune HD, like the Touch, where most people will watch movies on the screen of the device and 720p is a joke on a screen that small and uses up valuable memory.

[tellesal]

BTW I just did order the 32GB Zune HD on the hopes that Microsoft makes good with the XBox tie-in since I love my XBox 360. I am just tired of Microsoft not being innovative enough on their Zunes and like many people I got stuck with a 30GB Zune which I handed off to my daughter since they never took off.

[buckstermcgee]

I find it interesting that in the same breath you say the 720p is too compressed and a low end HD, yet saying that you can get a 576p for far cheaper, attempting to show 576p as something desireable.

While 576p sounds comparable to 720p due to there name sake, it only refers to the number of horizontal lines and not the verticle ones. Unless this is some different standard than normal, the 576p format should be 4:3 aspect ratio, compared to the 16:9 aspect ratio or 720p. Given a common denominator the 576p 4:3 aspect would be a 12:9 vs a 16:9 for the 720p. If you divide out those two areas, you find that you are missing 25% of the area by simply having the 4:3 ratio. Thus, if your 576p was actually just 720p video in a 4:3 aspect, you would lose 25% of your screen, just from the aspect ratio alone.

Now if you take, the actual megapixal of the two formats you might think that 576p was much closer to 720p, then lets say 720p is to 1080p. Actually the difference is about the same between the jumps, where the jump between 720p to 1080p is about 3% bigger. 720p has over twice the megapixels as 576p, as 1080p has twice the megapixels of 720p.

What's worse is that if you want to watch 16x9 video on 4:3 screen you lose out even more with the large black letterboxing then if you just had a 16x9 screen with the same megapixel size as a 567p screen.

As for 720p being worth it? 1080p is absolutely stunning, no doubt about that. If you've seen a blu-ray movie that was optimized for 1080p, it is so crisp and beautiful, it's almost scary. And like you said that would take up a lot of space, about 25GBs, or fill up one Zune HD for one movie. But as stunning as 1080p is, it's also somewhat overkill. Unless you really have a TV that's 60+ inches, you're not going to be able to notice the benefit as much (if at all), unless you really move closer to the TV. At that point, not everyone in the world is sporting a 60+ inch 1080p TV. For most HD broadcast on TV at done in 720p or 1080i. For me, those are still so sharp that I'm impressed, and I oggle over their prettiness. Also, 1080i doesn't have the same vertcle sharpness of 720p. 1080i does have a higher horizontal sharpness to 720p, but again it becomes hard to preceive. I would bet I could show you 720p and 1080i and you wouldn't be able to notice. At that point, 720p is really all you need. So other then the coolness factor of saying, it would be nice if the Zune HD could do 1080p, it's really pointless, especially for such a small device.

I think the size of the device is really missed by some people. it is super light and portable. I could carry that thing anywhere, in any clothing, and it wouldn't be an issue. It's like not even a consideration. Now you saying carrying a dock around you ruins it's portablity whereas a cable is far better? Do you really carry cables around you in your pants? Do you really just have a cable on you just incase you happen to be near a tv so you could watch video? I really doubt that. What I would more suspect, that you have a cable in your bag, or your car, or some place where you can go out and grab it, not just pull it out with your keys. In that case, the HD dock isn't so big that you wouldn't do the same thing. If I found myself actually running around and wanting to load up the Zune HD on a TV, I would keep the dock in car or in a bag. At the point, instead of whipping out a cable and getting up to the iPod over and over you have to look at it to control it, and do anything beside let sometime play, I would be able to easy (it's really easy on the HD dock) plug it in, set back and enjoy my portal media center. Then I could be accross the room controling movies, and music, or radio, or pictures, in a beautiful way, rather then just being able to port video over in a bland way.

Now, $90 bucks for a dock is a lot. But really, the extra expense if in the cables. If you get the sync dock, and have a cheap $3 hdmi cable, then congrats you can do the same thing. You will save $40 (ok $37) and still get the same experience.

In the end, it's not just about numbers and values, which people like to stick to because they are unbias, but it's the overall experience. And I think that a lot of the value in the Zune HD is that overall premium elegant experience tha tthe Zune HD has.

[buckstermcgee]

Ugh, let me just add that I didn't get a chance to proof read my typing, and the horrible mistakes with typing, spelling, grammar, etc. are embarrassing. I don't see of a way of going back and re-editing it, so i apologize for the terrible crimes I've commited against the english language.

[tellesal]

Thanks for writing Buckstermcgee and don't worry about the typos, I can tell you know what you're talking about. I just like to throw things out there and it lets everyone get more information than what the article has to say. I do have a very nice movie room I built with bluray, 110" screen, 1080 projector and all and we enjoy it immensely, I just doubt I will use my Zune HD for it, but the 360 is hooked up to it, so who knows. As for my cables, yes I have all the cables I need in my backpack which I carry each day in my car. It contains my sync cables, chargers for phones, etc. and when I do take the kids out I hook up the ipod to the dual screens in the headrests because it's a lot easier than carrying their DVDs. So, the answer is yes, I could go to your house right now with what I have with me and play a movie without any forethought. And with the cables so cheap I do own a few and leave some in the back of some TVs and with the app Air Video I have used the wifi to play movies that are on my computer and throw it on whatever TV I want without having to copy it to the ipod. The app only costs $2.99. I still think I would stick with an Apple TV before investing in the dock and I would bet Itunes will have twice the movie selection just like it has the larger music library compared to Microsoft. Sorry if I have no confidence in Microsoft to keep it a great platform. I am still mad that Microsoft didn't offer an HDDVD version of the XBox to battle Blueray since the HDDVD drives were so much cheaper to produce and put in their gaming machine. But they didn't and people bought PS3 machines in droves to have the HD experience. I refuse to buy PS3 only because I want to support the 360 but like most people it has been sent back because of the "ring of death" but they did right by me for fixing it for free and we have 2 of them in the house. And now we're discussing the Zune HD which is really not that much better than a Touch that may be 2 years old already, we're comparing it to a product that Apple has not done much with because they want people to buy the iphone.

[tellesal]

I'll write more when my Zune HD arrives and I get to play with it for a while, but in the mean while I'll use the touch to check my email, IMs, browse, play games, watch TIVO, listen to music. My whole city of Franklin, TN has gone free wi-fi throughout the city and it is nice to call the UK using Skype while driving through town and it's free. They better make apps to replace all the things I use on the touch or it will be under utilized (and make them free or cheap like they are on itunes).

[tellesal]

Finally got the ZHD yesterday and haven't been able to play with it much yet, but two things glare out first. I can't hook up my bluetooth headphones to it and there's no way to change the volume while it's in my pants pocket. My mp3 player spends majoirty of the time in my pocket and I like to change the volume through the outside of my pants when I need to lower the volume fast. As for the bluetooth, I just assumed it'd work with my existing pair of headphones since I hate the wire. Any of you gurus, please tell me if bluetooth is on the horizon. Thanks

[agriffith96]

Just give me an in-dash CD player that has a Zune interface. That is all I ask. Every car cd-player has an ipod interface. Just give me one that has a Zune interface.

[sural98]

A small detail but are the Zunes in the above pictures Zune HDs?!

[buckstermcgee]

If you are referring to the accessories gallery, there is only one picture that has a Zune HD. It's the one on the 3rd tab: Microsoft Zune HD AV Dock. The Zune HD has no big squircle (square-circle) on the bottom, also the screen is flush and covers the majority of the device. In that 3rd tab, the Zune HD looks very bland due to how it was lit in the picture. In real life they are very beautiful and elegant.

[Rod Roddy]

I have the AV Dock and it's awesome, puts the ZHD in a class all its own.

[sgrmba]

Does this car charger/fm transmitter set work like the one for Zune 2G? That one is very neat. When you turn the station to the one on the transmitter my radio display reads Zune. Once I start playing the music my radio display shows artist name and song name while it is playing.

[buckstermcgee]

So obviously I've never used a zune FM transmitter, but it sounds like you're saying that the Zune FM transmitter outputs RDS information, like a radio station would about the song they are playing? Is that what it does? Because if so that's just so cool! It's small attention to detail like that, which I really enjoy in products.

As for the the new FM transmitter for the Zune HD. A quick search on Zune's offical webpage of the two different models doesn't help answer that about either. Neither model suggests that it can do that feature that you speak of, which leads me to believe if it was in the earlier, then why not keep it for the newer "premium" version?

It's interesting that they seemed to go a different route with this newer model, making it less complicated with few wires. Both will do the auto scan to find the best radio station, as well as two presets, and the new one seems to have the addition of an extra open AUX out and extra USB port to charge USB devices. I'm curious why the AUX out is neccessary. Is the headpone jack on the Zune HD blocked if you use the FM transmitter, so you have to use the AUX? Does the AUX amply the signal instead of being at the lower headpone level? Can you use both at the same time? Or is it just that the headpone jack is turned off when the radio is in use? I don't see why you would want to broadcast FM and use the AUX at the same time, but I'm assuming there's a good reason for it.

[tellesal]

I didn't get my Zune HD yet, but got to play with a friend who I talked into buying the HD and dock. We hooked it up to his surround sound receiver and the movie wouldn't play, when we hooked it up directly to the TV it worked great, but then we noticed a big problem with this. No surround sound, which is a big part of the experience with High Def TV. As far as we could see last night the Zune has no provision for surround sound. We will play around more with this and see if we can get it to work and if anyone has done this let us know, because he would like to have the full experience.

[buckstermcgee]

Where did the video come from? The files would have to have a surround sound stream in them for it to work.

The last and only thing I saw about the Zune HD and surround sound was talking about it's video format in the latest release of Microsoft Expression Encoder, which showed having 5.1 surround sound. Check out the link below:

http://www.thezoone.com/news.php/2009/07/zune-hd-supports-5-1-surround-sound/

Beyond that I haven't heard anything else about it. I would assume that the Zune HD can infact play out Surround Sound given a file that has it. Of course you wouldn't be able to use the standard stereo audio connections, and would either need to use the toslink optical out, or the HDMI.

[tellesal]

Thanks again Buckster. It was a movie he purchased through Microsoft and I hope they are sending the movie with 5:1. Like I said, this is a friend's setup and I can't wait to try it on my own, where I feel more comfortable. All I know the video worked like a champ plugged into the TV, but not through his surround receiver.

[buckstermcgee]

Hmm, what type of video was it again that you got from Microsoft? Was it a movie? a Tv show? A podcast? A clip?

I can't say that I've read anything about when and where Microsoft uses 5.1 audio for their content. In one thought, 2.0 audio is just more compabile in overall usage, but you would think if you bought a 720p movie that at least that would use 5.1 audio. There is also the chance that this is new for Microsoft's video marke place and maybe they haven't updated it yet, and are waiting to do so when the release the upcoming xbox live intergration, which will allow you to get both 720p and 1080p video in one purchase.

I would say unless you can check the propties of the video you were trying out and see that it had 5.1 for sure, that you do find a video you can load on the Zune HD that you know without a doubt has 5.1 audio. At that point you'll have the best chance of finding out if it works or not.

[mrhdtv]

there is no war against the ipod dude! You are just trying to sell the Zune HD in that all too familiar "Apple against the world juxtaposition".
Here is how it went down 8 years ago, Apple brought out the ipod back in 01' and the industry laughed at them. Insiders on wall street thought they were going to make a pda to rival palm. NO. It was a music player. And who laughed at apple in particular? steve balmer. he chided them for bringing out the ipod. he said it was too expensive and why would anyone buy it when they could burn their music on cds for cheap. fast forward nearly a decade and the industry can't stop generating mp3 players.

Now here comes MS with the zune. Late to the party. But they have an advantage, the mp3 player market has already matured. So all you do is connect the dots. get a sleek design, a fancy UI blah blah blah. All the parts are ready to go complements of those ODMS in Asia.
One software update by Apple and they can emulate the zune's UI. EASY EASY EASY! Out the box the ipod touch and the iphone are ready to! So you can't convince me, ever, that the zune is better than the ipod. Never! MS wasn't there to battle it out with apple for the mp3 player market. NO! They waited until apple worked out the kinks and then they came sundering in. So don't give them any credit!

[mattytechfreak77]

Does anyone know what capacity the red, blue and green Zune Hds come in?

[buckstermcgee]

On the Zune Originals you should be able to get all colors now in both 16GB and 32GB. The site has been in the process of updating so for some reason you currently can't get a black 16GB or a blue 32GB, which is strange because a few days ago you could get the 32GB in all colors. Ultimately I expect the plan is to have all colors and capacities available.

[wegarnett]

Just becaus ethere's a ton of crap for the ipod, doesn't make it any better. I am amazed at how many of the reviews of products give so much weight to the crap that goes along with it (like apps that make fart sounds) instead of what the product is meant for and how it actually works.

[tellesal]

NOTE! No one using the Verizon modem should buy the Zune HD yet until Microsoft fixes their browser to accept the protocol. Keep an eye on the Zune Forum here with some very knowledgeble people. Check out this forum for unbiased questions and I wouldn't buy the ZHD until this is fixed. They are also reporting crappy unresponsive support again (typical Microsoft).
http://forums.zune.net/0/4/519784/ShowPost.aspx#519784