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sideaway
September 1st, 2009, 12:53 AM
With growing U.S. hype I stumbled across a nVidia's display, a couple of old 'previews' and a few articles about it.

There are reports the new ZuneHD is going to go on sale internationally. And hopefully that means my country.

http://www.zune.net/en-us/mp3players/zunehd/default.htm
To be honest I think it looks damn nice! A revamped intuitive UI. With nVidia's Tegra chip this puppy can play
back full 720p... Not on it's native res OLED screen (yay for efficient video playback!) of 480 x 272 however.
Aaaand you have to buy a few addons to plug it into your HD screen... so in that respect it's not overly useful.
But what it does mean is a very smooth interface, fast webpage rendering (it has wifi) and proper graphical
acceleration (cool addictive games anyone?). The dock also comes with a remote, although probably not overly
useful for your average user, I can think of situations where this might not be pointless, however the dock and
remote come seperately.

Support for 3rd party applications is planned, but apparently won't be released with the launching firmware. I
seriously think this thing has potential... Hopefully the (audio) playback is nice and it supports more than two
friggin audio formats and one video format. Know what would awesome? Non-encrypted firmware.

Maybe I can sell the neglected iPod on my desk and finally retire my 4 year old Toshiba Gigabeat from service.
Maybe.

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/4/2009/08/504x_504x_Platinum_Family.jpg

dragos240
September 1st, 2009, 12:55 AM
Hopefully it's Linux compatible!

sideaway
September 1st, 2009, 01:00 AM
Yes I totally agree. If the firmware isn't encrypted however, 3rd party mods would allow it anyway.

dragos240
September 1st, 2009, 01:03 AM
I wonder if the rockbox project will find out a way to get it on there. They always find some way.

sideaway
September 1st, 2009, 01:13 AM
Not always, look and the iPod 6.0 (or classic) No Rockbox there, and I'm really pissed off about it, because I bought it so i could put rockbox on it.

Touch screen is a complicated thing to code for, I'm not sure a project such as rockbox would have the developer capacity to develop rockbox with touch screen drivers...

HappyFeet
September 1st, 2009, 01:15 AM
Feed the machine! Microsoft FTW! ;)

sideaway
September 1st, 2009, 01:25 AM
Haha, well in terms of freedom, MS > Apple :P

No but seriously, I just generally buy the best device out there for me... And so far, nothing rivals my 4 year old Toshiba Gigabeat + Rockbox. 20 hours of audio playback (for a 4 year old device :O) compatible with nearly every format under the sun, good screen, aluminium finish, solidly built (dropped it countless times over the 4 years I've had it) came with all the peripherals as stock (docking-station, wall charger, USB cable but the headphones were average, oh well I never use the stock ones anyway) Uses usb mini, so never short of a cable if someones got a digital camera around (which is often), 60gb of storage, enough for my 40gb collection plus a few movies and small backup of apps.

My only only only gripe is that the CPU isn't very quick, neither is the HDD, but it is 4 years old, so something is to be expected - it plays doom very well, however. I seriously wish Toshiba made a new one. They did make a model after mine, but I couldn't afford to upgrade when released, so I never got it... They were fairly scarce in NZ, I actually bought mine in Aus.