At 9am on this wet Seattle morning, after we’d been ushered into a theatrette in the RedWest (Redmond West) compound belonging to Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division, Microsoft officially pressed the Play button on its already perilously overhyped Zune project.
The player itself is no miracle of technology — but then, neither was the first iPod. Manufactured by Toshiba and carrying the Microsoft Zune brand, the device uses a 30GB hard disk to store video, music and photographs which are displayed on a 3in colour screen that works in both portrait and landscape modes.
Content can an be shared with up to four other Zune users over an ad hoc 802.11g Wi-Fi network, although copy-protected songs sent to a user can be played for only three timesover a three day period before they must be purchased from the online Zune Marketplace.
Microsoft didn’t specify how much each track will cost, but says that users will also have the option of paying a single monthly fee entitling them to unlimited downloads.
In fact, Microsoft refused to be drawn on several crucial pieces of information such as the price or a firm release date, with the later pegged only as “available this holiday season”.
Zune is believed to use Windows CE and will sync to PCs through Windows Media Player 11. The device also has an FM tuner. This first player in an expected family of devices will ship in white, black and brown. Yes, that last colour made us do a double-take, but we are reliably informed by local fashionistas (ie, the guys at Gap) that brown is the new black.
DRM keeps me from buying alot of new music and such… they’re taking shit way overboard. Fuck… if I buy a CD/mp3/movie/ect, I should be able to do with it as I please… they have no right to take on the roll of “big brother” imo.
I mean, you don’t see any other industry trying to do the same shit (albeit, it’s a little different than most other industry(s)). They treat us [consumers] like criminals and try sneeky shit (ala sony’s rootkit, starforce, ect).
Thats why I refuse to buy ANYTHING that has any sort of DRM (well… for the most part ;))… let 'em go broke for all I care.
