What do YOU want in the next firmware?

[spivey8]

Ability to sync with WMP11
A clock
New themes. (Now, I mean text and all, not just the background)
Thumbnails for videos
Sync with laptop through wifi
Internet browsing
A new equalizer system, instead of just picking out of presets, you can have your own custom EQ as well.
More format support

[jwscuba]

At zunester.com he mentions video codecs in this post.

His words allude to a firmware update that includes DVR-MS & DivX support! Or am I wrong to assume this?

Video stipulations

Lots of comments on my video posts. Let me stipulate some things to respond to folks:

It would be better to never have to transcode, but you probably need to do it sometimes. it's just a matter of how often.
Zune makes transcoding utterly automatic for the user; you add a supported file to the library, and if it needs transcoding it gets transcoded prior to sync. We do pre-transcode files for folks so they won't have to wait, but sometimes this doesn't work and users must transcode a lot during sync. Sorry. Go have dinner, maybe get a nap, then use your device. Or get a quad-dual-core machine.
The key phrase above? "supported file". The biggest crux in comments: DVR-MS files. The challenge with DVR-MS is that it's mpeg-2, which is cranky and possibly unreliable (if you use an existing codec) or expensive (if you build one in to the software).
Let's agree DVR-MS and Divx support would be great. I wish we had it at launch.
My preferred solution, TMPGenc, is more poweful than most people need and more expensive than I'd like. Bummer. Can people suggest free/cheap alternatives and I'll play around with them? Frankly I suspect free stuff will be rough because (a) video is hard to program and (b) codecs and expensive. But I'd love to be proven wrong.
Thanks. The feedback is great and I agree this is an area for future investment and differentiation from the iPod.


posted by David Caulton at 4:30 PM 17 comments

[Zuneologist]

i read that as well..i dont know what to make of it personally.

[lolol123lol]

NetBrowser, Games, and a clock would be perfect.

[Dark616]

lefty support, mp4 support, delete songs(setup under options, it would say delete, then go into a main menu looking thing that you would navigate as usual to the song/artist/album/vid and click the center button.), removable hard drive, metta data editing.

[lolol123lol]

removable harddrive?

[Dark616]

like the hack

[KingJehu]

1. MAC SUPPORT!
2. WiFi support for internet radio
3. Small App for recording local radio
4. Maybe extended WiFi sharing?
5. Support for themes
6. Ability to make your Zune's music like a radio (aka people listen into your zune when you play music)
7. Video sharing
8. maybe a small text messaging system? (NM, not worth it...)
9. a huge upgrade for that Zune software
10. More video support...

:hang:

[thegame]

i would love to get wi-fi access, check emails msn, explorer. it was the function it just seems weired not been able to use it for other things then just send songs or pics to another zune...

[kryptman50k]

Custom EQ settings...easier method to use the Zune as a hard drive...clock/alarm.

[djbeenie]

How about a fix that will make it work on the hundreds of thousand of machines running Media Center prior to 2005!!!!

[cchasem]

i would like to be able to send/recieve songs freely (no 3x3 rule) between two zunes that both share the same subscription plan (my girlfriend and I both have zunes now..)

[Yonderknight]

I think there is a problem with video playlists Zune can't saw it. Fix it!

[Dlanijer]

In reality guys, for an official firmware update, we will never see DivX support. DivX is mainly used for piracy (and dont try to argue otherwise. I know "But itz smallar file size L0lz!!!!1one" but really... how many people actually encode their own movies into DivX. How many people use divx outside of downloading a movie you dont own? Find me 10 people like this and its still not going to matter over the number of people that DO use it for illegal purposes. And from a business standpoint, microsoft would really eff themselves if they'd add DivX support.

(sorry, i didnt mean to sound like an ass with that, but it wont happen... now, as for hacked firmware, here's to hoping! :cheers: )

What i'd like to see? Firmware support for mp4. REAL firmware support... not Zune software support like we currently have. I wanna d-load stuff from podtropolis and toss it onto my zune w/out any conversion. Takes too damned long.

And yes, the clock thing would be great too!

Games? Yea, that'd be cool, but we wont see that for AT LEAST another year/year and a half... if ever.

OH and the full on "removable hard drive" thing would be fan-forkin-tastic as well. (then it COULD be used on Mac and Linux.... oh i can only dream of the day heh).

[Jizzy]

Originally Posted by ohsoferrety

1.) Clock
2.) Metadata editor built-in to the Zune software (I know, not firmware, whatever)
3.) Wireless internet and/or ability to access Marketplace wirelessly
4.) Ability to see all songs by an artist, not just album-by-album display. (Don't hiss, I'm a FORMER iPod user)
5.) More in depth settings
6.) Cheese grater.

I'm all for the cheese grater as well.......

[greg3d]

1) Gapless playback
2) Playback of FLAC and OGG encoded songs.ÂÂ*ÂÂ*Serious audiophiles REQUIRE THIS
3) True customizable equalizer...perhaps several user defineable settings.
4) True mass storage compliance for the HD
5) Video meta tags and playlist/categorizing exactly like the music
6) Support for more video codecs to cut down that slow transcoding
7) Delete files from the Zune device
8) Send Video's wirelessly
9) Sync Wirelessly
10) Ability to record from the FM radio...though the RIAA gets in the way here
11) Clock (since everyone wants yet another clock on their person)
12) Implement the DJ feature that was scrapped last minute (broadcasting your music to surrounding Zunes)

[thegr8vincenzo]

I'm honestly already looking forward to hacked firmware more than official releases, especially when it comes to things like eradicating the 3x3 rule and divx/xvid support. The ability to load up custom GUIs would be cool, though difficult (and, again, something I'd expect in a hacked FW than an official release).

And you know what? Cheese grater for the win.

[SpaceGhost]

I am crossing my fingers for some software fixes. Some of the problems I've encountered that is driving me crazy:

1: Zune seems to have a problem dealing with my ID3 tags. It will recognize the tags correctly on the Zune software and even show up correctly on the Zune when browsing through the software, but when viewed on the Zune itself the tracks split up into two identically named albums.
For example: If I browsed by artist and selected "Some Random Band" I would see doubles of one or two albums in that library. About half of the tracks would go into one album while the rest would go into the double. This totally sucks and Zune support was not able to help me with this.

2: Zune's automatic ID3 tag update will change the tags of some of my mp3's into something that is entirely not correct. This feature has been turned off but it would be nice to have an option to automatically download just the album art. Speaking of which...

3: The "Edit Album Info" option in the software has not been updating the cover image as it is supposed to lately.

4: I have the Zune software directed towards a specific MP3 library that is not in "My Documents" so I turned off all of the default file paths and added the folders that I wanted it to sync to in the options. What is weird is that it still grabs random albums from My Documents/My Music anyway. I have no idea why it does this but I deleted the album from my library multiple times and have reinstalled three times. Just weird.

And minor requests:

5: Ability to use the Zune as an external hard drive?

6: Lefty Support!

7: AVI/Divx. Windows Encoder 9 works for this so it's low priority for me.

8: Ability to use something other than the default brown, grey or blue blob themes for albums without artwork. Being able to use our own image for the background is great, but why can't we change this as well?

I love the Zune itself but it's software is just killing me.

[boodah]

more battery life!!!!! a clock and louder volume and more but i cant think of dem rite now

[lolol123lol]

how can you extend the battery's life in FIRMWARE?, Thats only possible on hardware upgrade i guess...