Now, I admit I am an Apple fan with iPods, Macbooks, Apple TV, etc. I ordered a Zune HD because I think it will be AWESOME!
This guy sounds like he is a total fan boy without any open mind for another companies product. My only concern is the comments about the OLED. Is this in any way true or have any truth to it, or is he blowing smoke? As far as "HD" portion of the "review" he sounds like he wishes the iPod had HD video out, lol. HD radio isn't supposed to be "High Definition." I thought that was known?
The portion on the processor, I know nothing about but it sounds to me like a my car is better than yours or Ford vs Chevy stuff going on here.
Just FYI, I don't agree with this guy, I just want to see what you guys think.
That guy is using facts about OLED screens from about 3-4 years ago, when OLED was unknown and unused. Not to mention immature and under-developed. 3-4 years in the technical world is a lifetime in the human world. Nowadays, OLED screens perform better than LCD's in almost every field. Any field that OLED's don't completely stomp on LCD screens, it matches them. And I've seen many videos of the Zune HD being used in very well lit rooms. There's one with Brain Sietz sitting right next to a huge window with the sun beaming in, and the screen looks fantastic. Another one in some tech showroom where lights are flooding the room, and still the Zune HD is bright as ever.
Also, he says that the Tegra is just a revision of the SoC's used in older iPod's. Again, that was about 3 years ago. I'm not gonna restate what I just said in the last paragraph about lifetimes in the tech world. I would like to state, however, that the Zune HD boasts a better battery life in both listening to music and watching video than the 3rd gen iPod Touch. Funny, I don't recall him saying that...
His comments on HD Radio were ridiculous and inane, if you ask me. Sounds like someone's a little jealous that Apple didn't adopt it first.
This is typical iFanboy cynicism. Disregard it, he's just jealous that his precious iPod has been beat. Hard.
I posted to it, already. That blog is basically an Apple fanboy site, so my rebuttal was not very heavy (pointless to try to convert anyone, there).
My main concern is that the majority of the blog is opinion, painted as quasi-fact. I don't mind seeing criticism, as long as it's based on facts and metrics. The blogger does have a point about OLED and its lifespan - I actually saw a video in this forum about the same subject, earlier today.
The best way to debunk it is with direct comparisions. If anyone here has a Touch already, and you plan on getting a Zune HD, you are probably better suited than anyone else to compare the two.
EDIT: I like this reply, on the site:
"Be honest: if the iPod touch revision had included an OLED screen, you'd be hyping that like it's the best thing ever. Same with Tegra and hi-def video out."
That is so true - for Apple fan-boys, or any fan-boys for that matter.
I mean these are fair concerns but the bias against is pretty obvious. It is true, OLED's do have a shorter lifespan compaired to LCD's. Wanna know what that lifespan is? About 5 or so years. By that time, I'm sure everyone will have moved on to bigger or better things, or by that time getting an OLED screen replacement would be cheap.
As a matter of fact that's about the average lifespan of any PMP. And the best part is, current day OLED technology will apparently run for even longer, around the length of a standard LCD screen.
And no, they don't use up 300% battery life either when it's all white. When it's all white, it'll use up just about the same amount of battery life an LCD would use, with maybe a little bit more. The thing is though, there's a highly unlikely chance you'll be staring at a pure white screen the entire time you use your ZHD, which is where the power saving comes in.
Though the power advantage isn't that great with the ZHD, namely because I think the ZHD doesn't use Tegra for audio (which means when using audio it'll pretty much have the same battery life as previous zunes), and I think also because the ZHD battery is smaller (being that there's no longer a hard drive, and the device is smaller).
I posted to it, already. That blog is basically an Apple fanboy site, so my rebuttal was not very heavy (pointless to try to convert anyone, there).
My main concern is that the majority of the blog is opinion, painted as quasi-fact. I don't mind seeing criticism, as long as it's based on facts and metrics. The blogger does have a point about OLED and it's lifespan - I actually saw a video in this forum about the same subject, earlier today.
The best way to debunk it is with direct comparisions. If anyone here has a Touch already, and you plan on getting a Zune HD, you are probably better suited than anyone else to compare the two.
I have my 2nd gen iPod Touch sitting right next to me. I don't get my Zune HD for a couple weeks, but when I get, I will be doing some extensive benchmarking and testing on both to see which one outdoes the other in every category (excluding games and apps, unless there's a good enough library be then).
Well, the OLED will be EASY. "Dark rooms"? "Candles"? And the "trying to bring up a webpage" BS is, well, BS! Just look at those pictures. It's not dark (and there are plenty of videos where there is a lot of light) and they only show videos, the menu, and one or two music pictures.
I know nothing about the Tegra chip, so that's out of my hands.
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Microsoft is promoting the Zune HD as supplying HD video out and HD Radio, purposely conflating the use of "HD" as a meaningless marketing term. There are two issues here, the first being HD video display and output. The Zune HD's OLED screen isn't high definition in the sense of HDTV, of course. The screen itself is only 480x272, but with the dock you can watch HD videos from your Zune on your TV. Also, the videos on your Zune are automatically converted to 720p so they are ready to play as HD.
^fixed
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the iPod touch delivers both a significantly better screen resolution and a better display technology,
Because (and I might be wrong) 720p is worse than 480p? Maybe my math is wrong, or I'm technologically challenged. And better display? So LCD>OLED? Wait, everyone else agrees OLED>LCD but THIS GUY says otherwise so it must be true!
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Like the move to digital TV, digital radio offers both the potential for better quality
So...high def, right? At least, compared to the regular FM radio...
I got to Myth 5 and stopped reading. This guy is an idiot, plain and simple.
Oh, PS:
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Apple, which sells tens of millions of mobile devices per year and has a component appetite that literally sways RAM markets, didn't beat Microsoft, a company that barely sold a couple million Zunes in two years
Because the Zune is US only (and Canada, I think, but I don't live in Canada so I don't really care ). Apple sells worldwide, and in vending machines, and arcade games, and more. Microsoft is all, "Oh, cool, here's a Zune. Enjoy being better than everyone else, Zune, and being hated for it."
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Originally Posted by Deagle
It's completely impossible. Thanks for letting me crush your dreams.
God, 90% of that is irrelevant. Who cares if NVidia acquired part of what eventually became the tegra from a company who used to sell to Apple? That has no relevance to the quality of the Tegra, which benchmarks show are significantly faster, and energy efficient.
They offer no proof that the Zune HD looks pale in strong light, almost all tech presentations I've seen videos of happen in dark-ish rooms...
HD Radio is pretty cool, granted I like radio. Somehow having a feature that requires no subscription and is widely supported is bad?
How do they know what the software is like, we've seen like 2 snapshots of it...
I'd rather have a company offer access to pre-final versions of its development system for free for entertainment purposes like MS has done and then develop for the final system when it's done than have to follow ridiculous terms, pay Apple a significant part of the profits, and have to go through a ridiculous and arbitrary approval system that denies legit software because AT&T told Apple to.
And how does the iTouch have a "significantly better screen resolution"? The ZuneHD is the same size but widescreen, which is designed for HD video...
Just wait till Apple puts an OLED in the iPod, this guy will probably think it is the next coming of Jesus. I think I will wait and find a good side by side comparison and spam the crap out of their comments with it. At least till I get banned.
I have an iPhone and will have my Zune HD tomorrow.
I am a gadget fan and I dint understand why people cut down products they have never seen or used. No matter what company you like better than the other you have to admit the HD is a cool device (at least it has cool features)
I have an iPhone and will have my Zune HD tomorrow.
I am a gadget fan and I dint understand why people cut down products they have never seen or used. No matter what company you like better than the other you have to admit the HD is a cool device (at least it has cool features)
oh well. I just don't like people spreading lies.
I don't understand why people feel an allegiance to any one company. You should look at each new device as objectively as possible, and then decide on what's best for you.
I am also looking forward to the ZuneHD debut, tomorrow - I really want to see what it has to offer. I may have to take a trip out to Best Buy in the morning, and make a possible decision right there (assuming they are not sold out).
EDIT: Unbelievable. I can't make any more posts on AppleInsider - my account has been DISABLED. Are they so scared of a Zune board user that they have to disable my account? Very sad.
Where the touch's screen comes in at the bottom, however, is screen quality: brightness, colors, viewing angles, and so on.
...
The reason the Cowon S9's display (which looks better in person than in photos, by the way) is the most vibrant and has the best viewing angles is simple: it has a 16M-color AMOLED screen. The advantages of an AMOLED, which iriver has been using on some of their players for several years (e.g., clix 2), over a traditional LCD are unlimited viewing angles, higher contrast ratio, energy efficiency, and quick response.
Microsoft knows this, which is why it only demonstrates the Zune HD in dark rooms. Engadget filmed a full demonstration, including the device's incapacity to pull up a web page, in a suspiciously dark room without even noting this. There are actually candles visibly flickering in the video behind the device.
Microsoft sets up its demos in the dark because the Zune HD looks terrible outside, where its contrast ratio advantage observed in ideal conditions completely falls apart. Engadget's other pictures of an OLED-using Sony Walkman show that without the candle-lit smoke and mirrors, OLED blacks are not black at all.
So bright and shinny display at Best Buy (look the huge metal hallide lamps on the background):
This is particularly the case if you want to browse the web, which involves a lot of white space. Showing a white background,
Show us a 100% white webpage, ifanbot.
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If you're wondering why Apple, which sells tens of millions of mobile devices per year and has a component appetite that literally sways RAM markets, didn't beat Microsoft, a company that barely sold a couple million Zunes in two years, to the OLED trough, it's not because Microsoft is on the cutting edge, but because Microsoft is desperately looking for a marketable feature, whether or not that feature makes any sense for consumers.
Apple didnt go for OLED because they dont want to pay Samsung / LG to cut a 3.5inch 320*480 display when nobody uses that resolution/screen size for OLED making this process expensive to Cupertino and damage their profits. in short, Apple dont want to pony up the money from their pockets.
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Has Apple's expertise in developing ARM CPUs and in running its own CPU fab plant been outmatched by Microsoft's first foray into mobile devices with a functional web browser?
Windows Mobile and WinCE (zune OS run atop it) have been running under ARM CPU well before Apple came with that stupid mp3 named iPod.
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So, while NVIDIA's Tegra grew from the humble origins of the chip powering the video 5G iPod, the iPhone 3GS and the latest iPod touch models feature a mobile-optimized GPU core descending from the Sega DreamCast. While Imagination's PowerVR GPU never made it into the desktop GPU market to rival the technology from ATI and NVIDIA, it has become the gold standard in mobile GPUs.
From an owner of Radeon graphics cards, I still remember back in 2000-2002 when Nvidia GPU's were trashing the PowerVR GPUs. Mainly the Kyro graphics cards...hahaha.
NVIDIA's own demonstrations of Tegra's ARM11/integrated graphics show it achieving 35 fps in Quake III. The same software running on Pandora's Coretex-A8 with SGX GPU core achieves 40-60 fps.
uh? The Nvidia demo (done in 2008) is running at:
- WVGA (800x480). higher than iphone. or you gonna lie to us and tell crap that the iphone resolution is better than that ?
- AA and AF. Where is that on the iphone, ifanbot ?
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rather simply due to the fact that Apple has its own resources for designing and building advanced, state of the art mobile processors, and didn't need to buy into the desperate hype NVIDIA is using to promote the runner up technology of Apple's former SoC vendor.
Like how all the ifanbots related websites promoted and overhyped the mythical camera on the iPod Touch, right ?
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Black Zune 80 + MEElectronics M6 (Clear) + Zune Premium + AKG K26p + JVC HA-FX66 Blue "Air Cushion"
Anyone else read this - guy bashing the HD?
). Apple sells worldwide, and in vending machines, and arcade games, and more. Microsoft is all, "Oh, cool, here's a Zune. Enjoy being better than everyone else, Zune, and being hated for it."
