Pink Zune on ebay

Check it out; a Pink Zune secret limited edition sold on ebay for $761.

ebay link

First round of NPD portable music numbers

Ooh, this is sweet. Zune's first week of sales; we were 9% of the units and 13% of the dollars. Obviously would be higher if you looked just at the HDD device market. Looks like most of the volume came out of Apple, which isn't surprising given that they were previously the only real player in the $200+ price bands.

http://www.thestreet.com/pf/newsanalysis/techgames/10324945.html

A good start.

Microsoft Snow Day!!!

Sledding -er, working at home. Campus closed - no food, no shuttles, no IT, no receptionists.

Life is sweet.

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.

HMS Tanstaafl

The proud ship "tanstaafl", in the Puget Sound. 

Video on devices is a mess

Lots of folks are making the reasonable demand that they should escape transcoding and get perfect video device simplicity. In the past, devices have delivered this in several ways:

• People have gotten used to effortless audio support - a promise devices deliver these days. mp3 and wma files all play on all devices that claim they will.
• DVD players do it by tightly scripting video format - DVDs must user mpeg-2 within a proscribed bitrate.
• The PC makes video look relatively easy - it can be made to play nearly any file, thanks to its open video codec architecture. The OS sniffs the file, looks for the right audio and video codec, and then plays the file. If you look hard enough, you can find any codec, install it, and it'll work. Modern PCs have insane amounts of horsepower, so I can routinely decode HD res/bitrate video files on my PC.

Devices are different, for two key reasons.

Codecs are one issue. This morning I loaded a device that nominally supports divx up with some "divx" files. The experience reminded me why folks asking for divx support natively on the device might not get what they're asking for. The device is advertised as supporting Divx - and many of the files in my library do play. Unfortunately, many do not. I grabbed a video analysis tool to look at some of the files. The results:

• almost all Divx4/5 files play on the device, assuming they're low res
• No Divx 3 or earlier video plays (I've sadly got a lot of these)
• Some video files have audio that won't (for some reason) play.

Devices are closed and you can't just go get a random codec, so some video files will always fail to play.

Resolution and bit rate are another. Many of my files are high res or bitrate video files that the device apparently can't handle. In these cases, they warn you when you tranfer the files, but just tell you to go transcode the video. And of course most users wouldn't really want a two hour DVR-MS movie (5.3GB) on your device when it could get turned into a sub-1GB file.

Unfortunately, there's no way a user can understand or diagnose that the max requirements of their device are such-and-such and their file uses an unsupported mode of divx. They just try and fail, and can't tell what's going on.

This is why transcoding is a part of life, at least for now. The PC is so powerful and flexible, it can play/transcode 99% of files. Ideally, the software will just detect what the device can/can't do and just tranfer or transcode for you.

For now, Zune can't do all the files that matter, but we're working on it. Until then, getting a good third party transcoder and batch transcoding into a guaranteed format is the best solution I've found.

Video Tools

To do everything I'm going to talk about, you need some basic tools.

First, codecs. Your PC needs to have decoders installed for each type of content...

• For dvr-ms, you need an mpeg-2 decoder. if you have a media center PC, you've got the codec installed and it's probably capable of doing transcoding. If not, you may need to go get one. Try transcoding, and see. If you fail, lack a decoder. If video quality is bad, your decoder can't transcode and you'll need to get another one.
• For Divx, you need the divx decoder. http://www.divx.com/divx/windows/
• For wmv, you're all set if you run Windows

Next, you need a transcoding app. I have tried a lot of them, and they vary enormously in quality. Video transcoding is hard to do well, because of the variability in video content and codecs. Thankfully, I've found one I really like, but sadly it's not free. Tanstaafl.

TMPGEnc XPress is a first-rate pice of software. It works well and ingests nearly any video content, and produces great quality wmv video. One reason is that it comes with most video codecs built in, so they guarantee a great video end-to-end (sound familiar?). But that means they pay licensing fees for all of the codecs, which is expensive. I've been using the 3.0 version, but I'd bet the new 4.0 version is as good or better. It's (cough) $99.99. If time is valuable, it's worth it. My reasons for recommending:

• Supports the formats that matter to me, and to most people, both for input and output
• easy easy to use. sniffs videos before transcoding and is smart about picking arcane encoding params like frame rate, deinterlacing, etc...
• lots of optional power. modify while transcoding, filters, editing, etc....
• supports "profiles" and batch encoding.

In a bit I'll post a walkthrough of my workflow, but for now, check it out. Feature list is found here.

Videos that matter (to me)

So, to start out on video conversion for Zune, let me lay out the video types that matter to me.

• wmv videos (home videos, etc...)
• divx videos - encoded using a variety of encoders, especially doctor divx
• dvr-ms videos - tv recordings from my media center

Right now, the Zune only supports the first natively, so I need to do some transcoding.

It's also important to remember that you not only need to make sure a video matches the codecs on a Zune, but also in resolution. So you'll need to transcode down to 320x240 for the device if it's a wmv even though the device supports the codec. So I typically need to transcode almost all of my videos.

Fortunately, I've found some really good tools.

Next few posts

Now that Zune is out, I'm going to spend some posts on "how tos" with Zune. First up? My method for getting my video collection onto my Zune. In the next few, I'll talk about getting wmv, mpeg-4, and Divx files onto my Zune at home and the tools I'm using to do it.

Zunester returns!

After a hiatus...my excuse? A combination of shipping Zune and Gears of War.

We're out on the market, availabile in lots of stores. The redmond/bellevue/seattle stores are all sold out; folks should post their experiences; are there lots of units in stores? Has everyone found one? Let me know here...

Shipping....

Ah, shipping is nice.

We're finally out the door at last. People can go buy a Zune. We're simultaneously partying and working.

Last night we had our ship party at a private event in Seattle. Today we had a celebration (I missed as I was at the Shareholder's meeting) and got our ship gifts - nifty uniqely colored Zunes.

On another note, things were pretty exciting last week; we had amazing flooding out near my house in snoqualmie. Nice pictures here http://flickr.com/search/?q=snoqualmie+flood&m=text. I was driving home across one of the roads and ended up in a puddle that got deeper...and deeper...until I noticed there was a crosscurrent - the river was coming across the road! Got out just in time and then they closed the road.

Codec Requests

Special reminder - this is my opinion, not official policy.

The comments below include a lot of requests for additional codecs. I'll be a bit controvercial here and lay out my thoughts on these.

Codecs per se don't matter. Mainstream consumers don't care about how many codecs you have, what licensing terms they offer, how good the compression of the codecs is, etc....

What matters is access to content. If you ripped in iTunes, you've got AAC files. If you own a Media Center PC and have a lot of DVR-MS files, you care about that format. If you download videos from bittorrent, then DivX matters. If you rent movies online, then WMV matters. If you subscribe to video podcasts, h.264 and mpeg-4 matter. Content drives customers, and so you should see increasing support of codecs that give consumers access to a lot of cool content.

Codecs for CD ripping are important, but mostly for particular scenarios.

• You need MP3 for interoperability.
• You need a high efficiency codec - We picked WMA for maximum quality/compression.
• To capture some audiophiles, you need a lossless codec. WMA Pro gives you perfect quality in a big file size.

End of story. MP3 is pretty irreplaceable, but you could pretty happily swap out things in this set - AAC for WMA, Another lossless format for WMA Pro. But adding lots of additional codecs doesn't make sense to me given that they add complexity, risk, and cost to the device and software.

Feature requests

Wow, lots of good comments here since more specifics hit the web. Many fall into the "feature request" bin, and I feel bad that some folks are disappointed by features we didn't include at launch. While I can't go into specifics, I wanted to respond generically.

Most feature requests fall into one of two bins:

• Niche features that wouldn't appeal to the mass market consumer - not that any of these are bad or unimportant, just that we initially needed to focus on the biggest buckets to get to market. Frankly, many of the PlaysForSure partners have tried to differentiate from Apple by adding these features, and have made little or no traction. In fact, many of those guys get trapped into serving the enthusiast community at the expense of the mass market (ex: Archos).
• Great features that we simply couldn't get to by launch - I feel sad about the items on this list, but you should know we're on the case here and those features will roll out and be downlevel to existing Zunes as fast as possible.

I can't really bin features specifically, but most of you know which are which. ;)

One specific thought on the stuff below; there's some argument over whether Zune "supports" podcasts. While zune will happily play most podcasts, I don't think it's fair to say we've really got a podcasting feature at launch; that would really require the whole enchilada - rss reader, podcast guide, etc.... - and we didn't ship those at launch. I didn't want anyone confused by that.

Zune: T minus 12 days

Sorry to not be posting more; it's a tad insane here.

The last few days have been a real hive of activity; finalizing the software and service, getting devices. We had a small milestone celebration last night; chinese food, beers, and a big poster of a Zune for everyone on the team to sign. Also, we found out what our "ship gift" is going to be ;)

I'm starting to meet about strategy and the product to a more partners, and we're starting to ramp up on next year's strategy.

Oh, and I got a new iPod Shuffle in the mail. It's an interesting little device. I'm not really the target for a small device with no screen, but I can see the appeal of the little guy for some users with small, focussed music collections. Actually, it feels like more of an iPod accessory than an iPod.

The Zune kimono is a bit more open now, so folks should feel free to post technical questions; I will try to answer, if not today than in a couple of weeks ;)

Zune.net up, codecs, the final answer

I'm probably the last to blog, but as of today zune.net is up. Lots of additional info is now available.

note the answers to many folks questions are at http://www.zune.net/en-us/meetzune/device.htm.

Note that the codec list (wma, wmv, aac) is just the codecs that are natively on the device; other codecs (h.264, mpeg-4, Quicktime) can come onto the device through transcoding built into the client application.