Zune 30

last updated on December 22, 2008

Generation One or Zune 30 as we have come to call it was announced to what one may call muted fan fare on September 28, 2006 and became available to consumers in the United States on November 14, 2006. Microsoft announced on November 14, 2007 that the Zune 30 had been discontinued and replaced with it’s next-generation sucessor the Zune 80, and thus would not see international release..

Storage & Capacity
7,500 songs or 25,00 pictures or 100 hours of video.
(30 Gigabytes or 3000 Megabytes)

Display Options
3 inch Liquid Crystal display with 320 x 240 resolution and a 4:3 aspect ratio, also features both portrait and landscape display modes. May be viewed using television display via a seperate cable available for purchase.

Media Formats
Can play WMA, MP3, and unprotected AAC audio files as well as video files encoded in WMV, MPEG-4, and H.264 formats. Photos are only in JPEG format. The device itself can only play video encoded in WMV. Both MPEG-4 and H.264 have to be first re-encoded on the Zune software before your’e able to watch them on your player.

Special Features
FM Tuner with programmable presets. 802.11 B and G wireless communication for Zune to Zune sharing of music, pictures, and podcasts. Also includes the ability to use personal pictures as wallpaper for your device, Purchase songs you discovered while listening to radio stations, with RDS and RDS+ support. Also included in the Fall 2008 update was the ability to stream and purchase music directly from the Zune Marketplace via it’s built in wireless.

Computer Connectivity
Using Zune software and the Zune Marketplace designed specially with the Zune in mind the owner can download music from the Zune Marketplace, their own music library, or rip it from their CD collection and use the included USB cable to transfer media to their device. Following a firmware update in November 2007 the player can now also sync wirelessly with a home network, or purchase music directly from the Zune Marketplace via wireless.

Battery Life
Uses a Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery built in to the player. For music playback the batter will last 14 hours with wi-fi activated. With video one full charge will last about 4 hours. The same goes for pictures & slide shows as well. One full charge takes 3 hours. With the initial release the battery would drain when you used the player’s FM Tuner and then put the device to sleep. A later firmware update took care of that issue.

Physical Aspects
With side buttons and a directional control pad the device weighs just 5.6 ounces, has a depth of .6 inches and has the height/width of 4.4 by 2.4 inches. You may choose between the colors of white, black, red, pink, and brown, however red and pink are only available from certain retial outlets. During initial release two more colors were released to Zune Team employees, hot orange, and hot pink, a special red edition went on auction for a charity event in Los Angeles, two other renditions with illustrations by artist Jeremy Fish, are also available via both the Zune Ambassador Program (cancelled in June 2007), and the Zune DJ Outreach Program.

Wireless
Microsoft’s Zune uses 802.11 b/g signals to beam music, podcasts, and pictures from device to device. In addition when connected to power via a USB cable or some other power source the device can also use these same wireless signals to sync content from it’s host computer wirelessly. The Zune Marketplace is now also available on the player, allowing you to wirelessly stream, music directly to your device.

Restrictions
The Zune cannot beam any media to any other device then another Zune. Although pictures have no restrictions, music sent to someone else can only be played three times before it will become necessary to purchase the tracks from Zune Marketplace or acquire them via a Zune Pass subscription. Video files may not be beamed from one Zune or another.

What is Included
Included with your purchase are the Zune player itself, a USB Cable used for connecting to your PC, magnetic ear buds, the Zune software CD and a carry pouch. If you happen to run into a special edition Zune the box will also include a card of authenticity.

Firmware Updates
The Zune 30 device is currently on version 3.0 having been significantly upgraded once again by Microsoft with the Fall 2008 software upgrade. (See Device Firmware). Although the first three firmware updates to the device were only bug fixes, the Zune Team at Microsoft has more then recovered from this having not failed to provide at least one software update a year to their former flasgship player every year.