First I have to say that I am in Wow land. This Zune HD interface was designed to make discovering music fun. Swipe your finger tip up and down to scroll the text menu up and down. Select music, and tap into your favorite playlist. Tap play and start playing the playlist. Okay, easy enough but it gets very fun, read ahead see what I mean.
Swipe down to the Radio. Add stations. If you hear a song you like, on the radio, add it to your cart. That's right, add a song you head on the RADIO to your cart. Hit the home button on the bottom to quickly escape the radio. Swipe down to Marketplace, select Cart, and the song you heard on the radio is in the cart. Download it and add it to your permanent collection.
It get better. You can do this wirelessly because of the built in WiFi. Now, Sync your Zune HD wirelessly back to the PC to push the song you just downloaded to your PC. How awesome is that. Your Zune Pass Subscription means you can grab all the songs you want.
Now, it gets even better.
On your Zune HD, go to the Marketplace, and start to tap on songs. You can play them through your wireless WiFi. Okay? Songs you don't even have, you can play right off the market place via WiFi. Think about that for second. If you are home and on your WiFi network, you can listen to any of millions of songs, without downloading them!!
Okay, say you find one you really like. Download it. It's all part of your Zune Pass.
I have not even scratched the surface.
QuickPick
That text menu on the home screen? It's one of two menus on the home screen. Swipe to the left on that text. See how there is this small strip of icons on the left side. They become in focus and the large text shrinks off to the right. Now, this little list of icons is huge. Swipe up and down and cruise through the history of the songs you have been playing. Even the radio station you set is here in this history. This strip also contains a QuickPick. So what is a QuickPick?
Say you are listening to song and you love it. You just found it on Marketplace and you want to listen to it over and over again until you're tired of it. How to find it easily? Well, tap and hold the album icon while the song is playing. A prompt window will appear and offer to pin the song into QuickPicks.
As you explore for music on the radio or the Marketplace, completely wireless, you can easily find those songs again via the QuickPicks or History. That's what that little strip of icons are on the left side of the home screen. Fantastic huh?
More fun stuff
So I am listening to song and I see the album cover on the display. Tap that screen, and the album dims. A new dimension of menu overlays the album. It's a control surface. You see pause / play in the center. Up and Down are volume up and down. Left and Right are skip left or right. The upper top is to go back. Ignore it for second and it goes away returning the album art to view.
The album / song you're playing has a small list under it. That's the songs coming up next! Tap on that little list and your in the list that this song comes from. You can now easily switch to other songs in this list.
All of these menus and animated and fluid. It's actually fun to run around within this interface discovering music, adding it to quick picks and retrieving it. It's almost like a dance.
Subscription music with the Zune Pass is such a great idea. And it really works with a device like this. Imagine all the ways to discover music, but keep the cost of enjoying all that music to a minimum. That's what the Zune accomplishes.
There is so much more. Audible Books works with this. Though you do have to download Audible's Download Manager. I've listened to well over 200 books over the life of my Audible subscription.
The Zune Marketplace software for the PC almost mirrors the features of the phone in that you can see your quick picks. You have a dashboard that shows you what's going on in your music world. And it gets this information from the device as well. As you add music, the whole ego system gets smarter and exposes you to more music you'll probably like. Absolutely fantastic.
Think about it. You can add hundreds of songs a month if you like. Listen to them via radio, and download what you like. Listen live off the Marketplace from your PC or even your Zune portable. What ever you do with the Zune HD will sync back to the PC. In fact, there's more!! I know huh....
So you have Zune software on your office PC too, okay... Listen to this. Go to Settings, Account, Subscription History. Remember, do this on your office PC, not your home PC so you really understand what's about to happen. Those songs you found on the radio, added to cart, and downloaded from the Marketplace are here in this history list even though this office PC had nothing to do with that. It's connected to your account so it knows. And you can, from your work PC, now download those songs to your work PC collection. It's subscription! You can have multiple PCs all connected to your account and they each aware of a collective history of subscribed to music. You don't have to carry songs with you on a thumb drive from your home PC to your office PC. Just let the Zune software show you the history. It tells you what is in your collection on that machine and what is not so you can update your office PC with those great songs you found on the radio or in the marketplace.
Hey, do you like Tina Fey's 3rd rock? I sure do. You can download those TV shows as video and watch them on the Zune HD. They have movies too. For rent in SD and HD. I'm watching 21 grams.
I have all the free games microsoft added to the apps section. By the way, you can download these from WiFi direct to the device! I've been playing Texas Hold'em.
With WiFi, you can use the built in browser to browse web sites. I have The Wall Street Journal, Engadget, PCWorld and several other favorites sites programmed into mine.
So, absolutely the best music experience you're ever going to have, because you won't have to worry about money while you download your ears off. Get the Zune Pass and just go crazy. Play games if you like that. Watch TV shows, movies, and music videos. Add your own photos too! Listen to Audible Books. I'm listening to the new John Twelve Hawks 3rd in the-part series of the 4th realm trilogy called The Golden City. Book one is The Traveler. You're missing out if you've never heard of it. I am also listening to Dan Brown's sequel The Lost Symbol. And actually, a Gunslinger / Dark Tower Stephen King book as well. Too much good stuff all came at once and I had to.
On the radio station I added, I found Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling. Oh I love this song! Also just found Cassie - Let's Get Crazy. It's amazing all that you can explore and find when you pay a flat rate and can go nuts like this. I'm in music nirvana.
This is so much better than any iPod / pay as you go eco system I've had in the past. I'm giddy and had to share. I'm bobbing my head to the beat of I Gotta Feeling. The bass is great! Oh that reminds me. The music quality is absolutely here!! If you saw me listening to my Zune, you'd know I was having a good time.
Okay, so enough. I have music to dance around to now.
Thanks Amazon for getting this to me on opening day. LOVE IT!!!!! Get more detail about Zune HD 32 GB Video MP3 Player (Platinum).
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