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All posts tagged "videos"


Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Zune Branding Gone From New Xbox 360 Dashboard

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Zune News" @ 07:00 PM

http://www.winsupersite.com/blogs/e...-xbox-dashboard

Paul Thurrot called out the elephant in the room: there's no trace of Zune branding anywhere that we can see on the new Xbox 360 dashboard design. It's simply "music" and "video" now. Frankly, that makes sense - it's a bit of nonsense that we need to go into the Zune interface to watch videos...

It seems pretty clear that the Zune as a device is dead, and as a service, it's on the way out. Quite a shame really...


Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Are We All Digitally OCD Now?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Articles & Resources" @ 05:30 PM

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/a...2042340,00.html

"We are all OCD now. We do these things not just because digital filing gives us the satisfaction of cleaning without the unpleasant feeling of getting up from our chairs. It's because we're constantly confronting the onslaught of information, and our brains are trying to make patterns out of the randomness. We believe that if we just finish a list of every movie we want to see, we can finish that task, despite the fact that Rob Schneider is going to make more films."

Photo Credit: Gizmodo

This is a humour column, but there's some truth to the idea that sometimes we spend more time organizing and fretting away over the details of our digital collections than actually enjoying them. However, unlike the author of this column, I've always been detail-oriented and I appreciate creating digital order from digital chaos...it's almost soothing to me to see things organized properly. I don't think I could ever embrace digital chaos the way the author is suggesting - could you?


Saturday, September 12, 2009

BuyTV Zune HD Videos Released

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Zune Articles & Resources" @ 10:00 AM

http://www.buy.com/videoclip/zune-p...tion/75832.html

In typical fashion with everything Zune related, there's always someone that refuses to respect the press embargo that they agree to in the first place, and retailers don't understand what the term "launch date" means. I wonder why Apple doesn't have this problem with the iPod? At any rate, if you want to check out some videos of the Zune HD, here they are.

Tags: videos, zune hd

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Zune, Mean Mag Team Up In New Content Deal

Posted by Adam Krebs in "Zune Media" @ 11:30 PM

http://www.variety.com/article/VR11...oryId=1009&cs=1

"Microsoft is gearing up to give Zune owners something to watch. The tech giant has created a shingle that will produce a slate of video programming exclusively for the portable device, its answer to Apple's iPod. The move into production is being eyed as a way to help sell more Zune players, but the effort will also create another distribution platform for Hollywood's creative community. The first project will be "Cinemash" -- a comedy series it has created with arts and entertainment mag Mean -- which bows by May. The eight-episode series, unspooling in three- to five-minute installments, will feature celebs playing the roles in movies they wish they'd landed. Mean mag had already produced a series of shorts starring James McAvoy, Elizabeth Banks, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Kingsley and Seth Rogen that appeared on its website before pairing with Microsoft. Like all the Zune shows, "Cinemash" will be ad-supported and free for download."

If you're having a hard time reading through the Hollywood language (seriously, what does "bows by May" even mean?!), here's what's basically happening: Microsoft is teaming up with a magazine called Mean which has produced some pretty cool web shorts with some famous people in the past. The shows will range in content from live-action to animated, and from comedy to urban and music. They'll initially only be available to Zune, but will eventually trickle out to Xbox Live and MSN, and then the internets as a whole. Sounds pretty cool, and I remember there being talk of this a while back, but we'll have to wait and see how it pans out when the episodes bow out (hehe) in May.


Monday, January 19, 2009

A Plethora Of Videos!

Posted by David Tucker in "Zune News" @ 02:51 AM

Zune Insider has the…err…inside scoop on some of the recent deals and additions to the Zune Video Marketplace. This all came to pass as of last week. There’s a little here for everyone I think. First for all of you Battlestar Galactica fans, Zune has made all of the webisodes available as free downloads! The 11 webisodes and 20 minute catch up video give you over 60 minutes of BSG goodness. Which is great since there are now only 9 episodes left.

If BSG isn’t your thing then you can check out the list of new additions last week to the Marketplace. With 11 networks adding content there’s something for everyone. And if you don’t fit into everyone there’s still some hope left. United States of Tara from Showtime has hit as a free video podcast.

And if you’ve still got nothing then it’s time to branch out your interests a bit.

Tags: videos

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Zune Marketplace Adds Hundreds of New TV Shows

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Zune News" @ 10:43 AM

If you're into buying TV shows for watching on your Zune, this is great news: they've added a huge amount of new content. Myself, I'm leery of investing in much video when the purchased content has DRM on it. The full press release is below with all the details.

"Zune announced today that it will expand the selection in its recently opened Zune Marketplace video store by 50 percent by adding more than 400 new episodes of popular television shows. In addition to adding more programs from COMEDY CENTRAL, NBC Universal and the SCI FI Channel, Zune will start offering shows from USA Network. 19 new programs will be available on Zune Marketplace within the next two weeks, including COMEDY CENTRAL’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “Colbert Report,” NBC’s “Friday Night Lights” and “Saturday Night Live”, USA Network’s “Monk” and “The Starter Wife,” and many more. New shows from Bravo will also be available in the coming months.

Zune makes it easy for consumers to download popular TV shows to their computer or Zune portable media player to enjoy anytime, anywhere. Earlier this month, Zune launched its video store with download-to-own hit shows from COMEDY CENTRAL, FUNimation® Entertainment, MTV, NBC Universal, Nickelodeon, Starz Media (including Manga Entertainment), Turner Broadcasting, Ultimate Fighting Championship® (UFC) and VH1. Each show is 160 Microsoft Points per episode (approximately $1.99)."
Read more...


Monday, January 28, 2008

Zune Desktop Software Dysfunctions: Video Sorting Options

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Zune Talk" @ 02:05 PM

I just reinstalled the Zune desktop software a couple of days ago (after my install of Windows Vista went belly-up forcing a complete re-format and re-install) and after it scanned my music, videos, and pictures, I was reminded of the truly useless way the Zune software organizes my videos. There are only two sorting options: by Name, or by Date Added. Over a period of months, Date Added starts to actually work (just a little bit), but when you first install the software every single video, regardless of how old it is, it stamped with the same date - which effectively gives you no sorting option at all. Why did the Zune team think this would be useful to the user?


Figure 1: The above videos were created more than three years ago, yet are at the top of my video list as the first videos shown.

What would make much more sense would be to list the files by the created date - because that's the real date of the video, similar to a photo. Sure, it's not entirely perfect because if you digitize a video today of your family holiday from ten years ago, it will be stamped with today's date, but at least the date is relevant to the file: the date you digitized it (and the Created Date can be manipulated via software if you want to really get accurate). The date that the Zune software scanned it has no practical use that I can think of - because even if we're talking about TV shows & movies recorded via Windows Media Center, the file creation date will be the date it was recorded, so those will show up as being newer than most of your other videos.

I'd also like to see a folder-based approach for organizing videos, rather than having a single flat-file approach. Thinking about how your organize and access your videos, how would you like to see the Zune desktop software improved?


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