OK, it took me awhile to get this up and running, but today is your chance to have a say in who we work with in 2007. the list was culled from the various posts and emails I received. It is not all inclusive, but it is a pretty good mix of different types of products. One caveat, there is no guarantee that the partner who you pick will say yes, but I'll give it my best shot.

Take the survey

Speaking of CES...I was told a couple of days ago that some of the new partners were invited to be in our booth at CES. More importantly, some of them will have product to show. Very cool stuff. As a bonus, some of the partners will be showing their second round of products. I'll give you a couple of hints. Wireless and on-the-go.

Who's going to be at CES? Anyone interested in getting together? Drinks on Wednesday night? If there is enough interest, I'll set something up.

I did this before and it was pretty well trafficked. If you guys have any questions about Zune, the current features, the history, troubles you are having, etc, feel free to ask them here. There is one caveat, though. I won't comment about future product/features. Other than that, feel free to ask.

It has been mentioned several times that some of the threads seem to be going off in all sorts of directions. So, here is your chance to comment on anything you want. Tell me the good, the bad, the wish lists, etc. Anything is fair game.

Since I am taking a little break, I've been playing a lot of GOW. I started to play some ranked matched of multiplayer. It is really frustrating! I've been getting owned (or Pwned or GOWned or whatever the lingo is today). So, I'm looking for some tips. I've memorized the maps. I also figured out where the various weapons are on each map. I've learned to keep moving at all times. I've learned to look behind me. I've learned to stick with my group. I've learned to talk to my teammates. But, I am having a hell of a time getting kills (my max is 5 in a ranked match). So, I thought I'd have an open forum for advice. OK you gear-heads, what should I be working on?

I've been asked a couple of times (from both internal and external folks) whether dcut works with Vista or not. It is my understanding that is currently does not. So...I thought I might spend a little time during my break trying to track down the author. If that doesn't work, I'll try to make some recommendations for other tools. The first one that comes to mind is DVR toolbox. That allows you to go from DVR-MS to pure MPEG 2. From there you can use your encoder of choice to re-encode.

With Hanukkah coming to a close and Christmas just a couple of days away, I'm wondering 1. What Zune goodies are under the proverbial tree and 2. what other gizmos are you guys getting.

For me, there is a pink Zune for my wife. I gave away a couple of Incipio cases and a Belkin FM transmitter. On the gizmo side of the house, the folks at Sonos sent me a demo unit which is kind of my Christmas present to myself (and a review to follow later). I asked for a set of strobe flashes for my digital camera. We'll see if the family steps up on that one.

Well, the lights came back on a couple of days ago. Overall, not too much damage. I was at work on Thursday and now I'm almost caught up. What's that all mean? Well, I can get back to blogging for one thing.

Much has been posted and blogged about with regards to Zune sales data. I think it is important to keep a few things in mind when "analyzing" whether we are doing well or not. First, we don't compete with the entire MP3 player market. We compete with a very specific subset of the market - the $200+ HDD market. For example, to compare Zune to Sandisk is (pardon the pun) not comparing apples to apples. The second thing to keep in mind is that we've never said that we'd be "iPod killer." Inevitably, those comparisons will be made whether or not we like it. So, if you must compare us to the iPod, at least compare similar products. We should be looked at in comparison to the 5.5 Gen iPod (with video). Again, comparing us to the shuffle and the Nano doesn't really tell the whole story. When viewed through those two filters, I think you get a much better picture as to the state of the market.

I've not be very subtle in thge past when people have asked me about how I feel about silicon cases. I hate them. That being said, someone send me two cases last week that I feel are OK. I'm wondering how many people have silicon versus leather and whether they like them.

For those of you who don't know (or don't read Zunester), we had a severe windstorm last week. Since Thursday, I've been living in a hotel with extremely limited access to cell/email/internet. While I'm still displaced, I've at least found a warm place with a net connection. I can't say how often I'll be able to update the site, but I'll do my best. We supposed to have power by Saturday, but it could be as late as Christmas. Bummer!

I love my Media Center.  I literally was one of the first to buy on in 2002 and have been using it ever since.  As such, I've got tons of content in the DVR-MS file format and it is somewhat difficult to move around from device to device.  In addition, I wanted the ability to remove unwanted content from my shows (like commercials).  I had been looking for a tool that would let me do both for a long time.  I finally found DCut awhile ago and it is incredibly useful, so I thought I'd share.

What makes DCut different is that is runs as a service in the background.  That means you can do some cool things that you can't do with some of the other products.  In my case, I use it to grovel the folder where I store my DVR-MS files and I also use it to batch encode the SAME file into TWO DIFFERENT sizes - one for my PMC/Zune and one to stream to my Xbox over extender.  It takes a little configuration, but once up and running, you can pretty much forget it.

Setting it up is pretty easy.  You first start the service.  This can be done automatically or manually.  Once the service is running, you open the configuration manager.  The first thing you'll do is to set up your global paths.  This tells the product where you keep your DVR-MS files.  You'll also notice it also lets you set a WMV folder in case you already have WMV files you want to transcode as well.

The next thing you'll do is set up a path to edited and unedited videos.  This is where your files will eventually end up (edited if you trim them, unedited if you don't). 

The next thing you do is to set up your profiles.  Here's the fun part.  You can do as many as you like and they will run sequentially.  As you can see, here I use a Zune and an Xbox file.  You can download my files here.  Also, they can be used in WM Encoder if you don't want to use DCut.

 

The last thing you do is open MCE.  There is a link in Programs menu to DCut.  You can either tell it to start, or you can use your remote to set enter and exit points and then run (to cut out unwanted material).  It then queues up the files and encodes in the background.  If you point Zune to the edited and unedited folders, they will automatically be imported.  POOF!  (almost) automatic DVR-MS transcoding.

Charlie over at Zunecorps managed to wrangle Dave and I for an interview. He's posted a podcast of the interview here. I think it turned out pretty well. Give it a listen if you want to know more about what we do here in Zuneland.

So, the holidays are fast approaching. And, well, I've been playing a lot of 360 lately. I'm still learning, but I think I'm pretty OK at GOW. So, at the risk of getting fragged a lot, I thought I'd see if anyone wants to play a little over the next few weeks.

Also, I'm trying to brush up on my Halo 2 skills, which utterly stink. I've been playing matches online, but even in the training area, it seems that there are level 25s who just sit there and pick me off every 5 steps. So, if someone wants to play a little Halo 2 and doesn't mind helping out someone who isn't so great, I'd love to play. I'll set up some private matches.

I usually play at starting at 9PM PDT and my gamer tag it BillWitt27.

I've asked a few times about Zune branded clothing. I received some good and some bad feedback on that. What occurred to me is I didn't ask about Zune co-branded clothing. For example, a Burton coat with a Zune camo pattern. Two questions. First, are you guys at all interested in that type of co-branded clothing? Second, what are your favorite brands. Bonus if you tell me specific products you are interested in (sneakers, coats, hats, bags, etc).

I didn't get enough nominations to make a survey. So....I'm going to extend the deadline until Friday and see if we can't get a few more. If not, I guess we'll punt it.

The nice folks over at DLO asked me if I would like to review their cases for the blog. Being that I'm a gadget freak, of course I said yes. I need to make as disclaimer here. I do work with these companies every day and sometimes when I'm critical, it can come off as "MS says that your is bad because XXX" THESE ARE MY PERSONAL OPINIONS.

Before beginning, I have to say that before doing any review, I like to live with the product for at least a week. You can't really write a good review until you've really experienced (I wish all reviewers felt that way). I cheated a little bit on this one and used all three for one week rather than in successive weeks. But, I think you'll get the idea.

Silicon Case - I've never been a fan of silicon cases. I think they tend to add heft to the device and they tend to pick up lint when you put them in your coat pocket. But they do add scratch and drop protection, which can be useful. I'm not so sure that the Zune needs scratch protection, but I am pretty rough on the devices. I put the case on and placed it in my backpack for the week with a set of headphones, two phone chargers, a pen, and an old cell phone just to see what happened. At the end of the week, the device was a good as new. It worked fine. No new scratches to report. And as a bonus, the lint factor was minimal. I decided that that wasn't enough so I did two drop tests. One from about a foot and a half and one from three feet. Worked fine. Cosmetically, I'm not crazy about the white color and I wish that it came in brown and black (and maybe even green), but that is just a nit.

Arm band - I'm absolutely the worst person in the world to evaluate a workout device. I tell everyone I don't run unless someone chases me. So in this case, I just tied it on for size and comfort. I found it to be quite comfortable if a little bulky. I found the controls were a bit hard to use. I didn't get to test the sweat factor, but I bet it is OK. I was not at all crazy about the rubber edge around the clear cover. All in all, I suspect if you were a runner, this would work in a pinch, but I think a breathable fabric based like what Nike makes would be better in the long run (no pun intended).

Leather case - Far and away this is the best of the bunch. The flip mechanism on this device is snappy. The controls work very well in the case. The clip is solid. It looks nice in the Black and brown (again, colors would be nice). After a week, there were a couple of things I did notice. I saw some puckering around the USB connector. I also wish the headphone jack hole was a little taller to accommodate the plug I have. But, this has become my day to day case. I even gave one to the guy who runs the show. It still isn't as nice as the Vaja cases (which I still don't have. Are you listening guys?). But then again, it is half the price.

Holy cow was it a mistake to upgrade to the Blogger Beta. You may have noticed a lull in the posting. That's because I've been locked out of the account. It turns out that Blogger has some sort of script that won't work on my home machine running IE 6. It no longer seems to like Windows Live Writer either. So, I've go to use my work laptop on my home network. And guess what, you can't revert back to the old Blogger. What a PAIN! Well, at least they warned me.