The Complete Disclosure – Zune HD and AV Dock Review

In the war of the Personal Media Players Apple is king. Not always because they have the best product, but in terms of sheer marketing and market position. As of this writing Apple holds something like 89% of the PMP market; this is combined market share that includes all of the iPod products as well as the iPhone. Any company wanting to get into this market cannot afford to simply have a good player. They have to bring an amazing player, the product has to do things that the iPod just cannot do.

Enter Microsoft; in the beginning Microsoft sought to complete head to head with Apple. They released the Zune, which was a good player. It equaled the iPod [at the time] but it carried the stigma of being not only a copycat product but also one from Microsoft. This hurt sales right out of the gate and Microsoft’s horrible marketing did the rest of the job. In the end the Zune was a failure in terms of sales and market share. Now a few years later Microsoft is getting back into the game. This time they did their homework and pulled out all the stops [well almost all]. The enlisted the help of graphics and media giant NVIDIA and built something new and impressive, the ZuneHD. We have had one of these along with the AV Dock in our lab for a week or two and put it through its paces. But we did not simply try it out in the lab; we took it out and showed it to people to get their reaction and opinion. How did the Zune HD fair? Read on to find out.

Packaging [Zune HD Player]

so, what’s in that little box?

One place that Microsoft has always been behind in is their shelf appeal. If you take a look at any of their products you will immediately see what I am talking about. There is nothing about their products that grab you and make you actually want to buy them. With the Zune HD MS took the Apple route. They created sexy packaging that not only grabs your eye but makes you want to pick it up. I brought just the box to work and anyone that came in my office would pick it up, turn it over and ask “what’s this?” with a note of excited curiosity in their voices. It was an interesting thing to see.

The front of the box has the Zune logo and Zune HD in the upper left corner. It also shows a clear picture of what you are buying with only two lines of very small text at the bottom to break an otherwise clean surface.

The back of the box tells you in block letters exactly what the Zune HD is, and what you can use it for.

The Side of the box gives you a little more information. Here you find the capacity, the HD radio and HDMI logos. I am not sure why there is an HDMI logo on the Zune HD box as you cannot use HDMI without the AV Dock that that is an optional extra.

On the bottom of the Zune HD box I found cause for a little humor that will become apparent very shortly. It says in bold letters “US ONLY” which follows the current state of the Zune HD. Right now it is for US sales only. What got me and I found funny was after I opened the box.  You see once you get to the bottom of the box [after sorting through a ton of promotional material] you find a message.
“Welcome to the Social” This is in English and French. Now, I do not know about you, but I find it very funny to find a French message in a “US ONLY” product. This must have been some marketing genius’ idea of class and is a perfect example of how poorly that marketing team does its job.

But all that aside, inside the box you do find everything that you need to use the Zune HD and a couple of other nice little extras. MS has included a card to with information on a free 14-day trial of their Zune Pass deal. We will cover the Zune Software and Zune Pass in more detail later. You also get a quick start guide, a small plain manual, a “Zune everywhere” booklet, a USB cable and a set of ear bud style headphones with three different color foam covers.

 

Packaging [Zune HD AV Dock]

The Zune AV Dock is also a new product but not one that is specifically for the Zune HD. You can use this with any of the Zune devices but will get the most out of it when used with the Zune HD. The packaging is not as sleek as the Zune HD though. The front does show you what you are getting but it loses out by having a stark white background instead of the flat black of the Zune HD.

The back returns to the classic flat black and provides a little more information about what the dock is capable of.

Once you open up the box you get a quick outline of how the Dock fits into your home entertainment system.  After you get by this and the quick start guide you get into the real meat of the dock.  MS has done a good job of loading you up with everything you might need to get the Zune HD connected providing cables, remote, power pack, and adapters for every Zune model out [much like Apple used to do for their Docks].

 

 

Original Author: Sean Kalinich

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