Zune HD vs. iPod Touch

[eslfish]

Title says it all, both are close...I'm kinda split on my decision...

 

[Teny]

These are just my opinions by the way.

Sound Quality - Zune HD.
Screen - Zune HD (screen might be smaller, but I like the OLED better than LCD, and the 16:9 resolution)
Apps - iPod Touch
Software - Zune (I got used to Zune, so I use Zune instead of iTunes now)
UI - Zune HD
Video Quality - Both (depends on the resolution of your video actually (16:9 or 3:2))
Browser - iPod Touch
Touch - Both
Market Place (Music) - Zune Pass ($15 for unlimited download and stream, keep 10 songs a month)
Market Place (Misc.) - iPod Touch (Seems to have more selection)
Quality and Feel - Both are nice
Compatibility - iTunes (Mac and PC)
Price - Zune HD (16GB for $199 whereas iPod Touch are 8GB for $199)

 

[CrackerJacker1]

Agreed with Teny

 

[CBrooks]

I'd personally go with a zune hd BUT i heard there's this new app that basically turns the ipod touch into a cell phone if you're connected to the net. (and buy the app of course)

 

[foothead]

I'd personally go with a zune hd BUT i heard there's this new app that basically turns the ipod touch into a cell phone if you're connected to the net. (and buy the app of course)

You need some sort of headset for this to work, and I think you have to pay monthly fees for all the apps that do this.

I'm not a big fan of either the zune or iPod tbh. Between the two, zune wins, but meh I would never buy it unless it had some sort of expansion slot.

Do not expect to get hardly any HD video on that thing. I mean, almost nothing. HD video is massive.

 

[Teny]

I convert some of my videos to my Zune HD and I didn't lose any detail (or at least I can't tell) when compared to playing my HD videos on either the Zune or PC. Like foothead said, it's not HD as the resolution is only 480x272. However, you can transfer up to 720p videos onto the Zune HD, but it requires the dock to actually display the 720p (not sure if it's upscaled or not actually ).
Though, one bad thing is getting the right format to have it be read by the Zune software. I gotta re-encode some of my videos to make it be readable my the Zune software (mainly the videos I get from Youtube).
My "HD" (will be 720 if I had the dock) 3:18 video is ~75 MB. So it's not that big.

 

[foothead]

3 minutes, 75MB?!

That's pretty big.

 

[Teny]

I think that's about right for an HD video. I don't think the Zune software converted the video as it's not past 1280x720, and it's an WMV file.
The Zune software let's you choose either to convert it for the HD dock, or for the Zune player. If I chose the Zune player, then the size will be 20MB. However, since the file is smaller, the quality will be worse.

 

[foothead]

The thing is that one of the main attractions to the Zune HD is its ability to play HD video. If you can only get two movies on the thing, what's the point?

 

[Teny]

A 720p movie is about 2-4GB (most of mine is less than 3GB) depending on what movie, and length. So you can put a couple to a few movies on a 16GB. I assume more people went with the 32GB as before launch, most of the BB stores near me only had 16GB to pre-order. Now they came out with an 64GB for those movie lovers.

Microsoft Expression Encoder is a pretty sweet software for encoding my videos for my Zune HD.