Dark Zune

Jason Dunn over at Zune Thoughts has prepared an awesome video tutorial on how to set up the Zune Software to find your videos. Check it out

Stefan, over at I Have A Zune, posted this photo of a Mysterious Zune Case today:

We’re guessing that its a 3rd Gen Zune Case or a Gaming Zune’s case (also 3rd gen we’re guessing).

From what i can infer from the photo, its looking at a rather “Fat Nano” styled shape, which i hope it isn’t as i dread to think of the responses in the Zune Forum to this. As we are just inferring, this could all be wrong, it may not even be a Zune Case, but actually an Earphone holder or an accessory holder of another sort.

Who knows… Share your views in the “Mysterious Gaming Zune Case” thread at the Dark Zune Forum.

Hey, i am going to keep this short, but over at DarkZune is a Poll within ZunerTuner on whether or not we should add a “Buy & Sell Marketplace Forum”.

This would allow users to buy items of any sort, sell items of any sort (i am sure there will be some rules on this) and trade items between each other.

If this all goes ahead we will add a feedback system to users profiles so that finished transactions can have users feedbacking on each other. We would also try and keep users aware of spammers and scammers in the forum.

To vote please visit this weeks ZunerTuner.

We are guessing that if this does go ahead with enough support it will help Zuners worldwide to trade Zune goods, sell other items and buy the things they want easily within the community environment.

Thats right. Our long lasting poll of “Which of these is your most favourite set of earphones?” has finally finished. The results are clear that the Zune Premium Earphones took a large majority of the votes and seem to be the most popular earphone among the Zune owners. Whether its due to their great price (which is now even lower due to the 2nd gen version earphones release), their handy case which is included or their amazing functionality.

Here are the final results:

• Zune Premium Earphones (34%, 59 Votes)
• Skull Candy (20%, 35 Votes)
• Other (14%, 24 Votes)
• Zune Included Earphones (13%, 22 Votes)
• Shure (10%, 17 Votes)
• V-Moda (6%, 10 Votes)
• Sennheiser (5%, 9 Votes)

You can clearly see that the

Wow, since i last checked people have gained thousands of plays. Checkout these stats for these non-stop crazy listeners, top songs and top artists.

Top Listeners

RocketDFS - 93,807 total plays

shaggy241 - 86,750 total plays

Coke von Cola - 64,335 total plays

Most Played Songs

1. Apologize by Timbaland

As we near the official Spring 2008 and Zunes will become available in Canada we stumbled on this link

.

It shows some information on the current Zune generation, but only includes Zune 80 and Zune 4/8 (in red, pink and black).

There have been reports from France that Microsoft has stated that Europe will not see Zune until Fall 2009.

I got my Zune Premium earphones for Christmas and they are great, here is my review on them:

There is a very nice feel to the earphones, and they are very comfortable in your ears. The magnetic backing is better because they go further into each other so there is less chance of falling out like the usual ones do. The case is very nice, it means you don’t have to wrap them around your zune and screw up the earphones (like I did with my standard zune earphones) or just have them getting messed up at the bottom of your pocket.

When I first put them on, without music playing, instantly loads of sound was blocked out which is brilliant, means you don’t have to have it as loud. Lower volume, less chance of damaging ears etc, one problem though is that your voice is very muffled and sounds quite loud (to you) if you speak with the earphones in, so if you’re listening to them on a low volume you will hear your voice quite a lot, but good thing is that you won’t need to talk because you won’t hear anyone asking you anything unless they shout at you while standing next to you.

Also in-ear earphones like these don

Here is a great video showing a Zune 4/8 Test Version with the Games menu. Currently we have seen four games in this video, Alien Takeover, Hexic, Zauri and Marblets (a bubble buster type game). Games are not sendable (at this time). The games show a type of meta data or description and you can flick left and right to change game. On the new Zune devices (Zune 4, 8 and Zune 80) the touchpad can be used. Zune 30 owners are not left out though, as games will also be developed for the button interface also. The games are limited to being 2d, although have some stunning graphics and everything is very slick and flawless. The XNA Api will be available for developers to create their own games for the Zune, although this is very locked down and will probably still prohibit any further hacking (atleast we have game support now though). Music and its album art, aswell as pictures can all be intergrated into games if wanted. This could open up games such as “whats the song name” or a jigsaw of a picture or album art. You can also listen to music while inside the games. Games will also feature wireless later down the line, this will be a local wi-fi (eg. Zune to Zune - there is no Xbox or PC direct compatiblity confirmed yet), which will unlock multiplayer wi-fi games with other nearby Zuners which is a pretty sweet feature.

View the Zune XNA Games Video here.