Zune Spring Update 2008 - The ZuneLuv.com Overview Report

Updated: Our Zune 2.5 Spring Update Review Roundup. That should keep you clicking for awhile.

Sometime the morning of May 6, the Zune Spring 2008 update will be made available to all Zune owners.

We got a sneak peek at what's coming (and think it's pretty cool) and wanted to give you the heads up. It's good to be an MVP.

Television On The Zune

Starting tomorrow …

More than 800 episodes of popular television series to download and watch (on the desktop and to sync to the Zune) including “South Park,” “Afro Samurai,” “Witchblade,” “The Hills,” “The Office,” “Heroes,” “30 Rock,” “Battlestar Galactica,” and a bunch more.

Episodes will be priced at 160 points (about $1.99).

Finally, real competition for the iTunes store. And, just try to get Battlestar Galactica in the iTunes store anymore.

The Expanded Zune Social

It's obvious Microsoft is pushing this one pretty hard. We have a lot of new features in "The Social" - and some of them are very cool. These include: syncing Zune cards with devices, reputation badges, considerably enhanced album are artist reviews and more.

Music fans will love this part.

Simply, Apple doesn't have anything close to this and there are some really interesting options in this space. Instead of the generic album review databases out there, you can actually find what your friends think about the music their listening to. This whole concept of exploring music together in "The Social" actually has a chance with this release.

Being able to see on my player what my friends are listening to, take it home and do something about it - very cool.

At last, the wireless is being put to some good use.

And, don't worry, this ain't just something for the big names. You're going to find some bones tossed in for the indie folks out there.

An Enhanced Zune Experience

New features here include: Auto Playlists, Better Album and Track Information Editing, Collections, Gapless Playback and Group Syncing.

Zune hasn't been perfect in the handling of the media files. A number of fixes are promised here and we'll give you a full review of what we've found after we put the software to the test. Our review to this point has been on Microsoft supplied machines. Tomorrow, the real tests come in.

Nothing New In The Podcast Space

I have to mention that there is nothing new in this release for the Podcast part of our little media device. While my mouth waters with the potential for these "Social" features to be opened to the Podcast content, I can at this point only hope it's coming one day.

Not that Apple has that either.

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