Here is a review of the Zune 16Gb player from PC World. They seem to agree with most everyone else that the Zune has finally become a serious music player with high features end iPod does not offer.

The additional capacity of the 16GB player should come in handy for those who decide to use the many new features available to the Zune 3.0 firmware. You can now access the Zune MarketPlace from your wireless device and do things like purchase songs you hear on the radio station thanks to the new partnership Zune has with many major radio stations.

The hardware specifications on the Zune 16 are very similar to those of the Zune 8 and what really changed was the harddrive capacity and the high gloss finish of the new Zune 3 players.

PC World – Microsoft Zune 16 GB Review

The 16GB Zune retails for $200–the same price that the 8GB Zune carried when it debuted. Size (including the 1.8-inch screen), weight, and the device’s battery life (according to the company’s spec) remain the same for the $200 Zune 16GB. At 0.3 inch thick, the 16GB Zune is noticeably bulkier than the 0.24-inch third-generation iPod Nano; it also weighs a bit more, at 1.7 ounces versus 1.3 ounces for the Nano.

Here is an interwesting read on the new Dell MP3 players and what that might mean to Apple. I’m doubtful Dell will have much success against Apple buyt Zune may have some things to worry about.

Dell’s MP3 Player Move: How to Beat Apple – Talk Back by Digital Trends

Last week the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Dell was again looking at the MP3 business and that I was involved in the effort. I’ve been fascinated with the success of the iPod for some time now and the fact that even though it is very clear how Apple took the market, there has yet to emerge a truly serious competitor to Apple’s leadership. This is primarily because no one wanted to match Apple on all aspects of their program initially, and now that Apple is dominant, matching alone won’t do it anyway.

On the other hand, just like Apple moved around the companies who dominated the MP3 player market before Apple entered, so too (in theory) could another firm. But, it will be harder this time because Apple has already captured many of the likely early adopters with either the iPod or iPhone product lines (you can check out our Apple iPhone 3G review).

Dell computers is taking another run at the portable media player market after the beating they took on the DJ. It seems they bought a company that manufactures a wireless media player, not Zune but Zing, that may help them with a new shot at the market.

People are calling it another shot at Apple of an “iPod Killer” but thats the sheeple following the pack. There is never to be an “iPod killer” unless Apple decides to kill it. No other company is going to design or develop something so radical it overtakes iPod as the dominant PMP. They were the first to mass market the devices and they will remain on top forever.

What this new Dell device may be is not an “iPod Killer” but a “Zune Killer”. Lets face facts Zune is not burning things up and Microsoft has had more fumbles than successes thus far and Dell must realize just how badly Microsoft has screwed Zune with the DRM crap and horrible marketing approach and what Dell saw was just how fast and easy Microsoft took the #2 slot with Zune players regardless of how poorly Zune was introduced to market and they decided to try again.

I think its too late for Dell to take #2 because Microsoft would rather lose more cash and build a better Zune then to be pushed out of the market by Dell but they probably realize they can do well in the #3 spot and maybe thats good enough for Dell.

Byte of the Apple Here Comes Dell To Compete With The iPod, Again – BusinessWeek

Looks like Dell is going to make another run at the music player business. All I can say is “here we go again.” Perhaps you’ll remember its ill-fated attempt to compete with Apple’s iPod. It lasted all of three years.

What’s different this time around? Well last year Dell acquired a little music software outfit called Zing which in 2006 was demonstrating a concept design that essentially put Wi-Fi streaming inside a portable player, thus giving it the ability to, among other things, play Sirius streams.
Sound familiar? Well yeah, actually. My very favorite thing to do with the iPod touch is to listen to streams from Pandora and Last.fm. Okay, Sirius and XM aren’t on the iTunes App Store, but if they know what’s good for them, they’ll offer their subscribers who like to listen via the Web (ahem) an iPhone/iPod touch application that will work via Wi-Fi and/or 3G, but I digress.

Dell’s player might include streaming capabilities, and could also work with Rhapsody, which isn’t a bad service at all, or it might launch its own music service. And hey, if it supports MP3 music files, as it presumably would, it would support music sold on Rhapsody, Amazon, eMusic and whoever else has decided to go the MP3 route. The problem, will of course, come down to marketing and positioning aganst Apple, and we all know how that tends to work out. Its closest rival in the U.S. is SanDisk, which has a market share of about 11%, though it has tended to be a profitable share profitable share.

Well maybe we have seen the first sign of the fall of DRM on the Zune player. No, I’m not talking about the plethora of Zune hacks out there. I’m talking about the man who started Microsoft making comments about how useless DRM can be. He admits that not even Microsoft has been able to do DRM right and it may signal a shift in their thinking when it comes to DRM.

The idea that DRM is here to stay seems a sure bet but the consumer ultimately has the choice in what they buy and if Microsoft feels that DRM hurts sales they have the power to make changes. The wireless sharing features of the Zune make it more difficult to enforce DRM and in order to really open up the wireless they will need to relax the DRM restrictions.

Maybe future Zune players won’t have so many restrictions on the Zune to Zune sharing and it will help the players gain acceptance to a wider market share. I think the content sharing is the key to Zune success and DRM seems to be getting in the way of things.

iTWire – DRM is “too complicated” – just rip CDs, says Bill Gates

Gates confessed to a round table of prominent bloggers that “no one has done it right” when it comes to Digital Rights Management. This is despite Microsoft recently creating yet another DRM format for it’s new Zune MP3 player.

Gates went on to say Digital Rights Management “causes too much pain for legitimate buyers” trying to distinguish between legal and illegal uses. He declined to elaborate on how Microsoft would address this.

Last weeks announcement of the Microsoft XNA Game Studio Framework has confirmed for us our suspicions of the use of the new Microsoft DRM as reported on June 30th. When we posted about the new DRM being worked on by the research team at Microsoft we gave details of a possible relationship to the Zune. We posted how it could be used to facilitate user generated content sales and turn musicians into their own producers and marketing agents. A brilliant move by Microsoft as it would turn every struggling musician into the biggest Zune fan ever. We strongly believe that by courting the content producers Microsoft will take the lead on both Apple and Sony.

In private we discussed the possible uses of this technology with John Porcaro of the Xbox team. In an email sent to John the day after our first post on the DRM we explained to him how cool it would be to allow gamers the chance to design and develop their own games. We also discussed how integrating the Photosynth software Microsoft is working on with the game development would create the ability for user generated virtual reality games.

John was rather silent and we found that odd. With last weeks announcement we understand why he never replied to our suggestions for the Xbox. We had predicted it just 2 weeks before it’s actual release. XNA Game Studio Pro will offer exactly what we said. Xbox users will be able to produce games for the Xbox and Windows for commercial release. That’s absolutely huge for the gaming industry and creates a serious threat to other game companies. Sony had better be very concerned with this. Their strength has always been in their selection of games and by opening up the doors to millions of potential developers Microsoft has changed the game on them.

Check out the Photosynth software demo and then think how cool a tool like this would be for developing games. Users could work with Photosynth to create virtual recreations of real world scenarios and then using the XNA Framework they can develop games to play in them. XNA Game Studio Pro will allow them to make this game available for commercial release under the new DRM. Microsoft has turned every game fan with $100 a year into a prospective video game developer and producer.

In the future the Microsoft DRM will manage sales of user generated games for the Xbox and music for the Zune. It will be possible for one person to develop a video game for play on the Xbox using the XNA Framework and Photosynth software. Another person can use the Zune XNA Framework to produce audio and video content. Or will that be the Zune ZNA Framework and Zune ZNA Music Studio Pro? The two of them could form a partnership and license their content together as an Xbox user developed video game with Zune user developed audio and video content.

Whatever happens it seems certain that Microsoft is serious about building a user driven community behind the Xbox and Zune and the XNA tools and the new DRM are sure to be an important part of things. No doubt it’s more than Apple and Sony that need to look out for this combination of tools and services. What need for a record label when you can create, produce and market your own music? Why get a job at a game company when you can just build your own games?

There has been much said bout the Zune music player and the Microsoft DRM Some feel that in order to succeed the Zune player must offer a more open DRM and be less restrictive than the Apple Ipod is with FairPlay. The common logic being that the less restrictive DRM will offer customers more freedoms in their use of purchased content.

Critics feel a more restrictive DRM will stifle the industry and takes away rights from the consumer to manage their content their way. Whatever your thoughts on an open DRM it appears that Microsoft may have their own plans for a new DRM. We have uncovered a PDF document produced by the Microsoft Research team that may explain more on a Microsoft DRM and why the Zune will not be an open architecture. It remains to be seen what DRM the Zune will actually operate under but this document may shed some light on Microsofts plans for a future Zune DRM.

First off please understand we are not scientists and are still working to decipher some aspects of this document. But it appears that Microsoft may have much larger plans for the Zune family of devices than just to play music and videos. We suggest you read the entire report located here and draw your own conclusions.

This excerpt is from the main page for the International Workshop on
Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video . These statements are made by members of the Off-line Economies for Digital Media team Darko Kirovski and Kamal Jain from Microsoft Research.

We propose a novel platform for building off-line markets for digital content. The key objective is to enable an arbitrary user of specific digital content to resell it to other users in an off-line peer-to-peer manner so that part of the proceeds goes to content’s copyright holder. Most importantly, one part of the revenues is retained by the seller as an incentive for participating in the distributed economy. To address this objective, a transaction is finalized and incentives distributed to the seller on-line using a client-server architecture. Technologically, such systems can be readily created, for example, by adding a communication tool such as Bluetooth to a portable media player such as the iPod. In this paper, we present a threat model for this system and devise a novel protocol that relies on traditional public-key cryptography to ensure secure and efficient off-line transactions of arbitrary digital content. As a consequence, in our system copyright holders can control the pricing and recruit a powerful marketing and sales force with marginal investment and via various types of incentives, users are offered the ability to sell or purchase content they like anywhere, anytime, and to/from anyone.

It would seem that this platform would offer users the ability to not only buy and share content but to also facilitate sales of user generated content as well. As we can determine it seems this DRM would not only allow a user to purchase and listen to content via the standard music service but in addition an artist would have the ability to create and sell their own content through the same service in a user to user fashion facilitated by the DRM and accompanying services. It appears this new DRM architecture will allow an artist to charge for and be paid for their own works and Microsoft will of course share in the profits. It seems the much talked about Zune to Zune service is more than discovering new artists and sharing music it’s about selling new music as well.

This would of course explain the numerous media reports on why the Zune will not be PlaysForSure Compliant. Microsoft developed the PlaysForSure certification program in late 2004 as part of a branding campaign designed to promote products and services that were compatible the Microsoft DRM system. It was an attempt to assure consumers that they could buy any compliant player, subscribe to a compliant music service, and have a seamless digital music experience on par with anything produced by Apple.

In order to offer the music sharing features on a Wifi device the Zune will most likely have to use a more restrictive DRM in order to offer security and protection to the content license holders. Microsoft has also been reported to be in talks with recording studios and artists to support their new music player. A DRM that allowed musicians to create, distribute and sell their own music would play right into the hand of artists. Microsoft seems keen on using the artists support to boost popularity of their new portable music device. If Microsoft succeeds in putting more money into the hands of the artisits they have a chance at making the Zune a hit. This new DRM could be a boon for smaller independant recording artists by offering them the ability to create, license and sell their own original copyrighted works direct to consumer.

Could a new more restrictive Microsoft DRM be key to the success of the Zune? Further analysis to follow.