3.6. Working with Videos
Like Windows Media Player, Zune supports playing back
various types of movies. There are some key differences between the
two, however, including the following:
Windows Media Player has a more flexible UI:
WMP supports different video playback modes, including a true
full-screen mode. Zune is far less configurable. It has a nice-looking
full-screen mode (Now Playing), but it's not truly full screen in that
it doesn't even hide the Windows taskbar, as shown in Figure 22.
They support different video formats:
Although there's some overlap—both Windows Media Player and Zune play
nonprotected WMV and H.264 files, for example—video format support
differs in important ways between each player. For example, Windows
Media Player can play DRM-protected WMV videos from services such as
CinemaNow and MovieLink, which Zune cannot.
The takeaway from all of this is that Zune cannot
replace Windows Media Player when it comes to PC-based video playback,
which again slightly lessens the ubiquity of this player. Instead, video
support in the player seems to be there largely to facilitate
synchronization with Zune devices. Presumably, Microsoft expects you to
just watch your videos that way.
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Syncing video with Zune devices works just like syncing music.
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From an organizational standpoint, Zune offers some
decent capabilities for your video collection. As with music, Zune
supports a number of subviews for Videos:
All: This
view displays all of the videos stored in the folders that Zune
monitors, regardless of type. To change the type of a video, right-click
it and choose Edit. This will display the dialog shown in Figure 23.
Click the Category button and choose the appropriate type—TV Series, TV
Specials, TV News, Music, Movies, or Other—from the drop-down list that
appears.
TV: In this view, only the TV shows in your video collection are displayed. (Microsoft sells TV shows in Zune Marketplace.)
Music:
In this view, only the music videos in your video collection are
displays. (Yes, Microsoft also sells music videos from Zune
Marketplace.)
Movies: In this view, only the movies (that is, full-length Hollywood-type movies) in your video collection are displayed.
Other: Here, videos that are categorized as Other are displayed.
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Why categorize? Well, content sold via the Zune
Marketplace is categorized, of course. But the real reason is that
Microsoft's Zune devices also utilize these category types for
navigational purposes. So you could view the TV shows and movies stored
on your device in separate lists if you wanted.
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NOTE
Zune uses a thumbnail image to represent each
video, and it doesn't offer a way to add DVD cover art, similar to music
album art, to videos. But that doesn't mean you can't add DVD cover art
to ripped DVDs and other video content: you could use another
application, like Apple's iTunes, to add DVD cover art to a video file.
When you do so, Zune recognizes it and uses it in the thumbnail display.
As you can see in Figure 24, the effect is quite attractive
3.7. Organizing Pictures
Zune's support of pictures is pretty lackluster and
seems to be oriented more toward device synchronization than actual PC
playback. In this sense, the Zune software is much like Windows Media
Player. It offers only basic picture viewing functionality, with simple
slide shows. That said, the Zune does present folders of photos in a
very visual way. As shown in Figure 25, folders of photos utilize a thumbnail and a large photo count within the Zune player.
Zune's slide show also works within the pseudo full-screen mode that's provided for videos, as shown in Figure 26.
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Syncing photos with Zune devices works just like syncing music.
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3.8. Radio in the 21st Century: Enjoying Podcasts with Zune
As the Internet's answer to radio broadcasts,
podcasts are an awesome diversion, with topics ranging from the expected
tech nonsense to travel, food, celebrity gossip, and more. In other
words, it's just like radio from a content perspective. The problem with
podcasts is that in order to enjoy them effectively, you need a
software client that can work with the underlying technologies that
distribute and manage these recordings.
Windows Media Player is not such a client. While you
can of course play podcast files with Windows Media Player—they are
typically delivered as standard MP3 files, after all—and even manage
them manually if you're so inclined, this software has no understanding
of the infrastructure that is used to post new podcast episodes.
Zune has no such problem. In fact, one of the major
features of the Zune platform is that it's completely compatible with
podcasts, so you can subscribe to podcasts with Zune and sync them with
your Zune device if you have one.
NOTE
In fact, you could use Zune to subscribe to
podcasts even if you plan on usually using Windows Media Player. That's
because Zune will save podcasts, by default, inside of your My Music
folder, which is monitored by the Music library in Windows 7, and thus
by Windows Media Player. Put another way, podcast content subscribed to
by Zune automatically appears in Windows Media Player as well.
First, you might want to configure how the Zune PC
software handles podcasts. This is done via the Podcasts section in Zune
Settings, as shown in Figure 27.
Here, you can determine how many episodes you want to keep of each
podcast (three is the default, but you can keep as few as one at a time
or as many as all of them) and how the podcast episodes are ordered
(newest episodes first or oldest episodes first). Unfortunately, these
settings are universal. You can't configure them differently for
individual podcasts.
To subscribe to a podcast, you have two options.
First, you can search podcasts via Zune Marketplace. As far as podcasts go, Zune Marketplace has a great
selection, and its integrated search tool and genre-browsing
capabilities make finding the right podcasts short work. A typical
podcast entry in Zune Marketplace is shown in Figure 28.
As you can see, you can easily download an individual episode to try it
out, or click the Subscribe button to begin receiving new episodes
automatically.
A less well-known method of subscribing to podcasts
is via a standard RSS feed. To subscribe to a podcast this way, you need
to visit the podcast's Web site in a Web browser and copy the URL for
its RSS feed to your clipboard. Then, open the Zune PC software and
navigate to Collection =>
Podcasts. In the lower-left corner of the player is an Add a Podcast
button. Click this button and then paste the RSS feed URL into the
dialog that appears, as shown in Figure 29.
To test this, use a random podcast RSS feed URL such as, oh, say, http://leoville.tv/podcasts/ww.xml. Paul would really appreciate it.
NOTE
Before you can subscribe to a podcast from the Zune Marketplace, you need to create and sign in to your Windows Live ID first.
4. Sharing Zune
If you're really
living the digital media lifestyle, you might want to share the content
in your Zune collection with other devices around your home, including
PCs, digital media receivers, and the Xbox 360. Not surprisingly, this
is all very possible.
4.1. Sharing with PCs and Other Windows Media Devices
Windows 7 already includes integrated digital
media-sharing features, and those features continue to work just fine if you choose to use the Zune PC
software to manage your music. That's because Zune integrates with this
underlying technology and shares, by default, the same monitored folders
and media folders as Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center.
Here's a shocker: this sharing capability extends
even to Digital Rights Management– (DRM-) protected music that you've
purchased from Zune Marketplace.
One interesting side note: while Windows Media Player
works nicely with shared media libraries on other PCs thanks to its
integration with Windows 7's HomeGroup functionality, Zune doesn't
really offer any way to directly share content with other instances of
the Zune software. For example, say you have Zune installed on two
different PCs, both of which are connected to your home network, and
you've decided to manage your music collection with this software. Even
though Windows might be sharing your content on both PCs, the Zune
software on either PC will never see the collection on the other. To do
that, you have to use Windows Media Player. This, too, is another one of
those areas in which the evolving nature of the Zune software makes it a
little less viable as your sole solution for managing digital media
content.
NOTE
You can get around this limitation with a brute force approach if you really want to. To do so, visit Settings => Software =>
Collection in the Zune software and configure it to monitor one or more
shared folders on your network that contain digital media content you'd
like to enjoy.
4.2. Sharing with the Xbox 360
Zune also supports an optional media-sharing feature
that's aimed at the Xbox 360, Microsoft's video game console. If you
have one of these devices and think you may want to stream music,
movies, and other content from your Zune media library over your home
network, you'll need to enable this functionality first. To do so,
navigate to Settings => Sharing.
Click the button labeled Enable Media Sharing with
Xbox 360. Once you have done this, you can configure a few other sharing
options, such as the name that will identify your media collection to
the Xbox 360, which media types to share (music, video, and pictures are
available, but only music is selected by default), and whether you want
to share your media library with any nearby Xbox 360 or would prefer to
specify a particular console. (The Zune-based PC and Xbox 360 must, of
course, be on the same home network for the sharing feature to work.)
On the Xbox 360, media sharing is handled via the My
Xbox section of the New Xbox Experience (NXE) user interface, just as it
is for any other shared PC-based media libraries. To find your Zune,
navigate to Music Library and then select the proper PC from the list in
Select Source. (It will have a colorful purple and orange Zune logo
next to it, so you can tell which one represents your Zune-based
library.)
When you select the Zune-based library, you can
choose between lists of Albums, Artists, Saved Playlists (which include
both manual playlists and autoplaylists), Songs, and Genres.
NOTE
Navigating through your Zune-based library from
the Xbox 360 is pretty straight-forward, if not as graphical as doing so
from the Zune PC software. However, the first time you try to play AAC
(audio) or H.264 (video) content in this fashion, the Xbox 360 will
alert you that you need to download a media update. This free update
downloads and installs quickly.
Finding Zune-based photos and videos is handled similarly, using the Picture Library and Video Library options in My Xbox.
