Chime in on what suggestions you have for the Zune Team regarding Zune 2. I am looking for Suggestions about the following...
Please keep these suggestions constructive and as detailed as possible.
I know that the Zune 2 experience has been good for a lot, but those that have been unfortunate enough to have a bad experiece are the most vocal. So, if you are completely happy, maybe shoot off a word of thanks to the guys too.
51 Responses for "Zune 2 Suggestion Box"
Hardware: Non Proprietary USB cable
The Social: Separate Xbox Live and Zune friends
Firmware: Clock and Stop watch
- Bring Back the EQ please, not much explaination here.
- Gapless on the device. Yes, it is great we finally have it on the software, but why exclude it on the hardware?
- The ability to move files to another directory through the Zune Software. The best example of this I can give is Azureus torrent software. I keep all of my music on external HDD as I am sure a lot of other people do. Instead of having to go in manually and click and drag all the folders to the HDD, I should be able to right click on the album/video/pocast/etc and click "move files". Doing this will open a command asking you to input the directory of your choosing.
- I agree, bring back the EQ, just give an option to turn it off to save battery, I don’t think it’s necessary, but it is a nice feature.
- Gapless playback is a must have, some of the great rock classics made albums which were meant to be listened too as a story, think "The Point" by Harry Nillison or "Down by The River" by Yes (many others too).
- Autoplaylists obviously (I know they’re working on this, but I thought it was worth a mention)
- Metatag editing and drag and drop library additions.
- Search for album info manually (Why was this left out?) or just initiate an update of album info (for a single album, song, or the whole library).
- Streaming audio and DVD playback.
- Unprotected DVD ripping to Zune.
- Embeddable Zune Tags (w/o having to write the HTML yourself, add an option to do this, it’s not hard, would take about 45 minutes to add to the site)
I could go on, but for now, great job and keep up the good work, I adore the new software!
- Leif
http://www.greenmangames.vze.com/
HARDWARE:
- replaceable battery = let’s make iPod fans salivate.
- bigger screen on flash version - the screen border on the flash version is too big. The screen needs to be bigger.
- have an iPod shuffle-like clip on the Flash version
- Ability to register the tilt of the Zune. If the user is holding the Zune horizontally, then the photos should be displayed in landscape mode. If the zune is held vertically, then the Zune should automatically change to portrait mode.
- A iPhone/iPod Touch killer version of the Zune. This version needs to either have at minimum 32 GB of flash memory or 80GB of harddrive memory.
FIRMWARE:
- stopwatch, clock, calendar, games (multiplayer via wifi) = a stopwatch and timer would be a great addition so we can use it to workout.
- use zune as a hard drive w/o any hacks
- be able to delete directly from Zune
- ability to modify the main menu. I like how you can do this on the iPod. For example, if you don’t use the podcasting feature, then you should be able to get rid of it.
- ability to preview artwork when menu item is selected. I like how the iPod does this. Select (w/out pressing) "photos" on the iPod, and you’ll see a mini slide show of the photos.
- ability to view PDF files. You’ll be able to read books and view maps.
- ability to zoom more than once into a photo
- ability to bookmark mp3 files - ebooks
- audible support
- nike+ support
- View photos by tag!!!
- When viewing photos by folder, the entire folder structure should not be displayed. In the original firmware this was not a problem. Take for example the following image path where the software is told to find images under the "Photos/" folder:
"C:/ABC/XYZ/Zune/Photos/image.jpg"
The old firmware would display the image under: "Photos/images.jpg"
The new firmware finds the image under:
"ABC/XYZ/Zune/Photos/image.jpg"
Of course, if you were able to find photos by tags (and subtags), then this would not be a problem.
- Cross Fade music
- gapless support
- More codecs: i.e. avi files
- ability to create playlists on the Zune which can later be uploaded to your computer.
- Would love to see an option to view thumbnails of video/photos like it is done in Media Center. Horizontally and bigger thumbnails.
- An ability to view the current song playing. If you play a song, then start viewing photos, the only way to return to the "now playing" song is to wait 10 seconds for it to return. If you’re playing a slideshow, then it’s practically impossible. A simple solution is to add a Now Playing option under the Music menu.
- use Zune as a sideshow device. This would allow you to use your Zune as a Media Center remote control. For example, you’d be able to view thumbnails of TV shows that are available to watch on the Media Center thru your Zune. On your Zune, you could choose to have Media Center play a certain TV show or choose to have the video download/sync to your device. Maybe you could have a preview of the video downloaded to your Zune to see if you want to watch it. The same could be tru for music files. This would be a great feature that would help promote both Zune and Vista. It would be one feature that Apple couldn’t easily replicate.
SOFTWARE:
- ability to modify meta data easily for music and videos.
- dynamic playlists on Zune
- automatically schedule conversion of dvr-ms files in the background (i.e. as soon as the dvr-ms file is created) so when you sync a video to your Zune, it doesn’t take forever to sync.
- ability to subscribe to RSS feeds to blogs which can synced to your Zune so you can download the articles on your Zune.
- ability to view the details of your sync. The old software did this. While a file is converting, it should show you how much of the file has converted. Instead now it just shows you the percentage of the sync.
- ability to place file to sync in a well to see how much room you have left on your Zune. Again this is a lost feature from the original software.
- ability to tell the software not to automatically sync my Zune until I tell it to. I hate it now if I move/delete a video file from my computer, this video will be deleted form my Zune even though my video sync setting is set to "let me choose my video"
- basically, I’d like to see an advanced set of features and not a dumb down software.
SOCIAL:
- audible alerts when a fellow Zuner tries to send you something. Right now, if someone tries to send something to you without you know it, and you’re busy listening to music and not looking at the screen, you won’t know som,eone is trying to be social with you. If there was an audible alert that sounds when someone tries to send something to you, then maybe the Social will actually thrive.
- option to accept anything anyone tries to send you. It would be great if the zune was able to automatically accept anything from anyone. So while you walk somewhere a couple of fellow Zuners may send you something. When you finally look at your Zune’s inbox, you’ll notice that a few people have sent you some things. Because you can limit the size of the inbox, there isn’t the danger of someone trying to send you files that are too big.
- Microsoft should buy a social site like last.fm
p.s.
SOFTWARE:
- ability to rename a batch of music files based on certain user specified criteria:
i.e.
"Artist-Album-Song"
"The Beatles-The Best of the Beatles-Yesterday.mp3"
Let see where to begin, first off the zune is a great platform, I’ve had over a year to play with the first version, and yes the brown is the best colour, why because I say so, just kidding, the colour is just something you don’t see every day in a media player, I just hope MS add it as a colour to choose from on the zune originals site, brown casing, that includes the back with gold artwork or text, black zunepad, that would be sweet.The new firmware on my zune 30 is amazing, it’s like I just got a brand new zune, it’s fast and responsive, the software is also great, even though I miss some features like drag and dropping album art.But right now I’m only focusing on the U.I, although the U.I is great there can be some improvements made, so let’s begin:I’ve noticed when in album mode and when you are scrolling up or down, the bar that goes across the screen is below or above the character indicator, why not put that character to the left on the bar, also at certain speeds the album art become almost white or none existent, so put a graphic place holder in place of that album art, the place holder and character will fade out like it is now, Check graphic.Inside the song list mode, what happened to the fast forward and rewind icons, bring them back.On the front screen, I wonder if they made the font as big as they are just because the word pod is on the list, you know as in ipod?, take that scroll from the front ,the font can still be big, replace ipod with zunecast . hehe.This is the best part , I love vibrant colours, nothing better than having some nice vibrant colour to hold you over ,up here in the great white north… Toronto canada.Why not give zuners the option to choose from a list of colours, I’m thinking four to six. See graphic.There are more things U.I wise lets take it slow, or save those for zune 3.0
graphic
man we need an edit button chris, that looks nasty, it looked fine .sorry peeps.
The only thing the zune needs is the ability to display embedded lyrics, c’mon is it really that hard to do that in the next few months or so via a firmware update pleaaaase zune team I beg of you.
Otherwise the zune 2 is PERFECT in my eyes. I love it sooo much, all I ask for is lyrics displayed on my zune *tear
a WEB BROWSER LIKE THE IPOD TOUCH WOULD BE EVER SO COOL
some of these ideas are genius.
example:
"- ability to modify the main menu. I like how you can do this on the iPod. For example, if you don’t use the podcasting feature, then you should be able to get rid of it."
"- ability to subscribe to RSS feeds to blogs which can synced to your Zune so you can download the articles on your Zune."
Hardware: Bring back EQ, it makes no sense why they took it away.
Social: Alert to advice you someone send you something, separate it for XBOX live.
Firmware: Delete stuff from the device, Games, CLOCK, stopwatch.
Id also want to make a suggestion to the Zune Software. they should have a download to downgrade it to the previous edition,unlike everyone i actully like it better than the new one.
great suggestions everyone
We have some great readers!
Guys, I read somewhere (can’t recall the source) that eq support needs to be at the hardware level which has been removed from the Zune 2 hardware, so there is very little hope to get the eq back.
Wishlist:
EQ
Audible / audio books, Song popularity index in software, Forward button in software, Ability to select a song in collection and go to the album
I don’t think manny people have noticed but in the zune software you can see the orange-pink line glow when playing music. it is really good to see that the zune team put some time in this
FIRMWARE:
- TV shows should display the name of the TV show. If you only have ONE episode of a TV show on your Zune, you see the Episode Name, NOT the Show’s Name. The Show Name should be displayed under the the “TV Shows” menu AND in the description of the episode.
(Please note: if there are multiple episodes of the same show, this is not much of a problem since the shows are grouped together under the name of the TV show.)
SOFTWARE:
- Under the Video Menu, the name of the TV show should be visible. Maybe the title of the show should be “Show Name: Episode Name”: i..e. “Scrubs: My First Day”.
Both of these items could be resolved if the Zune Video UI resembled more like the Media Center UI.
why isn’t there in the software an quick playlist.
if you sort your songs on rating your “harted” songs appear on top followed by “broken harted” songs. and after those appear the non harted songs
Might just be me, but I loved the Volume Levelling “enhancement” for WMP11… Would be great if this could be implemented in the Zune Software.
The iPod has a feature that will limit the level of the volume, so a loud song will never be too loud and hurt your ears. It would be great if the Zune could also have this feature.
I’m defiantly NOT an apple fanboy, and i love my zune player, but as far as the software goes…to anyone who has ANY influence on software updates: please, PLEASE!!! go spend 10 mins. in itunes!� there is so much that needs to be brought up to a competitive level.� some of the softwares concepts are new and innovative, and that’s cool, but PLEASE don’t try to hard to be different!, itunes has a good formula from years of polish, it should be zunes foundation for standards - to build from there, forward.� Here’s a list of issues that I, and others like me, would love to see addressed in future software updates:
-Edits to artists, titles, etc. JUST DON’T STICK, why is that? its SO frustrating!
-in “browse” viewing, artists seems to be missing, example: i go to look for weezer–not there, but when i search by song and find “say it ain’t so” it says the artist is weezer! why?
-I miss (from itunes) being able to right click a song from any window, click info, and pop up a dialog box that gives me access to ALL of that songs info at once, change it all, click ok, and allow it to update all sorts of info for the song
-when music (in “list” view) is descending by artist, i want my song titles to be next in alphabetical order, but they seem to organize by track number–which for some files, has no meaning (like sound files i create myself) yet i cannot edit this arbitrary number, so self made files are in a wacky order…
-i seem to have tough time deleting pictures or video off my device
-When editing names/titles, it’s nice that the next song i click automatically opens for editing, but if I’m renaming artists what good does it do to have your next click open up editing in the song title column, if I’m renaming artists, my next click should edit the artist column…
-I miss (fom itunes) the auto-finish feature, where i start typing a word, and itunes tries to guess what it is–because that way i know all my artists, song titles, etc. will stay consistent, rather than having little discrepancies based on my errors
-i miss (from itunes) 5 levels of rating
-i miss (from itunes) smart playlists
-i miss (from itunes) being able to grab a handful of songs and right click to globally change their settings, example: artist, genre, rating, etc. all at once…
-wanna be able to write right click picture folders and see properties (particularly the size it will take on my zune)
-how do you jump to “now playing” in your list? in itunes, you could click pause, then play, and the list would jump to the currently playing song, in zune, i just have to scroll and scroll and try to find it
-(on my portable) I can’t add song to quicklist while i’m shuffling through all music…that’s the MAIN time i’d want to use the feature…
-can’t remove individual songs from quicklist, i actually have to clear the entire list and start over, if i accidentally put the wrong song in there…
-can’t edit quicklist from pc software
-in playlist menu (on pc software) can’t arrange the order of column catagories: (can’t swap “length” and “artist,” “genre” and “album,” etc.) AND I can’t arrange the music by any column other than artist, which seems to be the default
-again may I reiterate: edits to titles/artists/etc. DON’T ALWAYS STICK
-can’t flag anything from player, to later be edited/deleted/moved when i get it to the pc software
-pc software needs a new name, like i can say ipod and itunes, and you know which thing i’m talking about but since apparently the player and the software are both called “zune” it’s annoying to always specify by saying…well, “player” or “software”…
Sorry for the long list, thank you for taking the time to read it.� I believe each of these issues could help market the product better–if resolved, please take into consideration…
Thank you
P.S. … I don’t know why there are random question marks in my first and last paragraph…i don’t remember putting those there…whatever
My zune 3 wishlist. Lol
1. The ability to tune into other peoples zune, and listen to what their listening to
2. Wifi games(ex. Pong) simple, yet entertaining
3. Filling up the screens(the flash players don’t fill up entire screen space)
4. Ability to delete tracks from players
5. Wifi music store
6. Larger flash memory
7. A tad skinnier
WTH?� the video’s in my zune library do some weird name shuffle…they seem to randomly take on the name of their neighbors, and no amount of convincing can make them take back their appropriate name.� Does anyone else have this problem? It’s so frustrating,
…and then I’ll click to another catagory (music, podcasts, etc.) then click back (to videos) and it has a DIFFERENT wrong name, but if i rename it there in the software (and even if i go to the properties of the actual file and make sure EVERYTHING has the right name), whenever i leave and come back to videos, it will have adopted the wrong name again….i want to go back to itunes…
I think the zune 80 should have a higher resolution screen, all zunes should have an eq,games,and a clock. They should also make a 160gb zune like the ipod.
Thought of 2 more..
8. better resolution( like adam was saying)
9. Better software(more features, smart playlists etc)
I thought of another cool concept. maybe a touchscreen?
Adamross55: Touch screen is a bad idea, they need to use the money it’d cost to make the touchscreen to improve on the other features.
Soccerfreak24:Well yea but i meant like another model like to compete with the ipod touch.
I have hundreds of videos on my zune: movies, tv shows, internet videos…it’d be awesome if I could organize the videos on my zune into folders so didn’t have scroll through an enormous list to find anything
Also, the names I give my videos sometimes randomly adopt the name of another video and I can rename it back, but it doesn’t stick…
Adamross: Yah, that’d be alright I guess… I just don’t want them to change their current models to touch.
Soccerfreak24: oh yea changing their current models would be a very bad idea. But a separate touch screen model would be a neat idea
Does anyone influential to the design/programming of zune actually read this page?�
If so, some of the most prominent issues i struggle with are files renaming themselves, or not accepting names you give them, or not organizing by name (i.e. perhaps when i listen to a song it says the artist is Beatles, but when i go search by artist, even IF the Beatles show up on the list, that same song may or may not be organized under that artist, it may be floating somewhere in the abyss of “unknown artist” and when i finally find it and play it…at the bottom it still calls out the artist as “The Beatles”…)
Also, the software needs to be tightened up all around for speed and functionality. It does EVERYTHING so slowly that i will still open itunes to listen to music on my computer. i only open zune software when i NEED to update my device, otherwise, it’s just not functioning in a competitive way, itunes is just faster, easier to navigate, easier to search, easier to edit songs, all around easier…however, i really WANT to be able to use my zune software for those things. And that’s another thing, can it be called something besides just "zune" software so that i can refer to it without confusing it with the "zune" device?
I like my zune, i want to support microsoft, they’ve come a long way in a short time, i’d just encourage them to use the benchmark itunes set as as a base to build upon. Don’t try to be too different, make sure you can first compete, then improve from there…
It would be pretty neat if you could wirelessly send messages and stuff to other zune users nearby. Kinda like texts…that’s pretty social, right?
And someone better fix that video renaming issue, its getting harder for me to convince people to cross over to the Zune side when my videos have the wrong names as I am showing off my zune.
Yes i agree files rename themselves WAY to much. And i love the texting idea sounds very cool. If they did that they would probably have like unlimited txts a month for like 2000 microsoft points or 1600 or something like that.
I second the idea that it needs bookmarking for long mp3s. Fast-forwarding through half of an 8 hour mp3 hurts the finger! :) I tried faking it into the podcasts, which have resume, but it just picked it up as a song.
Firmware
-support for E-books without the need to convert them to picture format
My biggest complaint with the Zune is that it seems like the team is concentrating too much on the social aspect rather than concentrating on the usability of the Zune and its software as evident from zuneinsider.com. They publicly state that this is a entertainment device first, but they fail to realize that the Zune can be so much more if they allow such non-entertainment features like making the Zune into a external Hardrive.
Here is my list of suggestions (most of them are Zune software issues)…
1) Why can’t I sort my videos in my collection by show title (not episode title), genre, video type (TV show, movies, music video)?
2) Why can’t I alter the video type of videos within the software. Why can’t I change a video labeled as "TV Show" and make it a "Movie", or why can’t I assign a category to a video without a category?
3) Why can’t I modify the properties of a bunch of songs all at the same time, like I used to with the old software and like how I can now with Windows Media Player and other software programs?
4) Why can’t I remove individual files from the sync list like how I used to with the old software?
5) Audible support? Or bookmarking of nonDRM MP3 books support?
6) The folder management for photos is TERRIBLE on the zune now! If I have a bunch of photos 20 subfolders deep on my computer, it’s going to be 20 subfolders deep on my Zune. On a computer that’s okay. But on a mobile Zune, that’s just a TERRIBLE experience!
7) Why can’t I view photos on my Zune by tags instead of folders - which was a concept introduced with Vista’s Photo Gallery?
Auto play lists should be back
Lyrics display would be awesome
Clock and Calender (which syn with outlook & Google calender)
Picture/images at full resolution rather than 640X480
Audio & video notification when someone is in the wireless range.
Media management (tags, etc) completely through the Zune Software.
Firmware suggestion:-
Rather than show a static album cover image while playing song, it would be nice to have some dynamic effects such as (a) synced lyrics
(b) visualization
Software suggestion:-
The software should provide a way to tag lyrics with a song and also enable users to timeline each word in the lyric with the song. This information could be stored in an XML format (not sure if one exists) that the firmware could easily parse and render while playing the audio.
COMPATIBILITY WITH MAC
Thats about all I want … oh and a clock!
I sold my original Zune after 5 months due to lack of East Asian font support. I had hoped the new Zune 80 would support those languages (it is just a few simple fonts!!). I like the new Zune and kept it for the weekend, but ended up returning it due to the lack of Japanese, Korean and Chinese support.
If MS were to add East Asian Language support (they simply choose not to. It would not take that long to implement!!!) I would buy AND KEEP a Zune 80. As it is, I switched to an Apple iPod 5.5 gen and a Sony A818 as they both support Japanese, Korean and Chinese natively.
Tell MS to get their heads on straight. It has almost been 1.5 years now since the Zune was released and they still refuse to add this support. Booo.
Ah, I forgot to add that full support for WMP 11 and true UMS/MTP drag and drop should be implemented. Sony (OMG) broke down and did this in the West (they still use Sonicstage in Japan), so what is keeping MS from following suit?
Jaxim -> ftw!!!
Ability to save the quick list on your computer and rename it.
Clock.
Games(which are on their way)
Visualization.
More video format support(AVI)(for sync and or conversion).
I liked it when they added the category of "podcasts". I’d like to suggest an additional category of "audiobooks". It would really help me sort my stuff.Love my zune.
Couple things:
For both software and firmware:
- Include, or have the option to include, tidbits of information about artists if you download music from an artist that you haven’t before. Also lyrics would be nice.
Software:
- shift-click to select multiple songs and then give the option to right click to change meta data on multiple files at once.
- ability to group songs by genre so you can easily play "rock" like in WMP11.
Firmware:
- Kill switch. Some songs aren’t even worthy of a "broken heart", some songs you want to have go away forever and ever…
- Quicklist gone permanent: if you create a quicklist that you eventually want to save as a playlist, make a quicklist queue that you can name as a playlist later.
Firmware: enable users to (onboard zune) delete files, rename files. include clock, calculator, ps3, wii compatibility,
Hardware: touch screen!!!, lighter, gyro, more memory, linux compatible, bluetooth, longer batery life, phone, onboard minispeaker.
Scocial: wifi always on sleep. if another zune aproches notify the user for sharing.
Software: better and more customizable converting software. !!!especialy include .flv converting!!!
I was very satisfied with the Zune v2, but there is room for improvement.
-Speed up video convertion on software
-Better Video quality
-Ability to add friends with Zune (people nearby)
-CLOCK
-Games
-Create Playlists on Zune
-More complete Music Library (items shown but not availible)
-Expand Video Library (Movies and Fox TV programs)
-Use Zune as portable HDD
That’s about it, these are pretty minor details for the most part, but they would improve the already great Zune v2.
Not sure if this is mentioned but
A repeat function that has the option of repeating a single song and not the whole album; sure a person can say use the quick list but if you look at other mp3 players that are out, you are able to repeat one song continusly. Even CD players can do that much.
it would get great if the ratings assigned ont he zune would transfer to the player, and allow you to choose whether you want to remove that song from the play list it is in, or delete it from your zune all together.
it would also be great to be able to edit playlists without the use of the player (even if it involves moving one song at a time- though you guys are smart enough to figureout a way to select multiple songs and move them)
my last sthic, if the player could handle dragging adn droping of files, either onto playlists (in their appropriate window) or of new music folders (ie an other way to add a folder to monitor, or if you dont want the folder to be monitored but want to include that album, without relocaling it to the zune monitored folders)
thanks for the games in the update!
if only i could go on market place and purchase more…
also, while im at it, the ability to change the now playing screen (from all the albums, to one album- the one thats playing, to a cycle of albums one at a time, to some stupid media player “lava” or “fire mix” graphic or something.)
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