Ricepuddin

figured id share this..... Zune integration through factory deck for acura
http://www.soundgate.com/index.php?r...ategoryid=264&

#1 STUNNA

Aww that's fricken awesome. Too bad my car's too old!
It's only for 2002+ Hondas.

Ricepuddin

Mines an 01, but i sent them an email asking about the details. I'll share if find anything out.

#1 STUNNA

HAHA!! SO DID I!! I fucking just begged them to make it for my year. The iPod one I have works with most hondas from 94-05 cause its got a 8 pin din which I use and a 14 pin for the newer models, it seems as if soundgate only wants to include the 14 PIN. If worse comes to worse I might just DIY an 8 PIN out of the 14 PIN I think it'll work since on my iPod adapter the two connectors share the same cable. We'll see.

OH and I sent an email to USA Spec the company that makes my iPod adapter and begged them to make one for the Zune.

Ricepuddin

Heres to hoping, i plan on keeping my car for awhile and this would make me love my car even more. I rigged my iPod adapter to be bluetooth (well it wasnt hard just had to spend $14) and a bluetooth adapter for the zune. But man would it be nice to not have to charge the damn bluetooth every night

#1 STUNNA

care to explain how you did that?

mehhh

Zune>Ipod long time ago

Ricepuddin

Sure.
I bought a insignia bluetooth receiver
It has the same connection as the bottom of your iPod and is meant to make speaker docks bluetooth capable. I plugged my iPod wire into it, making my car a stereo bluetooth.

Then i got a Sony 3.5mm bluetooth which plugs into the headphone jack giving the Zune bluetooth out.

I can't control it through my deck but it beats FMtuners.

Sarlacc

There's a white CL in my building that's cleaner.

#1 STUNNA

This was the response I got from soundgate (I guess they're owned by kicker):
"Yes the part HONZNAUX1 will work for your but they will not be available till April."

but I don't think that one works with the factory controls.

Ricepuddin

Same thing i got from them, fuck waiting that long lol, but i guess no choice. You mean the older models wont becasue they are 14pin or just won't use the controls in general?

NYZGREATST

i use my ipod touch to read the online newspaper via the wifi as i take a shit in the morning. literally, it sits on my nightstand other than that.

#1 STUNNA

yeah I don't think it will be a two way connection it'll just be audio out from the zune you won't be able to FF or REW or skip tracks from the steering wheel controls.

#1 STUNNA

I just placed my order for the Zune 80 from the zuneoriginals.net site. Which is the site that lets you add free artistic engravings on the back of the Zune. Mine will look like this. I went with the collective soul engraving, I thinks it's pretty cool to have on the back of a PMP.

They also have a red Zune 80 that looks like this. I almost got red but decided to stick with trusty black.


I also should get my car back tomorrow and will look into the 14 pin 8 pin din thing on my ipod car kit and see if it's possible to make an 8pin connection out of the 14 pin wires. Then on tuesday I'll try and get a new iPod from the Apple store since my screen doesn't work and then I'll sell that one in the black market and get some money back. So if you're interested in a brand new and I mean brand new iPod checkout out the black market in the next few days!

Ricepuddin

The laser etching looks really good, it almost makes me wish i waited for mine. Keep us updated on your progress.

stangg172004

more

http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/..._originals.php

i hope they dont come out w/ a brown one cause then ill have no excuse not to get one! well besides the fact that im broke...

bkknight369

the new art work looks amazing!

#1 STUNNA

I just got back from the Apple store and they replaced my busted iPod classic with a brand new one which I'm selling in the black market forum so if you're interested. check it out.

https://acurazine.com/forums/showthr...69#post5783369

#1 STUNNA

MS just dropped the price of the 8gb Zune from $199 to $179. I wonder if they drop the price of the Zune 80 shortly I'll get my money back? OH and my Zune came in this morning and I've been playing with it all day!!

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/01/8gb-zune-now-179/

EuRTSX

What happened to your Classic that made it "busted?" Anything I should look out for? My classic's been working flawlessly, but I don't want to keep it if it blows ass in the long run.

#1 STUNNA

it fell off my knee as I was sitting on the couch and it hit the ground and the screen never worked after that! The Hard drive still worked fine but not the screen.

dallison

one day

gdubb

My fiance just got a new civic this week and it has a port in it for an ipod. Can the Zune use the same port or is it exclusive to the ipod? I am wanting pick up a mp3 player now and I kinda like the Zune better.

Thanks!!

Q1911

is it an ipod connection or a 3.5 stereo plug?

Q1911

you should be able to use anything that fits an 3.5!

gdubb

that Im not sure, it just has a small port. Is there any way to tell?


edit: just checked honda website it says mp3/aux jack. So im thinking now it should fit a zune.

sonnyg80

it'll work for any mp3 player.

stangg172004

or any device w/ a 3.5 audio out...

Q1911

#1 STUNNA

yeah then it seems likes its just a 3.5mm jack if it says aux. Or it might be the red and white RCA but probably not.

stangg172004

long day, sorry....

gdubb

thanks guys!

#1 STUNNA

I've had the Zune for about a week and there are many things I like about it and few I don't like but overall I really like it. Let's start with the pros.

The screen is awesome and it dwarfs the iPod classic in size and I find it very easy to watch videos on it. It's very bright and I like that it's in portrait mode instead of landscape as you can display more items on the screen. It's a glass screen like the iTouch which means it's very hard to scratch unlike the iPod classic. More about the screen later in the con section!!

Capacity. It's 80gb same as the classic but with a screen (3.2in) about the same size as the iTouch (3.5in), I find it to be a much better value than the iTouch. Compared to the 32gb iTouch it has more than twice capacity at half the price so if you just want a personal media player (pmp) and not a hybrid pmp/umpc like the iTouch than the Zune 80 is a great choice.

The Zune pad aka the squircle is pretty awesome and I agree with gizmodo it is better than the iPod's click wheel and similar to the touch sensitive iTouch screen! With the click wheel you have to manually go around and around in a circle to go from A to Z but with the Zune you just need to flick the zune pad a couple times and it'll fly though your list for you. The more times you flick it in a row the faster it goes. It reminds me of playing tetherball as a kid you hit the ball a couple times and it'll wrap itself around the pole. While with the click wheel it'd be like you holding the ball on the string and walking around the pole again and again until the ball was wrapped up. You can flick between everything, if you want to change a track or skip to the next picture, album artist, etc just flick. The zune pad isn't just touch sensitive it's also clickable so it you want to change the volume while listening to music you can either flick up on the zune pad or you can click the top of the zune pad, same thing for changing tracks, albums, artists etc. More about the squircle later in the con section!!

The UI. I love the UI and for the most part I like it better than the iPod Classic UI especially the half & half UI Apple introduced with the current iPod classic I think they changed it to be different not cause it's better. It's a beautiful UI I love the font and font size it much easier to read than the iPod classic. It has customizable background pics! I love this, I can put pics of the family or whatever I want in the background and it most of it looks great. Navigation through the Zune is easy. One thing that I like about the Zune UI is that if I go to Music it defaults to the artists view (which is the list I used most often on the iPod) with a list of all the arists going up and down. But if I click/flick on the zune pad I can switch between whether I want to list by music artist, album, genre, playlist and songs. While in the iPod it's an extra step if I choose artist and want to switch to album I have to back out of the artist list with the menu button and then choose albums but with the Zune it's done in one click/flick of the squircle. This little sortuct is in a few other places also once I choose an artist it lists all the albums with their respective album cover (iPod classic doesn't do that) but once I choose an album I can click/flick up and down and choose songs from that album or I can click/flick left or right and move between albums. So for ex. if I chose The Beatles from the arist list it would list all the albums I have and if I chose the first album which happen to be "1" it would list all 27 songs which I could scroll up and down through but if I scrolled left and right it would switch to the next album. It also does this when you chose a song you'll be able to go left and right through the song list without backing up to the album view to see the list of songs. The album art also loads very quickly it's usually there and if it's not it will be in a split second it very fast. Even though the classic does have cover flow I don't like cover flow cause it doesn't show you the album name until you have the album selected which doesn't work well for quickly browsing through albums. Cover flow is more for looks than anything else. I will say that it's pretty browsing through iTunes with cover flow in full screen mode. That is if you have good quality album art and if you don't you'll be wanting it after you see how it looks in cover flow. More about the UI later in the con section!!

The radio. It supports RBDS (I think that's the acronym) and can display info beamed from the radio station. For example one station gives the name of the station, the song and the band so I like that. The iPod doesn't come with a radio it's offered as a $50 add-on that connects to the port on the bottom and sticks out.

Videos. I can sync my recorded TV from Windows media center to the Zune. The Zune Software converts the proprietary dvr-ms files to zune compatible (I believe WMV files) more on this later in the con section!! It also works with iPod or PSP friendly mp4s. So for my DVD ot MP4 conversions I'm using DVD decrypter and PSP video 9 (I use it for my PSP and it works with iPod and Zunes). I tried handbrake but it didn't work, granted I didn't take anytime troubleshooting I just switched to what I knew would work.

Pictures. they work on my Zune!! With my iPod when iTunes resized the pics for the iPod they became distorted and about literally 90% were unusable. This also happened with my friends iTouch and he's not very happy. I've seen it happen on Xp and Vista but another kid I know who's got a mac the photos work fine on his iPod so I'm gonna blame it on the Windows version of iTunes which they haven't fixed yet. With the Zune you can zoom in on the pictures, it seems that the Zune isn't resizing the pics it's just copying the whole file so you can zoom in and it looks great. More about pics later in the con section!!

Zune Software. The Software is beautiful it's the best looking program I've seen not that that's a feature that I care much about but it is better looking than iTunes except for maybe full screen cover flow. But with the Zune software the now playing screen is cool it's a wall of album art which now for my collections almost completely filled in thanks to improvements in the Zune software and a little bit of work of my own. Stability wise I haven't had any issues, I haven't had it crash while the same can't be said about the Windows version of iTunes, it seems more stable now but it didn't used to be. The Zune software has most of the features you'd expect from a music management program but is lacking in some areas, so.... More about the Zune software in the con section!!



The Social. Welcome to the social! The social is pretty cool even though I haven't explored it too much but it's a neat way to hear new music. I like that you can see lists of tracks recently played by a person and listen to 30 sec clips of their songs. Same thing for their favorite songs and bands you can listen to 30 sec clips which is a quick way to browse for new music. Here's my social profile and you can see what songs I've listened to recently, my favorites, etc. A little bit more about the social in the con section!!

http://social.zune.net/member/Dan+the+Danger

The premium Headphones. The Zune 80 comes with in ear headphones included with it and they are pretty darn good. Good enough that I just sold my Sony $50 in ear headphones to my friend today seeing as these sound just as good and fit better in my ears. The outer ends of the earpieces are magnetic and stick together much like the magsafe connector on an Apple laptop, this helps prevent the wires becoming tangled and keeps thing neater. Clever.

Now for the cons.

The screen. As I mentioned months ago when the Zune was first announced 320x240 is kindof pushing with a 3.2 in screen. I like the screen of the iTouch better with it's 480x320 resolution. When you hold the Zune at a normal distance (I'd say 18 inches) you cant tell but if you hold it closer (I'd say 12 inches or less) you can tell. It's not bad at all but you can see some edges where it's not as smooth as it could be but it's no big deal.

The Zune pad. My only small beef with the Zune Pad is pushing down on the center button. The Zune Pad can be used like the middle button of the click wheel if you push down in the middle of the squircle. But sometimes when doing this you may be off slightly and it gets registered not a a push in the middle but as a push at the top or bottom of the Zune pad. They could remedy this by maybe putting an indent or some sort of physical thing (maybe the outline of a smaller squircle) in the middle of the Zune pad to signify that that was the middle and would help. A work around is that the play/pause button in most cases can perform the same duty as the center button so it's not always necessary to push the center button. Another thing is that the back and the play pause button are flush with the Zune and they don't stick out at all and this can make it hard to find said buttons while navigating the Zune blindly, this isn't so with the click wheel.

The UI. I have two problems with the Zune UI. One is that there's no now playing option. Like the iPod you can't change the volume of the music if you're navigating elsewhere and aren't viewing the currently playing track. Also like the iPod if you stop navigating elsewhere while the music is playing after about 5 second it will switch back to the song in play allowing you to change volume. The other problem is that once you pause the music while navigating elsewhere in the Zune it won't start playing the song again if you hit the play/pause button again. If you hit the play/pause button while elsewhere in the Zune it will start playing whatever is currently being viewed at the time. So if I'm listening to the beatles and I'm browsing in the beastie boys for the next song to play and I hit pause while doing so if I were to hit play again it would start playing whatever beastie boys song or album I was focused on at that time. So if I pause I have to go back and find that song in the list for it to play. Also once you hit pause it won't go back to the song currently paused so you can unpause it. this is a simple workaround that I'd like to see fixed.

Pictures. The pictures on the Zune aren't optimized for the screen they're resized so in some instances you can see anti-aliasing in the default view of the pictures. Once you zoom in this is gone of course.

Zune software. Where do I start. It's just lacking the advanced features of iTunes that people use on a daily basis. Usually it's the other way around where Apple releasesa product that covers the basics (like the iPhone) but misses some of the more advanced stuff while MS releases some thing that does everything (windows mobile) but doesn't look as neat as the Apple product. It doesn't have detailed ratings, smart playlists, access to gracenote CDDB (essential when ripping CDs), the ability to edit info about each song, etc. It's all the little thing that iTunes has that makes it better. Granted the softwares only been out a few months so I'm gonna give them time I sure it'll come but right now it's not there. But I'm gonna let you in on a secret you can still use iTunes to add and edit files everything you do in iTunes will be recognized by the zune software. So if I add music in iTunes I just setup Zune to monitor any changes to the iTunes folder and when I do so Zune recognizes it and immediately syncs with my Zune 80. Neat. Now let's talk about video conversion with Zune. It seems that when it converts my recorded TV that it convets from dvr-ms to WMV and to MP4 and this is a problem. They must've been in a hurry and didn't have time to develop an MP4 encoder (IDK of an MS made MP4 encoder) so they just used WMV. Now I've learned that if I take the dvr-ms file which is 1.2gb and convert it in the Zune software to a Zune friendly file it'll still be 800mb!! While if I use another program and convert the dvr-ms to MP4 it'll be 300MB and it will look just as good as the 800mb WMV! I just discovered this last night and am now in the process of converting all my dvr-ms files to MP4. Another example of the wasted space of WMV is last night I converted the 2nd disc of chappelle's show season to mp4 and all 5 episodes only took up 800mb while a 30 min WMV takes the same space but yet they look the same!! The program I use for converting dvr-ms to mp4 is called Druid. It just came out a couple weeks ago, it's still in beta and it's free unlike other dvr-ms to mp4 converters. You can find it here http://druidtranscoder.wetpaint.com/?t=anon
It's got some bugs but it gets the job done, I just wish it'd encoded mp4 in 768k cause 1500k is overkill.

Zune social. my only problem with the social is that I'd like for you to be able to access the social from within the zune program and for it to not have to launch the web browser.

Wireless synching. Yeah I haven't mentioned it at all during this whole review, wonder why? Well easy answer is cause I haven't gotten it to work yet. It says can't find my network. I haven't spent much time troubleshooting it yet as I'm currently not in the position that this is important to me but I'll keep y'all updated in the future.

That about wraps it up. Overall I like the Zune better than the iPod classic and I'm happy with my purchase. That's not that the Zune is without faults but fortunately most of it's problems I've found a simple workarounds for.

#1 STUNNA

Sorry this should read. Now let's talk about video conversion with Zune. It seems that when it converts my recorded TV that it converts from dvr-ms to WMV instead of MP4 and this is a problem.

stangg172004

excellent review!! i want an 80 now!

they only come in red and black right?

#1 STUNNA

Thanks! Yeah but I think red might be for a limited time only. I think it's a valentines special but I'm not sure.

EuRTSX

Meh, I'm quite enjoying my classic.

I was playing with a friend's Zune player, and I wasn't too impressed.

#1 STUNNA

UPDATE: I got wireless syncing working but there's a problem. I got it working by placing my Zune very close to my wireless router. If I'm farther than like 15-20ft from my router than I can't connect. If there's a wall between my zune and the router than it ain't happening either. Does anyone else have this problem? Is it cause maybe my Zune isn't plugged into a charger and therefore is operating the wireless function at full power? My wireless signal isn't that great but none of the other devices in the house have this much trouble getting on the network. I'm not using any security either so that couldn't be it. How does wireless syncing work for everyone else?

stangg172004

my 1st gen 30 connects to my computer from the other room

Scottman111

Very nice review. Thanks!

If I could rep you I would