Microsoft has confirmed details on the upcoming Zune HD portable media player and, based on their announcement, it’s time to put away the Zune player under the “three strikes you’re out” rule.

Here are the highlights of the new Zune HD:

• Zune HD comes with a built-in HD Radio receiver. Users also will have access to the additional song and artist data broadcast by HD Radio stations as well as additional channels from their favorite stations multicasting in HD.
• OLED touch screen interface (480×272 resolution)
• HD-compatible output
• Full-screen Internet browser optimized for multitouch functionality.
• Zune HD is Wi-Fi enabled, allowing for streaming to the device from the more than 5 million-track Zune music store.

We’re calling this a strike – because the Zune HD is two years behind Apple’s iPhone/iPod touch platform – and Microsoft has the liability of the Zune platform’s history. The one distinguishing feature, HD Radio, is a refinement of a feature that most people have shown zero interest in.

Zune On Xbox

Fortunately for Microsoft, though, they’ve got a plan B:

Zune will extend its video service to Xbox LIVE internationally this fall. This marks an important development in the Zune strategy and brings the Zune brand to more than 17 million international Xbox LIVE subscribers.

Zune will be a premium partner in the Xbox LIVE Video Marketplace, bringing an exciting catalog of TV and film to the platform. Zune will occupy the first slot within the Xbox user interface in the Xbox LIVE Video Marketplace, exposing the Zune brand experience to millions of new consumers for the first time.

In other words, they’re going to leverage the Xbox brand to push the Zune platform.

Only time will tell if this is a last-ditch effort to save the Zune brand or if Microsoft will find some real synergy between the Xbox and the Zune.

MG Siegler at Parislemon has an interesting take on the current state of movie rentals on the�XBox 360, suggesting that it’s not ready for prime time:

Last night I sat down to download The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I figured it would take 5-10 minutes to get enough information to start playing and then go. Wrong.

2 hours later I was still waiting as the download pushed past 40%. Fucking ridiculous. I shut it off and went to bed.

How exactly Microsoft plans to use any service called “Watch Instantly” with wait times like this is entirely unclear to me. Why can you rent a movie on Apple TV and have it start playing within a few minutes, but on the 360 it takes several hours?

To me, waiting several hours before you can start watching a digital movie is utterly ridiculous. I mean, I may as well have gone to Blockbuster. It would have been MUCH quicker.

For Internet TV devices to take off, companies will need:

1. technology in place to deliver streaming video effectively;
2. easy to use interfaces;
3. current content; and
4. deep libraries of long-tail content.

None of the solutions currently available do all these things. The technology is moving forward so quickly, though, that it’s likely that by this time next year, devices like the XBox 360, Apple TV or the Roku Player will do it all.

Sales of TV shows and movies via Xbox Live could reach $92.25 million in 2007, growing each year through 2011, when the aggregate revenue from the sale of both types of content could top $726 million, according to reports. This is expected to grow each year through 2011, when the aggregate revenue from the sale of both types of content could top $726 million.

The total revenue generated from the sale of video via XBox Live would still still be a small portion of Microsoft’s overall revenues. If video revenue reaches $726.50 million in 2007, that would represent only 1.6% of the total $44.2 billion that Microsoft generated in Fiscal Year 2006.

via HardwareGeeks