One of the best new features that comes with Microsoft Vista (Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate edition) is the ability to watch, pause or record live television and then move it to your Microsoft Zune. Basically, Vista allows you to turn your computer into a TV tuner and a digital video recorder much like a Tivo or what you use to pause and record your favorite television shows with your cable TV provider.
The requirements to turn your computer into a digital video recorder are Microsoft Vista (or software like it that has the TV recording features) and a TV tuner card installed on your computer. Once you have these requirements simply plug cable, satellite, or antenna signal into the tuner card and you are ready to record. One of the best cards I have seen is the HP ExpressCard TV Tuner for Windows Vista.
As a Zune user, the best part of this is recording live television shows and then putting them on my Zune for future use. You can watch up to 100 hours of TV or movies with your Zune 30 and over 250 hours with your Zune 80.
I have had a lot of e-mails asking about recovering lost music and other media files on peoples Zune player. I researched and found this software for Zune music recovery that restores music, mp3, mp4 pictures, video files and folders lost due to accidental deletion, corruption, formatting and improper handling of your Microsoft Zune.
The company states:
The recovery support aif, aac, mid, midi, mpa, wav and wma file format of music mp3 damaged or lost due to accidental deletion, corruption and format of your Zune player.
* Software supports all zune accessories and provide thumbnail preview of the recovery.
* Recovers data even if drive not formatted message is displayed by your Computer while accessing Zune Drive in My Computer drive.
* Restores lost music, video, pictures, songs, file snaps existing on your Microsoft Zune music player
* Music/ songs recovery from accidentally formatted Zune memory
* Retrieve and restore corrupted and damaged music files from Zune music player.
* Unplayable songs recovery due to human error or any Virus generated loss.
The software is responsible at $29.95 and the company offers a free trial version. The program is just 2.2 MB to download. The features include:
1. Converts your DVDs to MP4 format that is perfect for your Zune, iPod or PSP
2. Works very fast and has been tested on most DVD drives (use the trial version to see if it works for you!)
3, Enables you to different video options including MP4 video codec Xvid and H264, a rich list of different resolutions, video bitrates, video frame rates, audio bitrates, audio frequency, etc (see interface below).
Here is an image of the DVD to Zune converter interface.
This is a basic “how to Rip a CD” in your Zune Library software. This will allow you to take songs from a CD you own and place the songs into your Zune library and on your Microsoft Zune player.
Total Time: 2 minute
1. Open Up your Zune Software
2. Choose OPTIONS then RIP then FORMAT (choose the format you want).
3. Choose OPTIONS then BIT RATE (choose the format you want).
4. Insert an audio CD into your computer drive
5. The Zune Software will detect the CD and display the name, artist, time and other song details. At the bottom right you will see a “Start Rip” Button.
You do not have to perform steps 2 and 3 each time. These settings will default for future Zune CD ripping. Discuss this in the forum here.
There is a nice program called YouTube Robot that allows users to download YouTube videos and add them to your Zune for future viewing. The YouTube Robot program allows users to search YouTube, download the video, convert the video to to the format you want and then transfer to your mobile device. Currently, YouTube Robot. You can use this for almost any portable device like the Zune, iPod, iPhone, Pocket PC and PSP. YouTube Robot support almost all audio & video format, include MP3, MP4, WMA, WMV, M4A, AVI, 3GP, 3G2, WAV, DivX, XviD and more. You can download a trial version here.
One of the cool features is you can schedule the downloading and converting tasks to be executed automatically, even when you are not around. Downloading is followed by conversion to the format of your choice and uploading videos to a mobile device. For example, you can plug in your Zune (or other player), select multiple videos, go to bed, and by the time you wake up next morning, your Zune will be ready to play new YouTube videos.
I am downloading the trial version and will be testing YouTube Robot out. I will post a review soon with screen shots and possible some video. Discuss this topic on the forum here.
At 2am this morning, Xbox Live released an update, enabling allot of cool new features. One of them being support to stream mp4 videos from your PC to 360 and right onto your TV. However this will only be possible with the Zune software, as WMP does not support mp4, so if you have a Xbox 360, make sure you enable media sharing so you can now watch your videos on the TV via the 360
I know we have coverd Zune video converting before and shown you some sites/programs that let you download clips from YouTube.com and then stick them onto your Zune. However a site I like to visit, Mashable, has put together a great list of 23 ways you can get clips from YouTube (or any where really) on to your PC. Some of the ways just get the clip onto your desktop, while some, for example Zamzar (we recommend) is an all in one site. You visit the site, put in the URL of the clip ( they have a tutorial on how to do this if you get lost) then select the file type you want it to be and then let it do its stuff. Its very simple and easy to use for the average user. Its also a great way to get those clips on YouTube that are just too good not to be shown around to every one.
If doing this via an application is more your thing, then VideoGet is what we would recommend. Video get is able to get clips from more the 100+ different video sharing sites. However its converting capabilities are some what limited to just doing MPEG-4 formats unfortunately. Another plus on this this program is its has the Softpedia 100% clean check on it, so not going to be getting any nasty unexpected surprises with the program.
So there you have it 2 more ways to get faviorite clips from the net to your Zune and another 21 ways over at Masable’s list.
I didn’t get a chance to test them all out, so if you find one on the list thats good, make a comment and let everyone know.
