Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Zune HD video hands-on: chock-full of media edition

Weve witnessed a very interesting development cycle with the Zune HD, getting to witness the software at various early stages of development, instead of a completed device all at once. Our latest glimpse of the player is along the lines of whats been cropping up the last week or so: wild transitions, fun motion graphics and plenty of beautiful media to show it all off with. We did get to touch the new keyboard briefly, and while theres no telling what sort of predictive text Microsoft has worked in, since we only had a URL bar to work with, its a passable (and certainly beautiful) attempt to cram a full QWERTY touchscreen keyboard into such a small device. Reports are conflicting as to whether there will be a landscape keyboard in the final build of the device, but its been spotted in some iterations of the device -- it didnt show up when we tried to rotate the player, however.

Unfortunately, while the browser is up and running, the hotel we were at wasnt able to offer us a working internet connection -- hopefully well be able to rectify that soon. For now hold tight, check out the gallery below and the peep the video after the break for a magical exploration of the Zune HDs truly impressive interface.



See more video at our hub!