Zune HD vs. iPod Touch: which is better choice?

The history of Zune versus iPod Prizefights is long and bloody, filled with enough cutting criticism to send devout fans on both sides of the ring into fits. Now iPod and Zune Prizefight than ever more fiercely with Microsoft introduced Zune HD on September 15. Compared with the iPod Touch, Zune HD has what characteristics and what different advantages, has become the most heated discussion at the topic. Zune HD is a platform without a purpose. It's a single device in a multipurpose world. Zune HD gamed iPod Touch, with better design, better hardware components, more appropriate size and outstanding digital content consumption experience. It’s a brief summary, let’s go on!

Zune HD’s main features:
· large screen size (3.3 inches), lightweight (2.6 ounces), High-resolution (480*272 pixels), beautiful (Platinum, Black, Red, Green, Blue), large capacity (16GB/32GB), Multi-Touch;
· Battery life ups to 33 hours for music and 8.5 hours for video;
· Glass-covered full-color OLED display;
· ARM 800 MHZ CPU· HD radio tuner
· Buy, stream, and update your music—and download free games—wirelessly via a wi-fi connection.
· Surf the web anytime, including tap-to-zoom technology, built-in accelerometer, and touchscreen QWERTY keyboard.
· Support 720p HD movies, TV shows, and videos in high definition on your HDTV through the Zune HD AV Dock (sold separately).
· Quickplay gives instant access to your stuff with shortcuts to favorites, recently downloaded or played music, videos, and more.
Compared with iPod Touch, although the Zune HD screen measures a slightly smaller 3.3 inches diagonally, it's uses cutting edge OLED technology, which delivers brightness and contrast unlike anything you can find in a LCD which iPod Touch applies. And slight another three hours of music may look, the extra 2.5 hours of video stands out to us as a significant advantage.(iPod Touch ups to 30 hours for music and 6 hours for video).
Besides hardware, what differences in other aspects?

For HD Radio

Zune marketing continues to highlight the Zune HD's radio-tuning ability (which they've had since the original Zune) as its break-out functionality over the non-radio iPod. The internal tuner has gotten a little cooler now with HD radio and a feature that lets users "tag" the song playing, so that they can easily buy it later, which is neat.

Both of them are heavyweight media player for videos, audios and pictures. But they are different in many details.

Zune HD supports video formats: WMV, HD WMV, MPEG-4, H.264, DVR-MS and HD MPEG-4. audio formats : Windows Media, WMA, WMA DRM, WMA Pro, WMA Lossless, AAC(no FairPlay) and MP3. and video output: 720p with optional dock.

iPod Touch supports video formats: H.264, MPEG-4. audio formats: MP3, AAC(including FairPlay), AAC+, Apple Lossless, WAV and AIFF. And video output: 480p or 576p with optional cable.

Although both are advanced media player, they couldn’t support all of video and audio formats . So I go to Nidesoft Inc to get program Nidesoft Video Converter, which could convert video or audio files between all popular formats. Fortunately, this video converter not only could support Zune HD and iPod Touch, but also supports all of the popular multimedia devices, such as iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia, Palm, Sansa, Google Phone, iTunes and so on. Personally I select an AVI file and have tried it. Below is what I do:

Firstly, I download this software form http://www.nidesoft.com/downloads/video-converter.exe
Install and Run it.
Step 1: Load files.Click "add Files" button and import the AVI video from my computer.

Tips: EDIT the video with the function button: Crop, Effect, Trim, Options
(1) Remove the undesired area or just convert part of the video area from my video file in “Crop” function.
(2) Select gray effect or Negative effect from Special Effect or tune the Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Volume to get special effect movie in “Effect”.
(3) Click “Trim” button to get my favorite segment.
(4) Click the white box besides "Merge into one file" to merge your selected titles into one video.
Step2. Select the out file formatClick the “format” drop-down list to select the output format. The software provides many profiles to support different devices and players. I select MPEG-4 Movie (*.mp4).If you don’t know what formats your device supports, you can just select the format according to the device name.

Step3. Click the "Convert" button and start the conversion. Wait a few minutes before the conversion succeeds!

After conversion, you could open the folder and find the output video files there, try to play it on your PC first, and also you could load the converted file into your player. For iPod, you could use iTunes to sync the files to the device; for Zune, you need to download the Zune software to manage the media content. Now you could enjoy video with your favorite player. In addition, maybe you want to enjoy dvd movie with iPod or Zune and need convert dvd to ipod and zune. I also find Nidesoft DVD Ripper could help you convert DVD to all popular video or audio formats easily!

As for connectivity

The Zune HD is able to stream music over Wi-Fi, something the iPod Touch cannot do out of the box. But the iPod Touch can stream music over Bluetooth (via A2DP) to compatible players.

Feature-by-feature, the Zune HD and iPod Touch are very similar and now the lower price puts advantage over the Zune HD. But in long time, iPod has been occupied the major markets. Can Zune HD win iPod Touch? We have to wait.