Microsoft Adds TV Shows To Zune Players
San Francisco – Microsoft, which trails far behind Apple in the portable media player market, challenged the digital media player market by narrowing the gap Tuesday with the release of new technology that enables users of Zune to share more of their music libraries with friends.
“Users of the digital media player can now download friends’ nine most recently played songs, as well as nine tunes flagged as favorites.”
Microsoft Corp. lately announced that it will now begin selling TV shows, together with popular NBC series, on the Zune Marketplace, a move that brings its selection of content for the digital media player a step closer to what Apple Inc.’s iTunes offers for Apple’s much more popular iPod.
Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft begins releasing a software update for the first time that adds new features to the Zune devices and the PC software used to buy and manage digital content and enables users to more easily share their tastes in music.
The new features will bring a host of downloadable television shows from Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, NBC Universal and other entertainment networks for 1.99 dollars per episode, as well as other changes to the Zune online store and its music-sharing community, Zune Social, according to Microsoft. The update will give depth to the Zune’s video offerings and also deepen the social components of its music-sharing community.
“Partnering with Zune will allow us to develop innovative content offerings for their customers, including flexible pricing and packaging options beginning this fall,” said NBC Universal digital distribution president JB Perrette.
“NBC Universal is excited to offer our hit television shows to Zune customers.”
“The release that went live lately really focused on three different areas,” said Brian Sietzer, group marketing manager for Zune. “One, the most obvious, was the addition of short form video to our online store. We have done a bunch of updates to the features and functionality of the Zune Social, but also brought the power of the Social, the data that is kind of feeding it, into the Zune software that is on your PC.
“The other big cool thing was that the engine of the Zune Social, your Zune card — we are giving people the ability to actually bring those cards down onto their device,” he added.
Starting this week, Zune users will be able to choose from 800 downloadable episodes, including popular titles such as COMEDY CENTRAL’s “South Park,” MTV’s “The Hills,” NBC’s “The Office” or “Heroes,” SCI FI Channel’s “Battlestar Galactica,” Starz’s “Ghost in the Shell,” UFC’s “The Ultimate Fighter” or VH1’s “Rock of Love.”
Users will be charged 160 Microsoft Points (the equivalent of $1.99) for each episode at launch. NBC said the deal with Microsoft is actually what they have been looking for, considering Microsoft’s flexibility on pricing issues.
The Zune online store offers customers over 3.5 million tracks (most of which are in MP3 format), 800 television shows, 4,800 music videos and 3,500 audio and video podcasts. With the help of the Zune Pass subscription, consumers will be able to see what their friends are listening to via the Zune store (through Zune Cards, which are in fact snapshots of the music they are playing on their Zune).
Other new features include gapless music playback and playlists that automatically update themselves based on criteria set by the Zune user.