With all the news circulating about the Zune HD and the Zune coming to the XBox I started thinking about what I would like to see from the service and what to expect from it should it ever come to the UK.
Firstly I expect that the connection with the XBox will be great I just hope to see no limits on the music and films that can be shared between the two and think that being able to play some games on the Zune HD would be exactly for Microsoft and both their products. By linking the two services Microsoft have opened up a huge amount of content for the 2 services which should help sales of both and improve people’s ability to watch media wherever they are.
Thinking more about the linking of the Zune and XBox it dawned on me when, talking to Ryan Rea ( @Volvoshine), that Microsoft could be looking to further the usefulness of the Zune when working with a PC. I have been using Windows 7 since the beta came out in January and I have loved it and the new features one being Play To. Play To is a feature that allows linked media player libraries and devices to be able to stream music to another device or PC, they have also improved the libraries system and made it much easier to access libraries on other PCs. You might be wondering where I am going with this but it is possible to browse a media player library on a remote PC if you have previously linked it to another PC. Noting that the Zune HD will be able to access the internet easily, as it will have a form of Internet Explorer on it, would it be out of the question for the Zune HD to be able to connect to a library on a PC remotely and be able to stream music from it.
To me this makes sense as the Zune HD is set to replace the flash Zunes which obviously have a smaller capacity than the larger HDD version and would benefit by being able to connect to a remote larger library. I know for me that I will never be able to fit all my music on any media player on the marker as my music library is well over 25GB so being able to stream any media over the internet from my PC would be a truly great feature and I hope that it will make an appearance on the Zune HD and its service.
For all the latest info about the Zune HD: Zune.net | Zunited | Zune Insider
