Zune Review : The Zune PC Software is Equipped with a Transcoder

The Zune PC software can play lots of formats, codecs and video sizes. WMV, h.264, aac, wav, 320x240, 640x480, HD among others.

The Zune device is more limited. It's got a 320x240 screen and a less powerful CPU than your PC. So if you've got your beautiful 720x480 video on your PC, something has to change before it gets to the device.

Zune transcoding will take care of this. When you go to sync the movie, The PC sofware checks if the format will be playable on your Zune. If not, the software then converts the video into a copy in the device's target format, a 320x240 WMV file.

Once the transcode is complete, it transfers the copy over onto the device. It saves the copy in the cache so the next time you need to sync that movie, you don't need to transcode it again.

The same sort of thing happens with audio files that the Zune won't support.

The Zune software can only transcode files that it knows how to play. That means that Apple Fairplay songs and other unsupported DRM and codecs can't be transcoded.

Check these other Zune reviews.

Source : Zunester