Zune “TV Out” Reviewed

3” in good but 42” is great. Yes, you can watch videos and pictures on your Zune, but what makes those features really fun is to be able to send the content to your TV. We were not sure what to expect from the Zune “TV out” but we were happy with what we found.

We first had to hook-up the Zune to the TV. I was not sure if we could easily do that because I did not buy the Zune A/V cable. But luckily, I could make it work (almost) in a second with a standard A/V cable that we normally use for camcorders.

There is no automatic video signal detection in the Zune player. So, you need to go to the main menu, select settings, than display and finally choose the TV out option to send the video signal to your TV. At this point, you Zune screen will be turned off.

There is also a TV out in the base connector of the Zune. This can be use with the docking station available as an accessory. You can bet other accessory makers are going to use that in the future.

I was curious to see how the Zune would use my 42” 16x9 Plasma TV. I can’t flip the TV like I do with the Zune…

 

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First thing first: The menu. The menu is accessible on the TV screen but you lose a lot of space because, like I said, we can’t flip the TV and the output resolution of the “TV out” is the same as the Zune’s screen. For the main menu, this is fine since the actual Zune menu only has 6 items in it. But when scrolling in your music, picture or video lists, the navigation is a lot less obvious. The screen becomes too small and you see only a few songs or pictures at the same time on the screen.

Music: When we finally choose a song, we had there a sweet surprise. The ‘TV out” can take advantage of the screen. Like you can see in the first image, the song information was placed besides the album art instead of under it. This is nice since you can’t scroll when you are at this place in the interface.

Videos and movies: The video compression is so high that when you shoot it on a 42” TV it is very ugly. In fact, it becomes unusable. I would make more sense to upload the video at 640x480 and downscale it to fit the screen resolution of the Zune and shoot the high resolution through the TV out. But it would take much more space on your hard disk…

 

 

 

Pictures: We had much better result with picture viewing. The pictures just looked great on the big screen. It was also a nice surprise to find that the controls on the Zune don’t flip when you are using the TV out. This is great since you are not looking at the Zune screen but at an “unflipable” TV! The thumbnails were also well displayed on the TV screen, permitting the full use of the screen space (row of 6 thumbnails instead of 5 on the Zune screen).

The “TV out” was fun to use for pictures at the same time as you listen to music. We had people at home this past weekend end I was able to drive the Zune music at the same time as I was watching pictures in a slide show on the TV. The family enjoyed that as much as I did.

Comments

[Justin]

Awesome. I have to say, I am liking this Zune more n more by the minute. It syncs up nicely with my windows XP, and "Wifey" is going to love all these extra options for picture viewing n such. What would the ladies do with out all their photo's anyway? 1 other thing, customer service, at least for me was spot-on! Within 2 minutes I was speaking to some chick via the telephone. C'est maginfique!

[CanadianZune]

It's true, the Zune TV output looks ugly in big screen such as 32' and 42'. If you convert video at higher resolution, would it able to play in the Zune?????????????????????????????

[Nyob]

So this is what the 'TV' on my Zune is for?

[Mike]

my zune won't allow me to turn t.v. out on i clicked it and it says To return display to Zune, hold play/ pause to turn Zune off, then press any button to turn it back on then i clicked ok and it does not work???
please help me!!!!!!

[clint]

did you get an answer for this? I'm having the same problem.

clint

[Nancy]

I have the same problem too.

[Debbie]

I am having the same problem also. I called Zune Support and they were unable to help. I am wondering if their new update messed this feature up.

[Wesmeister]

wow this works like a charm. really. i didn't have to shell out an extra $40 for the A/V kit.

also, on HD TVs, the videos DO look terrible. however, on a normal tv, they look great. seriously. use it on a normal tv and it'll be like watching a DVD.

[ss]

I have Zune 30 and i am not able to select the "Tv out" option. its always saying "return display to Zune, hold play/ pause to turn Zune off, then press any button to turn it back on ". nothing happens.. did anybody is successful with this setting?
min got updated with the latest firmware & software ie. zune 3.1

[wwncl143]

the tv out works just fine,
if you use the right cable,
just follow the instructions EXACTLY as displayed on your screen,
GREAT for PHOTOS,
only good for videos if you downloand in highER resoluction, therefore much MORE memory is used.