Zune Originals is now celebrating Valentines Day

As we have seen in past years, Valentines Day has brought the release of a few special edition Zune Originals designs.

This year, would be purchasers have the option to decorate a 16 or 32GB Zune HD as well as a Zune 80. As far as design selection, you have ten to choose from, and there are a variety of interesting options. The designs all have a heart in them somehow/someway, but as you can see from the one that is pictured above they are not all your typical Valentines Day designs.

The Zune HD models can be purchased in any of the seven available colors and the Zune 80 in either black or red. Price wise, the the 16GB Zune HD is $199.99, the 32GB Zune HD is $289.99 and the Zune 80 is $199.99. Finally, they all come with the design of your choosing as well as free custom engraving.

[via Zune Originals]

Zune services going down Monday night for scheduled maintenance

Just to serve as a friendly warning/reminder -- your Zune services, which include the Zune Pass, Zune Marketplace, Zune.net streaming and Zune video on Xbox LIVE will be having scheduled maintenance this Monday.

The maintenance is expected to take "up to 24 hours" and will begin at 10pm PST on Monday January 25, 2010.

As for what is happening, well its a maintenance update, which means that we are not going to see any new features this time. However it was noted that SmartDJ on the HD and support for AVI/XVID video will be "coming later this Spring." 

Additionally, according to the post over on Zune Insider;
"Once the Zune service is restored, you will be prompted to update the Zune PC software. Additionally, older Zune device firmware (4, 8, 16, 30, 80, 120 GB) will need to be updated to allow continued connection to the Zune service. Zune HD owners will not have to update the device firmware."