Zune + Xbox 360 = Crazy Delicious (almost)

Finally got a chance to play around with hooking up the Zune to the Xbox 360. Turns out it's way easier to do than I expected, though it doesn't connect over the Wi-Fi like I was hoping. The front of the 360 has two USB plugs. You just plug the device right in via the USB, and voila you can play your songs straight through the media player built into the console.

On the downside, I'm having a hard time figuring out what the compelling scenarios are here. I already share out my music directory over the wi-fi so the Xbox 360 media player can connect to my music share directly. It's pretty fast over the network (even with 200+ GBs of music), and given that all of my synched songs exist on the share it doesn't seem to buy me much to connect the Zune. On the 'it's the social' side I guess a compelling scenario is bringing your Zune with you to play your tunes at a friends house. Kinda cool, but not a killer feature. The fact that the two devices can work together though definitely opens up possibilities for cool new features in the future.

Zune - First Impressions

I got a brown Zune for Christmas this year. After getting past the painful install process (though I remember my initial iPod setup being pretty crappy too) I'm totally digging it. The radio features are fan-frickin'-tastic, the customization options are slick and the color screen looks great. I know the blog-o-sphere is slamming this thing, but if Microsoft continues to put out software updates for the installer and Zune store it's going to be one sweet little device. Next step...see if I can get this thing working with the Xbox 360. Yippee.

Bonus points for putting the Band of Horses screenshot on the box. Nice!