Eight Great Ways to Get the Most from Your Zune

Loading Up Your Zune

The Zune. It's a media player. It does music. It does videos. It does pictures. And it's just waiting for you to load it to the brim with all the great data you can fit on there. Sure, you can do the Zune Pass thing and fill it all the way up with rented music. Or you can buy some points and spend them on tracks at the Marketplace. But you can also build up your Zune library with the great media you probably already have around your house: CDs, DVDs and digital pictures and maybe even some TV shows.

Audio

When it comes to Zune audio, it's not just about music. It can be about the music but it doesn't have to be about the music. (Let's be honest. Music is probably the main attraction for most people and the reason they bought their player.) The Zune can also play back podcasts and recorded lectures and many audio books. It all just depends on the format of the data you've got. If your data is in the right format for the Zune to play it back, you can sync it and listen on the player.

Here are the formats that the Zune supports:

WMA

Windows Media Audio (.wma) is the "native" Zune format. It supports bit rates of 48 Kbps, 64 Kbps, 96 Kbps, 128 Kbps, 160 Kbps and 192 Kbps using both constant (CBR) and variable (VBR) bit rates. By default, Zune Software rips your CDs using a setting of 128 Kbps. To change this, choose Options→Rip→Bit Rate and the rate you want to select.

WMA Lossless

Lossless WMA steps up the quality of your digital music to the best possible levels, ranging ...