First look: Zune HD

The Zune HD goes on sale today, and the firmware for the new device should be available by the time you read this (initial devices were shipped without the needed firmware, making them all but useless until hooked up to a PC). Hopes that Microsoft might offer support for the Mac or for Linux machines didn't pan out (and were always a long shot), but the Zune does have a few slick tricks up its sleeve. Let's run them down in preparation for our full review later today:

3.3 inch OLED screen: Sure, we knew all about it, but how does it look? With a unit in our grubby little hands, we can confidently say it looks pretty damn good. Colors are saturated and the screen is terrifically bright—so much so that even my dad (!) commented on it after seeing the device begin playing its demo movie. Resolution is 480 by 272, and the Zune HD features an accelerometer this time in order to do automatic screen rotation. The screen is driven by NVIDIA's high-def, low power Tegra chip.