Ian Blackburn

I recently picked up a couple of Zune HD’s while on a trip to the US.  There are plenty of reviews out there so this is not one of those, instead, and since the Zune HD has not been released in the UK yet, I thought it would be useful to outline how the device works in the UK.  So without further adieu, here are the burning questions that were on my mind as I played with the device on the flight back, and the answers both my son (who has the other one) and I discovered as we played with them yesterday.

Getting the Marketplace in the UK on the Desktop

Since the Zune HD is not available in the UK, there is no marketplace for UK users right?  Not quite, although it takes a bit of manipulation, and you can’t buy anything (though I have some thoughts on how to do that (read on…)!  However even without purchases there is still plenty of value in having the marketplace enabled because you get all the extra music discovery features of pictures, bios, discography and related music,and without the marketplace you can’t get the apps.

Initially I thought I would need to set this up in the US which is what I did, however on my return I managed to get the same result on my son’s laptop.

It’s pretty simple just set you regional settings in Windows to US before you start the Zune software and hey presto!

Setting you regional settings back to UK will give you the following Zune menu’s

If you want to download anything (such as the apps) you also seem to need to set up a Windows Live Id with a US location – this worked fine for me.

Getting the Marketplace on your Zune HD

If you ran the setup for your Zune HD before changing the O/S to US you will not get the marketplace on the device.  To sort this out you will need to re-install the software on the device while you have Windows set to US region.  You can reset the device (you won’t lose any content but it won’t be associated with your computer anymore) by turning it off, then holding down the Power and Media button (the one on the side) for 15 seconds.  More great tips like this are here by the way (anythingbutipod.com)

Buying things from Marketplace in the UK

You are not going to be able to buy anything from the marketplace unless you have a valid US credit card and address, which I guess is unlikely for most people (certainly me).  However I am wondering if you could buy points from Xbox live with a the Live ID account you created with a US address, or perhaps buy an Xbox Points card from a local store or Amazon and use that?  Haven’t tried that yet, but would be interested if anyone gets it to succeed?

Does the HD Radio work in the UK?

Yes it works fine as a normal FM radio though the stations that are found have strange four letter names (e.g. Radio 1 is CFJM Classical!).  When the station is playing the RDS name will come through and display on the screen as well as other program information if it is available, but the saved names is always the four letter one (even though I changed the settings > radio > to Europe). DAB is not going to work by the way.

Any Other Questions?

If you are thinking of getting a Zune HD for use in the UK and have a question, feel free to ask me – I’d be happy to try it out on the device and let you know via this blog entry…

Cheers

Ian