Updated 15 Feb, 2012, 6:16 pm IST

iPod vs. Zune: Get, Set, Go!

20 Sep, 2006, 3:13 pm IST | Aalaap Ghag

We'll drag the current king of digital audio players, the iPod, with the new kid on the block, the Zune, spec by spec, and tell you who will win.

Format support
The iPod jigs to tunes in AAC, protected AAC, MP3, Audible, Apple Lossless, WAV and AIFF formats, photos in JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, Mac PSD and PNG formats and plays back video in H.264 and MPEG-4 formats. The Zune does AAC (but not protected AAC), WMA (but not PlaysForSure WMA) and MP3 music, only JPEG photos, while playing back WMV, H.264 as well as MPEG-4 video.

In audio playback, I think AAC, MP3 and WMA are the only formats to actually consider, so both the iPod and the Zune are loyal to their own turf (AAC vs. WMA). Photo capabilities are clearly in favor of the iPod's SIX format support vs. the Zune's singular JPEG support. The Zune snags the video points by adding WMV format support to common H.264 and MPEG-4. Audio/Video is almost a tie, but the additional photo support increases the distance between the two.

iPod 3, Zune 1.5.

FM Radio
FM Radio support is definitely one of the most important things as far as the Indian market is concerned. The junta is going to judge all portable media players based on this! The Zune has an FM radio tuner built in. Yep, all your mirchi and red and city, 24/7 on your Zune wherever you go! With the iPod, you're restricted to only the music that's on the hard disk.

The Zune inches closer. iPod 3, Zune 2.5!

The Zune also supports RBDS, or Radio Broadcast Data Standards (like RDS or Radio Data Service), that displays textual information like the name of the station and the song that's currently playing, however, that doesn't mean a thing to us Indians because its not available here. There's no word on whether the Zune will be able to record FM, like most third-party east-Asian made MP3 players, but at least it has FM!

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Tags: Apple , iPod , Microsoft , Zune , Comparison