Cesar posted an explanation over at Zune Insider about the sudden appearance of higher-resolution album art:

"A few folks have noticed that the album art on Zune Marketplace looks better, both on the PC and on your Zune. It's true. Last Tuesday, we started featuring 800x800 album available for download, and for sync with the Zune device. In addition, ripped CDs will have 240x240 art available where available, and this should also be synced to the device."

So there you have it: 800 x 800 album art, but only for songs purchased via the Zune Marketplace. That's great news for some people, but it sure leaves people who rip their own CDs out in the cold. It's also worth noting that the current Zune Desktop software can't display album art in a large view like Windows Media Player 11 can - so I'm assuming that the new Zune desktop software will allow the user to see big album art. Windows Media Player can't scale down album art that's bigger than the user window, which is why I've always kept my album art at 600 x 600 - I found that larger sizes required me to have the Windows Media Player window being just a bit too big. I'm hoping that the new Zune desktop software that comes with the v2 Zune devices will scale down big album art to fit in the window.

Will the new Zune software extract high-resolution embedded album art and save it externally at 240 x 240 like the current software does, or will it extract the album art and keep it at it's original resolution? I'm also curious about how well the Zune itself will scale the album art on the device - will it finally read embedded album art? Will it scale the 800 x 800 resolution image to the screen, or will it look bad like 640 x 480 images do today on the Zune?

Yes, I'm a huge album art geek and I'm curious to see how they've improved the situation...

When Apple introduced the iPod in 2001, third-party manufacturers quickly brought to market various accessories for what would be the world's most popular personal music player.

With a big selection of legal tunes and music videos available to download for free, SpiralFrog sounds like a music junkie's dream.

If Microsoft wants to even catch a sliver of iPod's market share, it's going to have to build up its base of third-party accessories for its Zune music player... Oh wait. That's just what they did this week.

I swear that WiFi overall as a technology is less and less stable every year. Back when it was only 802.11b, I don't remember having nearly as many problems as I have lately. I've owned D-Link, Belkin, Netgear and Linksys routers - all have been replaced in my hunt for a fast, stable router that works with all of my equipment. The past month or so has been particularly hair-pulling; I've been in wireless router hell.

A couple of weeks ago my still-quite-new D-Link 802.11n router (a DIR-655) flaked out on me. I spent an hour thinking it was my cable modem, eventually narrowed it down to the router, then wasted an hour on the phone jumping through D-Link tech support hoops just so I could get an RMA and get the router exchanged. It took talking to three techs before they'd admit there was a hardware problem with the router. From the beginning the router had compatibility problems with my wife's iPAQ 1950, even with the latest firmware on both devices. It's embarrassing in a geeky way when my wife has to Exchange sync over WiFi at work because the home network is never functioning. I bought the iPAQ 1950 to replace the previous iPAQ that had trouble connecting over WiFi, hoping that the newer model would be more compatible with modern WiFi. It's not. I don't believe the compatibility problems are due to a hardware failure - I think the DIR-655 just has poor compatibility with WiFi devices, which is a common issue I've seen with routers over the past two years.

On Monday, November 12 in 8 cities (Boston, Chicago, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco and
Seattle), Microsoft, Zune, the Xbox 360 and Mass Effect are sponsoring preview viewings of the Battlestar Galactica movie "Razor."

How very, and if you watch BSG you'll understand, FRAKIN COOL.

More details at BattlestarEvent.com.

Did we mention it was a free screening? Seats are going fast so sign up asap.

Technorati Tags: zune, xbox 360, mass effect, battlestar galactica, razor

Microsoft today announced the retail availability of new accessories for its digital media player, Zune. The new first- and third-party accessories will usher in the next generation of Zune digital media players, which will be on shelves Nov. 13. ...

The new generation of Zune players is not shipping for another two weeks, but Microsoft already talks about that the new Zune accessories are available.

The new generation of Zune players is not shipping for another two weeks, but Microsoft already talks about that the new Zune accessories are available. Currently Microsoft is working directly with 23 accessory partners to ensure customers have a numb...

The head of the BBC's Future Media and Technology unit has said launching the iPlayer on the Windows XP platform only was 'never the plan'