It’s always hard for me to get a feel for the size of a gadget until it’s in my hands. So it is for the Zune HD.

Sure, I’ve known the dimensions (52.7 x 102.1 x 8.9 mm) and weight (74 grams) of the player for a while.

But I did not appreciate the lightness and compactness of the HD until I lifted it from its packaging this morning. If you haven’t experienced Zune HD yet, I’d recommend getting to a retailer and putting one in your hands.

In the pictures below, I try to give a feel for the size of the player by showing it nearby other objects, like the flash Zune players, the hard drive 120gb Zune, and the iPhone 3G. I’m not implying that these are equivalent devices – each one has a form and function designed for its feature set. But the pictures convey the size and shape of Zune HD relative to these other items.

Click on any picture to see the full-size photo. There’s also a video at the bottom of this post, that “sizes up” the Zune HD.

First, the Zune HD and my 2nd-generation flash 16gb Zune player:

Zune HD and my 120gb (hard drive) Zune player:

Zune HD and my iPhone 3G:

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Ah, nothing like an unboxing of a new gadget to make my day. Here’s a video (above) and some pix of the unpackaging of my new 16gb Zune HD. This new player is a joy to hold.

Zune HD is shipping now from Amazon.

Click on any pic below to see the full-sized photo.

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Zune HDs are shipping now, and those of you who pre-ordered should receive yours on Tuesday September 15th.

That’s also the day that new Zune software will be released. On Monday at 11am Pacific, Zune services will be brought down for the upgrade, and resurface early on Tuesday with all the new goodness that is Version 4.0.  Zune.net and Zune Marketplace will be unavailable during the upgrade.

We’ll be here on Tuesday morning with Zune HD unboxing pix and videos, and some first close looks at this player. We’ll also preview the new Zune software release.

Zune HD retails for $219.99 for the 16gb model, and $289.99 for 32gb. It’s available now on Amazon.

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The much-anticipated Zune HD is now available for pre-order. You can pre-order the player from Amazon now in its 16gb and 32gb sizes.

I received word from Microsoft today, confirming the pre-order availability, as well as shipping dates, prices, and confirmed specs.  Here’s the scoop:

Pre-orders: Can be placed now – from Amazon, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and the Zune store.

Shipping: Pre-orders will be shipped to arrive on September 15th. This is also the day that Zune HD will be available in stores.

Capacity: 16gb and 32gb. For the 16gb, this translates to 5 hours of high-def video, 48 hours of device-optimized video, 4,000 songs, or 25,000 pictures. For the 32gb, you can about double the video and music.

Prices: $219.99 for Zune HD 16gb; $289.99 for Zune HD 32gb

Dimensions: 52.7 mm x 102.1 mm x 8.9 mm (w x h x d)

Weight: 74 grams (2.6 ounces)

Colors: Black (16gb) and Platinum (32gb). Plus, more colors to be available through Zune Originals (see below).

Other Specs / Features:

• 3.3-inch OLED touch screen, 16×9 widescreen format, 480×272 resolution
• HD Radio receiver
• HD Video output (through HDMI A/V docking station – available separately from Amazon)
• Wi-Fi for wireless web browsing, music streaming, music downloading, wireless sync to PC
• Internet browser with on-screen touch QWERTY keyboard, multi-touch zoom-in / zoom-out, accelerometer
• Processor: NVIDIA Tegra chip ultralow-power HD processor
• Battery life: 33 hours of music with wireless off. Up to 8.5 hours of video.

Other details released today:

- Custom-engraved Zune Originals will be available for Zune HD, starting September 15th. Ten new engravings and five colors will be available for customizing both the 16gb and 32gb Zune HD models.

- On August 22 and 23, a sneak peek of the Zune HD will be available at Best Buy locations in various cities around the U.S.

Based on reports from the lucky few who have handled one, the Zune HD looks to be a beautiful package loaded with an impressive – and unique – set of features. I’m looking forward to getting hands-on with this.

How about you? Are you going with a pre-order? Let us know through the Comments link below.

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The past year six months have been busy for me, with new job responsibilities, lots of business travel, all the joys and cares of being a father to three girls (and husband to ZuneWidow, of course), and keeping my website operational.

I’m just now starting to get more substantial parts of my time back on Zunerama, and I’m looking forward to that. Despite those other time pressures, I did manage to make two Zune-related trips to Redmond (including the MVP global summit in April), participate in various telephone and email discussions with the Zune team, and produce the 2009 Zune Guide on schedule. The latter was an unexpected success, with over 10,000 copies downloaded to date. It looks like that will be an annual publication here at Zunerama.

I was most pleased this week to receive Microsoft’s Most Valued Professional (MVP) award. These are awarded once per year by Microsoft, and this is the third year that I’ve been fortunate enough to receive it. The award gives me an invitation to the annual MVP global summit in Redmond, as well as regular interactions with the Microsoft’s Zune team. Most of that interaction is under NDA, but it has its benefits for the site – such as the advance copies of the Zune players that I received when Microsoft updated its player line-up with the 80GB and flash players.

So, this makes my week! Thanks, Zune team! And thank you all for your support of Zunerama!

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Do you subscribe to the ZuneInsider podcast? I must say that I’m enjoying the banter between Jessica and Matt (Zune Tags “jetherealz” and “skipdeez“).

This week’s version is available now for download.

One of my pet peeves is overly long podcasts, and even though at 28 minutes this is no shorty, the twosome keep it moving along. And, this week they’ve introduced a feature that should be a best practice for any podcast over five minutes in length: an index to the discussion topics. Yes!

And I do appreciate their tip of the hat to Zunerama, which hits at about 5:30 into it.

Here’s this week’s topic rundown. You can see a full index here.

(0:00) We talk about how exciting this part of the release cycle is and what we’re doing at work. And toast. And Hello Kitty. You have to listen to know.

(5:29) We talk about Insidethecircle.net and Zunerama – some of the great sites our MVPs run for Zune fans.

(8:30) Send me and Matt music! We love music!

(9:10) Cinemash rocks. Check out actors and famous people re-enacting scenes from movies. Download it here.

(11:00) Free stuff from Illinois and Days and Nights.

(12:00) Free audiobook from Audible.com! And we talk about reading, libraries, and a book I read recently.

(16:00) There is another Diet Mt. Dew can on my desk.

Trading Zunes! My son introduced me to The Thermals, Pixies, and Operation Ivy. And he’s playing David Bowie. Matt’s all about rap and obsessed with Mos Def. And I’m obsessed with Toby Emerson. And for summer tunes, check out Matt’s fave, 50 Cent.

(22:30) I make it easy for you: don’t search on YouTube, check Cleveland out out here and here. (Must watch with SOUND!)

(23:00) I talk about user similarity. Send me feedback on it!

(26:00) Matt talks about search in the Zune software.

(27:00) Matt announces contest winners from last week.

(27:45) “Count the awesomes” contest!

In other news, I received a very welcome package from Redmond this morning – my 2009/2010 MVP award. Will post pics here shortly.

Have a great weekend, Zuners.

Do you tweet?

Then you have a chance to win a Zune 30GB, an Amazon Kindle, or an HP digital picture frame. All you have to do is use your Twitter account to retweet an ad campaign message from Shurguard Self Storage. On Thursday, July 9th,  three winners will be randomly selected.

Enter at this page, and choose one of the three storage doors. As a Zune owner and a Kindle owner, I can vouch for two of the three products up for grabs here!

The Zune HD, to be released this fall, will be powered by the new Tegra processor from NVIDIA. This has been speculated for awhile, and was confirmed on Friday in a ZuneInsider podcast by Matt Akers of the Zune team.

To date, no other portable device uses the new processor, which is being heralded for its battery-efficient operation. (The Tegra draws less than 0.5 Watts of power, and in netbook usage is said to deliver up to 25 days of audio play and 10 hours of video play on a single charge.)  Edited to note that the audio and video specs are from a Tegra running in a netbook, not in Zune HD. No battery life estimates have been announced yet for Zune HD.)

This seems to raise the bar substantially for battery life performance, especially combined with the prospect of the Zune HD’s OLED display – another highly-efficient feature compared to the backlit screens of virtually every other mobile device out there.

The Zune HD is viewable now on Amazon, and we’re counting the weeks until pre-orders are available. Zune HD has a 3.3-inch, 16:9 OLED (480×272 resolution) screen, HD (high-definition) radio, HD (720p) video out, Wi-Fi, a web browser, built-in accelerometer, and a touch-screen QWERTY keyboard.

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Zune.net tonight will be down for a “couple of hours”, according to my Zune MVP contact, starting at 10pm Pacific tonight.

When it comes back to life, Zune.net and the Social will have the following added features:

• “Follow an artist” –  Allows users to get news and updates about the artists they care about
• RSS feed aggregation – Users can add links (e.g., blogs, twitter, etc.) to an artists’ page
• Concert dates and music video previews will be available on Zune.net
• More Social data exposed on the home page (e.g., additional recommended content, “listening now” module)
• Performance improvements, including distributed caching

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ZuneHD is appearing now on Amazon, with a product detail page viewable now.

It’s not available for pre-order yet. But the product page offers a nice round-up of the ZuneHD’s unique capabilities.

Note: there is was some mangled language in the product page about Xbox gaming. Don’t get too excited about that; my understanding from the Zune team  is that the gaming language is a butchered reference to the Zune integration with Xbox LIVE.

Amazon link: http://www.tinyurl.com/zunehd-on-amazon

Thanks to Travis at ZuneSpring for the word.

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