A few weeks ago I wrote about my Zune and how I really liked the quality of it, both for Video and Audio playback. As far as the quality of sound and images is concerned, I have not changed my mind at all. However, there seems to be one annoying problem when playing back songs on the Zune. For all songs I have downloaded on the Zune from the Zune Marketplace, using my subscription, the sound quality is great as long as you play individual songs. Each time I try to play an entire album or create a playlist of favorite songs, something very annoying is happening. Song number 1 and song number 2 are playing fine, but when reaching the third song, playback is interrupted a few times during the first 30 seconds of the song, with the Zune device not responding to other commands. The next song will play fine again, but the song after that (so every other song) has the same problem again. Interestingly enough, this behavior is gone when the Zune is charging, in other words, connected to a computer or simply plugged in. Also, there are no problems when playing back ripped CD’s. In other words, this only happens to songs downloaded from the Zune marketplace. My first guess was that this might have something to do with digital rights management, because that seems to be the only difference between downloading subscriber songs and ripping CD’s to the device. Even though I think I have a clue about the cause of this problem, that doesn’t really help me of course. I want to listen to music, no matter where it comes from, without interruptions. I have been waiting for an update of the Zune firmware to solve this problem for quite a while now. The update mechanism of Zune works great, so this would only be a matter of solving the problem and publishing it. Unfortunately, since January my Zune has not received updated firmware, even though it is setup to download the latest version when synchronizing songs and videos. The Zune playback problems are irritating me quite a bit now, especially since it seems that there is no solution for it to be expected soon. This is typically one of those situations where the community came at help. One of the first hits in my favorite Internet search engine when looking for a solution was successful. It is only a workaround, but hey, for the time being I am happy with it. It turns out that the problem I described in this column is solved when leaving the backlight of the Zune device always on. After trying this, and playing a bit with different backlight options, I am confident that this really solves the playback problem. For the time being I am at least helped with this solution. Isn’t it strange how some totally unrelated settings on a device can influence the device behavior? I guess that is true for all embedded devices, we probably all have similar stories to tell. Right now I am sort of happy with the suggested workaround. However, I hope and expect a real solution from the makers of Zune pretty soon. After all, having the backlight on continuously reduces playback time dramatically. Listening to songs now consumes the same amount of power than watching videos, in other words, 4 hours of playback instead of a good 10 or so. This is definitely unacceptable, especially with quite a few long Trans-Atlantic flights coming up. Here is where the Zune can make a difference. The device has great sound and video quality already. If support is as good and problems like the one described in this column are solved fast, there is really nothing to complain about. Ah well, perhaps a larger hard drive, but only because I like to have something left to complain about whatsoever.