The NBC programming that went missing from iTunes last December has finally turned up in the Zune marketplace. Fans of The Office, Heroes, and 30 Rock can once again pay to download episodes of their favorite programs — provided they own a Zune and a Windows PC.

Given the Zune’s miniscule market share it’s curious to see any network choosing Microsoft’s media platform over iTunes for paid downloads. When NBC pulled its programming from iTunes, network officials sniffed at the relatively small sales the Apple service had generated. By comparison, sales in the Zune marketplace are bound to redefine the term “nano”.

Clearly this move isn’t about selling digital content online. NBC seems to be more interested in punishing Apple for exercising control over iTunes pricing than it is in actually expanding the market for legal downloads.

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By now you’ve already heard the big news everyone is talking about. That’s right, Microsoft just lowered the price of the Zune. Pretty exciting, huh?

Apple’s response to this earth shattering news? A revamped lineup of iPods, including the all new iPod Touch. The Touch is essentially an iPhone without the phone (or the two year AT&T contract for that matter). It’s pretty much exactly the device I speculated about in July. The iPod Touch is also everything Microsoft’s Zune should have been when it was launched late last year.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Microsoft partisans were crowing about how the Zune would ultimately beat the iPod, because of it’s larger screen and built-in WiFi. The WiFi, in particular, was going to be a killer app. In retrospect, the Zune’s WiFi was a killer app alright — it was the manner in which Microsoft chose to implement the WiFi that ultimately killed the Zune.

When they write the story of how Microsoft let Apple win the digital media war they’ll devote a whole volume to the failure of the Zune. In theory, the Zune could have done nearly everything the iPod Touch does. Aside from the iPod Touch’s touch screen, the Zune had all of the other major features in place: larger screen, built-in WiFi, slick user interface.

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A lot of hay was made yesterday about a wide-reaching survey released yesterday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. For example, one of the things that got serious play was that about half of the people out there still don’t live their lives around high-tech products.

Instead, I guess, they are living their lives around such mundane things as their jobs, their churches, their families and so forth. Then the survey broke down the actual users into sub-groups, and explained various things about the sub-groups. It was all very interesting and informative, and then I got to the very end . . .

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Last April we reviewed the Prism DuroSport 6000 digital audio player. At the time we determined it was the worst digital media player ever produced. After spending some time with Microsoft’s Zune, I’m prepared to declare that the Prism DuroSport has retained it’s title — although that may not be the case for much longer since the company is apparently working on something it’s calling the Pütz. Pütz will apparently be a “fully integrated approach to music and entertainment.” Having seen this company’s other products that sort of talk scares us.

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When Microsoft announced the Zune last July, we had pretty low expectations for the digital media player. So much about the Zune just didn’t seem right:

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After months of searching I think I’ve finally found something good to say about the Zune. It’s very possible that Microsoft’s new media player will be the death of DRM as we know it.

Before the Zune, DRM was merely a frustrating choice that consumers had to make. To legally purchase digital music released on a major recording label your choices were iTunes or one of several PlaysForSure music stores. Buying any more than a few songs from either source meant that you were essentially locking yourself in to one of the two proprietary copy protection schemes, or running the risk of having to repurchase your collection if you switched brands at some point in the future.

By presenting yet another proprietary DRM solution, Microsoft’s Zune further adds to the confusion consumers are experiencing over incompatible media players and music formats. The result? Microsoft seems to be baffling consumers, confusing the media, and scaring away content providers.

Thanks to the Zune the case against DRM may finally be reaching a tipping point.

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Unversal Music, the mega-major record label that thinks so little of its fans that their CEO, Doug Morris, recently said that iPods were: “just repositories for stolen music,” has evidentally hit upon a new business model: lawsuits and extortion.

Apparently making money by putting good music out there with a price point that might entice people just isn’t good enough. Because, of course, we are all thieves. So instead of that, they’ve decided to go a different route. Instead of using their artists to make money, they’ve decided to fall back upon the lawyers. Hopefully, the lawyers will get a better royalty rate.

Let’s review, shall we?

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On Tuesday Microsoft began welcoming the world to ‘The Social’. It’s Thursday morning and I still have no clue what ‘The Social’ is. I’ve scoured The Google for two full days to no avail. The Zune hype is making me dizzy.

If you’ve been following our Zune coverage here at Medialoper you probably know that we had pretty low expectations for the Zune. As unlikely as it may seem, I think the Zune launch may have actually turned out worse than we expected. Here’s a round-up of some of the Zune “highlights” from the past few days:

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After months of hype Microsoft will finally release the Zune media player tomorrow. We assume that someone, somewhere will actually buy the damn thing. If you’re one of those soon-to-be Zune owners there’s one last thing you should know before you run off to stand in line at the local Best Buy. When the Zune Marketplace launches later this week you won’t be able to buy songs with your local currency. That’s right, your money is no good in the Zune music store. Instead, you’ll have to convert real money to Microsoft Points, and then use those points to purchase songs. Of all of the puzzling Zune “features”, this one has to be the strangest.

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We’ve been pretty hard on Zune here, noting several issues before it has even launched.. Nevertheless, I had still toyed with buying one, just to review it. It only seemed fair to maybe give it a try. I mean, after surviving the Prism DuroSport 6000, how bad could it be? But forget all of that, because I read something last night that ensures that I will never ever buy one. Microsoft is giving a percentage of the money from sales of Zune to Universal Music.

Ah yes, the latest representation of an an incredibly anti-consumer trend: the Sin Tax on a consumer device.

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