The Zune HD wallpaper contest in the forums produced some really great looking original wallpapers optimized for the Zune HD. The winner of the contest, ABI member Rom, created a spinoff of the “I’m a PC” Microsoft ad campaigns calling his series “I’m a Zune”. The picture pack features some great looking vector graphics with happy Zune characters. Nice job Rom!

Judging these were a touch call since there were a lot of great wallpapers. The best of the bunch have been added to a downloadable picture pack you can drop right on to your Zune HD organized into folders by the members. Check out these great papers below and download these great wallpaper or browse all of the wallpapers in the Zune HD wallpaper forum.

Philips is a brand that hasn't gotten much attention on this site in the past, due to somewhat random product numbering, release schedules, retail outlets and generally a rather weird behavior for a MP3 manufacturer. They have some nice players however, especially some of the later models, so it's time to take a closer look at a few of them. First off is the GoGear Spark, somewhat of a competitor to the Sansa Clip+.

With Amazon MP3 and iTunes out of the way- the two immediate giants in the music store world- it's time to turn to some of the smaller services. First off is eMusic.

Digging though old posts I came across a review I started but never finished dating back to 2006. The photos are even watermarked before we had a logo.

The Zen Vision W was basically a larger version of the Zen Vision:M. They both had a great looking screen and awesome playback of native video. The only difference besides the obvious was that the W had a compact flash memory expansion slot. Though it wasn’t much of an expansion slot since both your music libraries would not integrate with each other. Unfortunately, Creative continues this trend today up to the new X-fi2.

Below are the photos that were prepared for the review back in 2006. How retro…

You might wonder what anything with "iTunes" in the title is doing on a site called Anything but iPod. Well, iTunes made the leap from DRM to DRM free earlier this year, and suddenly the biggest digital music store was open for use with any MP3 player- not only the iPod. 11 million songs and international (albeit not global) availability sounds like a killer combination, but how well does it work for non-iPod MP3 players?

Most on board sound cards are not worth the PBC they are printed on. They are plagued with low quality chips and interference from other internal components. The best solution would be to go with an external fire wire solution. I and a lot of others in our forum use one of the Echo AudioFire series of sound cards. These primary application for this series is professional audio but they make an amazingly crisp sound experience, but for your desktop.

I guess it would be possible to tote around the AudioFire2 but it is not an elegant little device like the Turtle Beach Audio Micro USB sound card. It is small enough to almost be considered a dongle or even a larger headphone jack adapter that will rival the sound quality of the pro audio FireWire sound cards. Though there are a few caveats- read on for the full scoop.

Having gone through an reviewed some of the most popular music organization applications for MP3 players it's time to turn to the other part of the equation: how to get a hold of media in the first place. Amazon MP3 is the first in a series of reviews that will test to see what media stores offer the best value for money, has the best selection and the best overall experience.

It’s been quite a while since we reviewed the CrossRoads MylarOne X3/XB and X3i/XBi. While they were good sounding in-ear phones in the sub-$100 price range, their build quality was more than questionable. Jaben, the company behind the CrossRoads brand, certainly considered these shortcomings in durability when they designed the new versions of their MylarOnes. We’re going to take a closer look at their Bijou 2, Bijou 3, and Quattro.

To make matters more confusing – or interesting – Jaben introduced a second brand of IEMs as well, called Hippo. While the MylarOne brand appears to be targeted more towards the “serious” listener, the Hippo brand seems to be catering more to the “fun” crowd. Well, at least that’s what the branding and naming scheme looks like to me. “Fun” might actually sound more scary than appealing in this audio context – but fear not, the Hippos are of course nothing like, say, your average Skullcandy IEMs. We’re going to analyze the Hippo VB (Variable Bass) and Hippo Boom in our super secret ABI laboratories, right after the jump.

For me it has been an exciting 4 years of running ABI, checking out the latest gadgets, working with manufactures on improving their products, and most of all getting a chance to interact with a lot of great people in our community forums. All in all it was always hard to call this work or a job. As the site grew to millions of page views it became much harder for me to maintain the software and servers running ABI- the more time I had to spend in an admin panel the more I missed the enjoyable parts of the site.

Faced with these issues my decision was to hire help and expand the ABI network or find the right partner that could take the weight and help ABI grow. Getting acquired by another company is always a scary prospect for site owners since you fear losing the vision of something you and your community been a part of for so long. However I was fortunate to find the right people.

CrowdGather is a network of forums with a talented staff that understands communities like ABI. After I had a met with them and had a chance to see what they have going on behind the scenes- the decision was easy. I saw that it was a perfect fit in that CrowdGather could improve ABI with their core competencies and I could lend my years of expertise running a successful site.

Other than a smoother running site, more content, and an improved user experience, not much will change here at ABI. I will be still be heading this site along with the other talented writers here. Additionally, however, I will be joining CrowdGather’s team to help them manage and grow their technology related sited. One closely related site you may be familiar with is ZuneBoards.com where I hope to add some insight from my work with the Microsoft MVP program as a Zune MVP.

I am really excited about this moving forward and will continue to find ways to improve the community experience here at Anythingbutipod.

[Press Release]

Now that the major players (some pun intended) in the field have all been reviewed, it's time to take a look at them all and decide which is the recommended choice for music organization software.