Above photo of first gen Zune with new and old software, stolen from Engadget.

Today was the official launch of the new Zunes, AND (more importantly for me) the new Zune software. While I didn’t stay up late (or get up early) like those good folks over at Engadget seem to have done, I did start my download about 3 minutes after my first cup of coffee–because I was excited to see if, as promised, I could download saved programs from Media Center to my Zune with the new software.

The short answer? YES. It works fabulously. The update process for my Zune device and the store was remarkably simple. Once I got my Zune store and my device updated, I took my refreshed device over to a Media Center here and got going.

Once I had identified a show I wanted, all I had to do was drag ‘n’ drop the show into the video section of the Zune store and sync. Voila! No conversion (or at least none outside Zune).

A few notes:

• I updated my Zune on my Windows XP laptop at home; then I updated the store software on the Vista machine at work and connected as a guest.
• I used WebGuide (which I covered a few blog posts back) to search for saved TV on other Media Centers on the network and download it to my local Media Center, which didn’t happen to have any saved shows–thus proving that not only can I get the content onto my Zune, I can also access the content from anywhere with WebGuide.
• I haven’t tried getting a show using the wireless sync yet–but I intend to!