Engadget has gotten the official word on the new Zunes.

The hard drive based Zune will be called the Zune 80 (80GB), cost $250. The flash Zunes will go by Zune 8 (8GB) cost $200, and Zune 4 (4GB) cost $150. Pretty clever names if you ask me;)

Additional details:

* New Zunes ship in November, date not yet announced.

* All Zunes (including the Zune 30) will have a new, redesigned interface and feature parity. In other words, early Zune 30 adopters will have all the same software features as new Zune 80, 8, and 4 users.

* Additional native video codecs for h.264 and MPEG-4 -- users no longer need transcode those file types to WMV.

* WiFi sync to host computer!

* Podcast support! (Sorry, no over the air downloads -- sync only.) Podcasts can also be shared via WiFi.

* The 3x3 song sharing DRM has had its three day restriction removed, but users can still only play files three times.

* There is still NO wireless music store.

* The Zune software is all new and rewritten, and is supposed to actually be more than a rebadge of WMP10 now.

* The Zune music store is going DRM-free, with over 1m MP3 tracks being made available for download. Other details (like which labels, whether there is a DRM-free upgrade path is for users who've bought music with DRM, price differences, etc.) are not yet revealed.

Labels: zune