Here's looking into how Microsoft's new iPod rival looks and the features offered.

Measuring 4 x 2 x 0.3 inches thick, Zune HD comes with a 3.3-inch multi-touch OLED display. The OLED display dominates the device's face with a single, slim hardware home button below.

The device, which goes on sale this week, has a claim of technical superiority over Apple's iPods, with a state-of-the-art organic light emitting diode screen and ability to relay high definition video to a television.

But it will struggle to make an impact on the stylish iPod, which took the digital music player mainstream when launched in 2001 and now controls more than 70 percent of the market. The original Zune did not come onto the market until 2006.

Zune HD features an accelerometer to do automatic screen rotation. The screen is driven by NVIDIA's high-def, low power Tegra chip.

The Zune HD also supports 720p HD video files. The Zune HD's user interface (UI) has a new menu item called Quickplay. QuickPlay displays user's most recently added content, device history, and lets him pin his favorites to the menu -- example video, music, photos, playlists, etc.

Since Zune HD's display doesn't require a backlight, the player reportedly uses less battery power. According to Microsoft, Zune HD can play music for up to 33 hours and video for up to 8.5 hours.

In comparison, iPod Touch offers 30 hours of music playback and 6 hours of video.

In Zune HD, Microsoft boosted the player’s FM radio functionality by adding an HD radio receiver to the hardware. HD radio is said to offer a cleaner sound quality than analog FM. It also allows stations to broadcast additional channels with different programming.

Users can pinch and zoom and do other such things in Zune HD, courtesy its new browser which has been optimised to fully take advantage of multitouch.

According to Microsoft, the browser is based on Internet Explorer. It also has a full-QWERTY touch keyboard.

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