Some leaked images and specs have churned the internet seas with rumoured details on the forthcoming newest member of Microsoft's Zune portable media line, dubbed for now the ZuneHD (or Zune HD). We know the company has confirmed plans to release new Zune hardware this year so it's certainly plausible, although it's not entirely official that this device will be it until we hear an announcement from Ballmer and Co.

Nevertheless we've still got enough to drool over (which is a lot to say for a Zune...), including a 16:9 OLED multi-touch screen, an HDMI output and support for playback of high-def media from the Zune Marketplace, HD radio, multi-touch internet browser, and an interesting claim that the device will have XNA support, which is Microsoft's developer kit for building Xbox Live games. That would put the ZuneHD on the map as a capable portable gaming rig in its own right, squaring it off against the iPhone and its popular and growing slate of titles available via the App Store. Reported storage options seem a bit low at 16 and 32 GB, especially for carting around gobs of high definition media, but wouldn't be the end of the world.news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-10219055-27.html

The leaked info puts the Zune HD up for a release around September of this year for the U.S., Canada, the UK, France and potentially other parts of Europe. No word on price of course but we worry that OLED screens are still currently fairly pricey, although we're sure Microsoft has a mind to compete as aggressively as possible with Apple's players and the iPhone.

And speaking of phones, a related recent discovery about an ad campaign competition Microsoft is sponsoring for codename "Pink" reveals the company is potentially getting close to revealing details about that project, which refers to the Zune software running on mobile phones. We're not sure how this would play out considering Microsoft's array of Windows Mobile providers making the company phones running on that deeply entrenched platform; possibly the Zune OS would only be incorporated on a subset of devices or maybe even some sort of WinMo integration could potentially be in the works.

In other words, take all of the above with a few grains of salt, but it sure smells like there could be some promising announcements forthcoming from Microsoft later this year.

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