I have been putting off writing this post for some time now.  I figure if someone sees this and it helps them, great!

My wife got me a monogrammed 16GB Zune for Christmas which is a fantastic gift for a "techie" husband, I highly recommend it!

I am Canadian so one of the first things I read at the forums is that the Zune Marketplace is not available to Canada.

I had heard on the radio that it was and had read in the forums about various workarounds to do with changing the locale on your PC.  I still get miscellaneous errors on the site ranging from runtime errors, to sign in errors, to being redirected.  This is despite the site actually working for me the first time I logged in just after Christmas when the Zune was brand new.

Well, the end result is I cannot get it working and a couple of my Canadian colleagues confirm these issues...  Hopefully I'll be blogging about the Zune Marketplace being available to Canadians some time soon as I really want to see what is available for Podcasts and the different applications offered through the site...

Now, I have been able to RIP my CD collection into my Zune which is awesome!

For those new to this technique, "ripping" is making your CDs available to be read electronically through computer software players like Zune or Media Player, or iTunes...

This has been going on for years, just I am new to this world...

Once "ripped", you can pick and choose what songs you want and create custom play lists.  Play lists are tantamount to the Mix CDs or Mix Cassettes you made when you were younger for a party, to go out, or the Gym workout...

The issue I found is a strange behaviour present when ripping CDs into the Zune Collection.  The Collection is the catalogue of songs, albums, album info, album art, etc made from your actual CDs.  This is available to be played in your Computer without necessarily connecting the Zune player.

Now, to load selected songs, albums, album art, etc into your Zune you need to "Sync" it.  Syncing leverages a cable (usually USB2 or FireWire) and uploads selected items into the Zune player.

I am limiting my post to Music because I haven't really had occasion to try Photos, Podcasts, or Movies yet due to absence of the Zune Marketplace.

I have read that you can also obtain some of these elements via Discovery.  Perhaps, I'll expand on that in a later post.

I ran into a few issues while ripping my CDs...  Occasionally, the information is not found or incorrectly read from the CD itself while ripping.  You can manually edit just about all of this information to properly search your catalogue for songs and other selections rather than just seeing "Unknown track"...

I also found that while the Zune software is loaded, I intermittently cannot rip some CDs.  The CD is read correctly in windows, but the Zune software does not know how to interpret the new disc so does nothing.

What I have found as a workaround, is to close the Zune software altogether and eject the CD.  Then, close the CD tray, and allow the autoplay settings to launch Zune and the CD should start being ripped automatically.

I hope this helps someone to further enjoy their Zune!

Read the complete post at http://owsug.ca/blogs/brad/archive/2009/01/12/Weird-Issue-When-Ripping-CD-Collection-into-Zune.aspx