ZUNE HD & VAF-1 Octavio speaker

[aapold]

Well, after saving up various best buy gift certificates I think I'm gonna get the Zune HD to replace my broken Zune 30.

I have the original A/V Kit which I honestly didn't use much (just as a charger at work, as a novelty I'd sometimes feed the video into my monitor's composite output but from where I sat it was actually easier to keep the video on the device, so basically it was just a charging/sync station), car kit which I got for a road trip in someone else's car, not needed since my car has both USB and audio input jacks and the USB will charge it....   

But the one accessory I really do care about is the awesome Octavio speaker I won here on Zunerama over a year ago.  This is the best sounding speaker I have (to the point where I sometimes use it over my surround sound in home theater if i want to crank stuff higher). 

When the 2nd gen zunes came out I got a Zune 8 for my girlfriend and we saw that it did work somewhat with the Octavio.  Usually when you hooked it up it would initially work, then a short while later the Zune would reset, but after booting up it would usually be fine.   I found a contact for the manufacturer and they told me they had a firmware update for the speaker that would fix this.  There was a weird port on the back of it that I had no cable for.

The update they sent me of consisted of a PC file.... and a pinout diagram on how to make my cable that would allow me to transfer the the speaker over a com port.   I'm no good with soldering.  I suppose I could have found someone but honestly the inconvenience of an occasional reset... so long as it wasn't damaging the zune... wasn't that big a deal.  Also the little zune took up less space that the socket for the zune 30, but being so light the connector easily supported its weight.  I primarily used the speaker with my Zune 30 anyway.   FWIW the speaker also includes a composite video out (which obviously did not work on the Zune 8 since it has no video output) and I did use that on occasion at home since my speaker is by default normally behind my computer monitor, made it easier to see. 

So...  will this work with Zune HD?  I don't know if anyone else has this speaker.  I'm a little leery of hooking it up not knowing in advance, I'm assuming the connector is the same since people say the cables work between them.   I'm hoping i can get composite video out through this at least.    I'm probably going to get the HD a/v dock eventually, but even if I do I'd still prefer to feed audio into the Octavo (it takes 2 audio inputs plus the zune input).   Lastly would be whether the remote works...  honestly the remote was the weakest piece of the speaker, its range was always quite limited for me and I had to hit buttons multiple times to get it to take.   

I'll report back later on how well this works...

[aapold]

Well not so good.  It won't recognize it as a zune (the light normally changes color per input, white for zune, blue for external 1, red for external 2), and the zune won't charge off it.  It does seem to briefly light up when put put it on the charger, but the charging indicator does not light. 

So I'll use an 3.5" to rca left/right to connect it sound-wise, and charge with a normal connector.

[Zunerama Ed.]

The Octavio is a great sound system! But it seems that VAF's support for it is less than stellar. I can't believe they're having you create your own connector rather than providing one.

I don't have an Octavio anymore (the ones I used were review/giveaway units). But I wish you good luck in getting your HD to play nice with it. Keep us posted!

[aapold]

Actually I tried it again yesterday and it worked perfectly!  I didn't try the video part yet but the rest was perfect, awesome sound like always, and it charged, too.  Since I'm syncing wirelessly anyway I pretty much have all bases covered.

Now I just need to find the remote.