At next week’s E3 conference Microsoft will announce that a new Zune-branded service will replace the current XBOX Live Marketplace TV and movie service. This will be the first step to letting XBOX 360 and XBOX Live users access the millions of songs available on the Zune marketplace.

Already, XBOX 360 users can access their full Zune playlist stored on another device on their network. This includes Zune Pass content. Here’s hoping that Zune users will be able to tap into the TV and Movie offerings currently found on the XBOX Live Marketplace.

One annoying syncronization between the Zune service and the XBOX service is the buddylist. XBOX live buddies appear in my Zune friend’s list while the limit on the number of buddies you can have remains at 100. This means that I have no room to add Zune friends because my XBOX Live buddy list is near full.

Microsoft should increase the buddylist limit. Buddylist limitations are one reason why it is hard to find social games of Halo 3; my gamertag and online presence is competing with other gamers. Xfire, Steam, and other social networking gaming services do not have such low limitations.

As pictured above, Microsoft has confirmed and soon will announce the Zune HD portable device. This slick looking media player will likely only support up to 32 GB of hard drive space. (I’ve downloaded over 80 GB of music in the last 4 months through the Zune Pass). The Zune HD will feature a touchscreen (ala the iPod Touch), have a large 3.3-inch, 480 x 272 OLED screen, and an HD radio receiver.

The Zune HD will also feature a web browser.

Microsoft wants to offer the Zune service to mobile phones. One can assume this will intended for only Windows phones.

The current Zune plays video games, has a radio receiver, WiFi, and a lot of other cool features that no one knows about. It has one of the best hard drive size to $ ratios.