Although the new players have support for the mpeg-4 and h.264 formats, thats not the case with Zune 30. The new Firmware v2.2 adds only wma lossless audio native support. MP4, H.264 and DVR-MS videos have to be transcoded to WMV first (automatically). And most podcasts these days come in .mp4 or .mov...
Yesterday when I first updated my Zune 30 to v2 I experimented with Video Podcasts to test the functionality of the Wireless Sync and of the Marketplace. I noticed I had to wait for the Zune Software to transcode the files before syncing each one of them. This is both time and battery consuming. Zune Software has a setting for "Background Conversion" setting which saves you from the on-sync conversion but you can't avoid it.
And by the way where are the quality settings when Zune Software has to convert an audio or video file ? I can only find quality settings for CD ripping. I suppose these were lost during the process of simplification of the new Software.
Links:
Zune Players Features Comparison
Related articles:
Videos 10-12: Wireless Sync in Action