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After 3 Years, Rockbox 3.0 Released
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Sep 26, 2008 06:20 AM
from the adding-versatility dept.
from the adding-versatility dept.
DarkkOne writes "Rockbox version 3.0 is out. Three years in development, it marks the introduction of many new players since the 2.5 release and offers software-based playback allowing audio of nearly any commonly (or uncommonly) used format on a list of MP3 players by Apple, iRiver, Cowon, Archos, Toshiba and Sandisk. Beyond this it is FLOSS, under the GPL v2 license (or later), and includes a variety of plugins such as games and simple apps. 3.0 is the first official release for any players not made by Archos and more or less marks the beginning of a much more regular release cycle for the software."
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Archos Recorder + Rockbox Plays Video 92 comments
elinenbe writes "Rockbox, the open source firmware for the Archos Recorder, Player, FM, Recorder V2, and now the Neo can play grayscale videos at over 60FPS. A demo version of the DOOM3 intro along with a few other sample clips have been made so far. This is the Archos that was NOT designed for movies, but for MP3s -- go Rockbox!"
[+]
Hardware: Rockbox Plans Open Source Firmware For iRiver Gear 136 comments
PlayerBlog.com writes "The crew at Rockbox, the venerable open source replacement firmware project for Archos audio players, has put together an effort to port their firmware to the popular iRiver H1xx-series
of devices. In the wake of iRiver's much-maligned (and delayed)
attempts to update their proprietary firmware, this
is excellent news."
[+]
Entertainment: Improve Your iPod with Rockbox 343 comments
polar_bear` writes "The allure of the iPod is undeniable -- they're well-designed, sleek little music players that pack a lot of features into tiny packages. However, iPods fail to deliver when it comes to support for free codecs like Ogg Vorbis, and -- let's face it -- iTunes leaves a lot to be desired. If you'd like to enjoy the hardware goodness of the iPod with GPLed firmware, give Rockbox a try. Tim Lord explains how over on NewsForge.com." NewsForge is also a part of the OSTG network, and Tim Lord is "timothy", one of our own editors.
[+]
Apple: SanDisk Baits Apple And Woos Rockbox 374 comments
An anonymous reader writes "CNET reports that SanDisk is courting open source developers to port Rockbox to its popular MP3 players. SanDisk is currently the world's second most popular MP3 player manufacturer after Apple. Rockbox is an open source OS for most major MP3 players. The article also talks about SanDisk's subversive new anti-iPod advertising campaign which calls iPod owners 'iChimps' and uses a 'street graffiti style' to create the illusion of a 'counter-culture uprising against the iPod'. The writer says, 'SanDisk is the first company to market its player as an ideological rather than technological alternative to the iPod. To do so is to fight Apple on their own terms.'"
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Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a relative newbie when it comes to media players and I kind of like just plugging my ipod in and letting it sync with itunes. Having said that the hacker in me knows I have an old ipod that I'm not really using at the moment.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of this software?
Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware? (Score:5, Informative)
The chief advantage over the iPod OS is that it plays flac and ogg vorbis files, as well as many formats of video if your player's CPU is fast enough.
It also lets you move media to and from your your player by simple drag-and-drop operations; you don't need a special app to load it, build the iTunes database, etc.
Disadvantages? Well, the interface is different. I like it, you might not.
Parent
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The chief advantage over the iPod OS is that it plays flac and ogg vorbis files, as well as many formats of video if your player's CPU is fast enough.
Indeed. I was able to play mpeg movies on a 1st Gen iPod Nano. It isn't exactly hi-def but it works.
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Most MP3 players that can double as USB storage devices support Linux OOTB without modification. Very few players support OGG, although I have a Meizu Miniplayer SL [meizu.com] (aka 'M6SL') that does.
I've seen the 4GB model for as low $50 [google.com] recently, though $80 is far more typical. It comes in 2GB, 4GB and 8GB.
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I like Cowons players.
I had an X5 (gave it to a friend), and now have an A3.
X5 is definietly a better portable audio player. EXTREMELY durable, good sound, plays MP3, WMA, OGG and FLAC out of the box, along with some video formats, the control is good for use without having to look at the player.
the A3 is a good multimedia player that can be moved (notice I didn't say a good portable multimedia player, there's a difference!). It's not as durable as the X5, and the case it comes with doesn't give you access
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I have a Samsung YP-U3. It plays ogg but not flac. Since it's a simple little flash based "thumb drive" style player, I wouldn't want to put big flac files on it anyway.
My only complaint is that it's an MTP device instead of a USB mass storage device, but Amarok interfaces with it fine.
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Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of us don't like the whole audio library concept in the first place. File hierarchies are great, thanks.
Parent
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That's great for you, however I'm happy with a music directory on my NAS that's arranged by band and by album, which I can then stream/play to anywhere, and select chunks of to synchronise with my player as and when.
That's good for me, I really don't need all the extra stuff and I don't want it.
On top of that, having mass storage based access to the player means it just shows up as a hard drive to wherever I plug it in, meaning I can use it to transport stuff around, commit minor acts of piracy (here, have
Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware? (Score:4, Informative)
I've been using rockbox on that hardware for a year or two and I've been very happy with it. I actually bought this player only for the purpose of using Rockbox (a step of faith considering I'd never used it previously).
Using the original firmware to copy files is fairly transparent. If the device is on and you plug in the USB port, it powers on and automatically boots to the original firmware. Then when you unplug it the system automatically reboots to the Rockbox firmware. I'm sure they'll set it to just boot to Rockbox once it supports USB syncing.
About the only time it would seem to be inconvenient is if you wanted to listen to music while having it plugged into USB. That never happens for me - I can just play music on my PC if I want to.
Parent
Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware? (Score:5, Informative)
Pros:
Lots of games (a few are decent even)
Music can be copies off with no effort (just files on a disk)
Flac, and Ogg support
Really nice playlist builder on the device
Cons:
Harder to get a playlist from a computer
The database option is nice, but not as seamless as from iTunes (you can browse buy database or by filesystem)
I really like it, I think the whats playing screen looks great, and I like being ably to through a quick playlist together. If a friend has a song I want, I just copy it over, and listen on the way home. I want music on my computer at work, plug it in and copy to the computer.
iTunes may be great within the iTunes system, but in a social world at large I find Rockbox to be more useful.
Parent
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For me, the most important advantage was:
it stores and plays music in plain mp3 format instead of some braindead apple DB format.
This means I can play my music on the iPod, but also plug the iPod in my computer and play it on my stereo.
Also, I don't like the 6th generation firmware on the iPod. For one, it uses half the available screenspace to show the album cover, which I don't have and which you can't turn off.
Disadvantage of Rockbox is that it has to reverse engineer the software to make use of the hard
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This means I can play my music on the iPod, but also plug the iPod in my computer and play it on my stereo.
The hard disk on my iPod (third gen) broke a couple of years ago, so things might have changed since I last used one regularly, but is this really better than just dropping it in the dock? I had my stereo plugged in to the dock, and when I got home I just dropped the iPod in the dock and it continued playing and charged - I only ever plugged it in to the computer after buying more music.
It was possible to play music from the iPod on a computer too - the music was stored in a hidden folder and, although th
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Other cool things you get for it [wikipedia.org] are stuff like Doom, a Gameboy emulator etc. Very cool.
I used my old iRiver i120 to play chess once on a long bus journey and plane flight (not to mention listening to music), whereas previously it didn't have any games, and couldn't even do basic stuff like delete/rename files, check free space and get a more accurate reading of how much battery life is left (percentage rather than just 3 bars or whatever it was).
Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware? (Score:4, Interesting)
First of all, I am by no means an audiophile. I have a 3rd generation iPod and a computer with onboard sound and 2 tinny speakers on either side of my monitor.
I quite like the standard iPod interface. I can find tracks quickly using the database and scrollwheel. I've had some issues transferring files with amarok, but gtkPod works well.
Most of my collection sounds fine on the iPod, but I was never very satisfied with orchestral music with a large dynamic range. I'd ripped some Arvo Part CDs to MP3 at increasingly high bitrates using lame. Despite that, the quiet bits (such as the closing bell harmonic at the end of "Cantus") sounded awful: some sort of bubbling distortion. It seemed fine playing through my PC, but I put that down to my dodgy hardware blotting out the bubbling noise. In the end, I resurrected my old windows partition and ripped to AAC in iTunes. It was a bit better. My conclusion at the time? AAC was a better music format than MP3.
Then I installed Rockbox. I didn't like the interface much, and preferred browsing a database of artists rather than reorganising my whole collection into folders. At the time, browsing on a 3G iPod was painful. It would take about 60 seconds to scroll through a moderate sized list of artists. (I submitted a patch to speed this up but it was rejected. In any case it works much better now.) Battery life was poor, and crashes were frequent. I considered wiping it from the machine, but then I listened to those quiet MP3 tracks again.
The difference was stunning.
Crystal clear and without distortion, they sounded as good as the original CDs (and at least as good as the AACs).
My conclusion now? Apple's MP3 decoder on the 3G iPod is appalling. Being a bit of a cynic, I suspect it has been crippled or underdeveloped to push DRM-leaden formats.
Rockbox has come a long way since I tried it. It now seems as stable as the default firmware and I'd recommend it highly.
Parent
Poor name for software (Score:5, Funny)
Next up:
* OSS firmware-updater: Brick
* Rails anti-virus plugin: acts_as_used_tissue
* Microsoft patch utility: BrokenWindows
* Apple iPhone widget: iPaid2Much
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What's wrong with Rockbox? It makes your little music box rock, so it's the perfect name.
If the wife hadn't thrown her old and broken iPod out (I was going to buy a new disk for it) then I'd probably have put Rockbox on it.
You don't like "box of rocks"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Other poor names:
Image manipulation software: GIMP [gimp.org]. A gimp is a cripple.
Beatles: They named their band after a kind of insect? Some unlikely names don't stop success.
I am very impressed with the fact that the Rockbox team lists all the contributors.
Parent
Re:You don't like "box of rocks"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
The one player missing from that list... (Score:5, Interesting)
That reallly needs the firmware... the Zune.
I wish someone would crack that player. It's great hardware just crippled with really crappy software and DRM. If they could crack that puppy and get their firmware os on it I'd be snapping up all the unloved brown zunes I could find.
Honestly it's only now that the ipod has the screen the zune had when it was released, the Zune could have made a dent in ipod sales if the managers at Microsoft did not have their head so far in their rear you couldn't see their shoulders.
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I'm still trying to make out if they have legs or not. The zune has to be the biggest case of crippled by design ever. Just think of what that hardware *could* do if it was accessible to hackers.
Re:The one player missing from that list... (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly it's only now that the ipod has the screen the zune had when it was released, the Zune could have made a dent in ipod sales if the managers at Microsoft did not have their head so far in their rear you couldn't see their shoulders
Microsoft has a nasty habit of acting like they already have a monopoly in markets they are merely exploring.
I would consider this propensity a godsend, otherwise, you would see it only AFTER they drove everyone else out of the market.
Parent
Re:The one player missing from that list... (Score:5, Informative)
That reallly needs the firmware... the Zune.
Great Hardware? This does not surprise me at all.
After all, the Zunes are, hardware-wise, designed and manufactured by Toshiba (afaik).
Then again, the real Toshibas are known for their excellent audio quality *and* (some of them at least) are being supported by Rockbox.
So why bother with an under-cover Toshiba, hampered by mediocre third party firmware? ;-)
Get a real one (Gigabeat).
Parent
Been using this for years... (Score:2)
The site being currently very /.'d, does anyone know what's new in this release, other than the 'officially supported' status?
Re:Been using this for years... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Does it come with a web server as well? (Score:5, Funny)
Feels like the site is being hosted on one of these devices.
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Some of players they support and "rescue" from Vendor firmware/lock-in costs like $300 and even more.
Dare to ask the amount of donations they get? I don't ;) I can guess, that is why.
Superior (Score:2, Informative)
Pretty cool. I use rockbox on my sansa and it is worlds better than the stock. It fixes stupid problems the sansa has like volume leveling... Plus its pretty.
Rockbox is great! (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually traded my brand spanking new 6th generation iPod because the idiots at Apple encrypt the firmware so that you can't install alternative firmware anymore. I bought a second hand 5th generation iPod with half the capacity to be able to use Rockbox, just because I severly dislike the Apple firmware.
I can tell you, it was the first and last Apple product I bought and will ever buy. If you think out of the box ( in this case: Apple's straightjacket ) they will do their utmost best to block you from utilizing the product like you would want to.
Re:Rockbox is great! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think out of the box ( in this case: Apple's straightjacket ) they will do their utmost best to block you from utilizing the product like you would want to.
They tried to do this with computers in the '80s, and it cost them most of their market share. Now they're trying to do the same thing with music players and phones.
Apple's success is largely due to the fact that they don't design for focus groups, they design for Steve Jobs, who generally has good taste. If your usage is close to his usage, then you'll be happy. The more your usage diverges from his, the less attractive they are.
Parent
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Wow! I did not realize that.
I am glad my coworker is getting a Sansa and not just an ipod as I had suggested given the fact that mine worked fine with Rockbox... Well, of course it helps the Sansa is much cheaper...
Well, I guess I must make sure to tell my wife not to get me anything from Apple the next time around. Too bad, I liked the hardware.
Rockbox rules (Score:5, Informative)
Creative? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any word on compatibility with Creative's players? They're a pretty big part of the PMP market and the next company that comes to mind (for me) after Apple.
Re:Creative? (Score:4, Informative)
Any word on compatibility with Creative's players? They're a pretty big part of the PMP market and the next company that comes to mind (for me) after Apple.
It appears to be in the very early stages.
I'd love to see a Rockbox port to the flash based ZENs if only to fix the pathetic functionality of the SD slot... How Creative got away with calling it memory "expansion" or "upgrades" is beyond me.
Parent
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Indeed, I am in the same boat as you. I love the player, it does me perfectly (especially since I'm not a heavy music-listener) but it does have it's shortcomings and I'm sure they're nothing a firmware upgrade can't fix. Except for perhaps the pathetic FM radio they threw in that can barely get a signal anywhere.
Ipod Nano 2nd gen support? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ipod Nano 2nd gen support? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
The best combination (Score:2, Insightful)
Go to buy.com and choose one of their recertified Sandisk Sansa players (I got one of the E series) and slap rockbox on that thing. You now have yourself a $40 player with $200 worth of functionality. No more worrying about losing or dropping it when it's so cheap.
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Star ratings and play date-time (Score:2)
Does Rockbox support star ratings and automatic tracking of play count and last played date/time?
My favorite iPod feature is the ability to rate songs on the iPod and the ability of the iPod to update playlists based on star rating, play count, and last played date.
My most frequently used playlists are:
Highest play count
Not played in last week
Not played in the last month
Star rating >= 3, 4, or 5 depending on my mood
Better than Stock. Why isn't it more widely used? (Score:5, Insightful)
I got an Archos Ondio flash-based player years ago, but after the newness wore off I found the usability sorely lacking. I was really disappointed. I heard of Rockbox fairly early on, but I figured the last thing I wanted to deal with was troubleshooting problems with firmware on my mp3 player, so I thought "not now, but maybe some day". A year or so later, I was finally so fed up with the Ondio I figured I'd give it a try. Man was I sorry I'd waited so long. The Rockbox firmware made the player much more useful, and it even added features that had not existed at all before (e.g. grouping via ID3 tags). To top it all off, I don't recall ever really running into any bugs in the firmware.
What this really leads me to wonder is, why don't some of these player manufacturers team up with Rockbox to make that the official firmware of their player? It seems like, with people inside the company to help with the hardware interface part of it, Rockbox would be a very solid choice, and the company wouldn't have to pay a license fee or write firmware from scratch. And, of course, they could even make the version on the player branded and incorporates whatever eye candy they please.
Thank you RockBox (Score:3, Interesting)
Rockbox is very well written clean code.
I have been working on an NXP ISP1582 driver, this is for USB2.0 Device interface and Rockbox has been one of the cleanest example code pieces for this, demonstrating how to use this chip.
I hope to eventually release my code in to the Linux kernel although it doesn't look anything like the RockBox code, they help me get past some roadblocks on how to communicate with that chip.
So Thank you Rockbox, I hope it will have a long future ahead.
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I think there is an mplayer plugin
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With the iPod Video it is suggested you boot into Apple firmware to watch videos. Rockbox does not support the Broadcomm video decoder, and thus must attempt to drive the large screen with CPU decoding. You will not get 24FPS in MPEG2 on the 320x240 screen with the iPod's 80Mhz processor.
Most all other targets have a much better processor to screen size ratio and play video better.
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