Archos Recorder + Rockbox Plays Video

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!"

All I can think of is

[MC68040]

.. "that's neat, but if that would have been a standard feature everyone would have said it sucked", on the other hand as it's not designed to play video, it's neat alright.

Go non-corporate developers.

LCD Response Time

[zalas]

Is the LCD on that thing supposed to be able to keep up with 60fps? I mean, I don't think they were designing the LCD on the MP3 with Video playback in mind...

Does Archos play non-evil formats?

[Thinkit3]

That is, vorbis or FLAC? Are the video formats patent-encumbered? There's no need to use Evil formats when Good ones are out.

Re:Not so big

[maelstrom]

s/DUCK/DUCT/g

Re:Does Archos play non-evil formats?

[The Human Cow]

Apparently the hardware decoders are not immediately able to play vorbis or anything other than MP3, and the processor is too slow to allow software conversion on-the-fly. That said, they're still working on a way to do it.

s/DUCT/DUCK/

[Da w00t]

What, you've never heard of Duck Tape [ducktapeclub.com]? Maybe he prefers the name brand over generic brands.

Get a load of all the uses for Duck Tape:

• prom formal wear [ducktapeclub.com]
  and
• about how Duck Tape saved a poor cat's life [duckproducts.com]?

A better idea

[plinius]

Clearly what is needed is not another tiny hard drive-based video player.

What you people should be doing is hacking one of those DVD-based video players with the 10 inch screens, adding a USB port or something.

Future PDAs will be converged devices, with phones, cameras, and DVD....at least until MRAM arrives.

great stuff on that site

[The Tyro]

It was the first place I got the hardware mod instructions for my old 6gb archos mp3 player (nothing like having a 20gig version before you can even buy one in the store).

Somebody else mentioned it... the charger that came with the archos really was a POS... the wires frayed on mine, and I ended up cutting them and attaching spade connectors (yeah, I know... unsafe, but it was all I had at the time). Soon after that, the transformer went out entirely, and now I have to change batteries.

Oh well... at least it survived a longish SW Asia military deployment for the afghanistan war (wish I could say the same for all of our equipment).

Reverse Engineering

[meehawl]

some guy claims that he has access to the neccessary docus, but the rockbox-developer don't even consider looking at it, unless they get official permission to use it.

Why not use the old, tried-and-tested method of clean-room reverse-enginering? Recruit several people with no Rockbox programming exposure to look at the documents and write their own version of the specs, noting entry points, API calls, and so on. Get them to publish the documentation using some version of the GPL. Then fire them, put them out to pasture. Ensure they never communicate directly with any of the Rockbox programmers regarding what they read.

Then get people who have never read the original documents to create code implementing the published doduments.

Because of increasing restrictions on reverse engineering in the US [chillingeffects.org], the document analysis team should be based in the EU or Asia. Or preferably Russia or China.