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Rockbox Replaces Archos Firmware
bagder writes: "The guys in the Rockbox project have just released the first working firmware replacement for the Archos portable hard disk-based MP3-players. The software is all GPL. Every tiny bit was reverse engineered, disassembled and then re-written from scratch. You can go download your own firmware right now!"
Lots of other people have mentioned that they want Ogg support on their player and a few others have pointed out the FAQ answer that says it's probably too hard to do on this device. What I would like to see is a portable device that can be easily extended to arbitrary formats. For example, my current audio format of choice is FLAC which has no portable hardware support (though there apparently is a car player that supports it -- rock!). I doubt that it will become very popular though, because it's a lossless codec and therefore must take up more room than lossy codecs. But that's beside the point -- if someone makes a new audio format that is truly cool and does some things that certain people like or want, it would be neat if you could carry around that music without custom hardware.
Just a thought...
Yes, you can find the new firmware at the Diamond Multimedia FTP site. Its Version 2.00 BETA, with extra features such as a steroscope. Here's the link:
ftp://ftp.diamondmm.com/pub/rio/riovolt/sp250/
Download the "riovolt_sp250_200-firmware.exe" file (the firmware) and its corresonding text file (the readme explaining the new features). Note that in this version, some buttons will perform completely different actions than in the original firmware.
I just hope the Archos legal dept. isn't friends with the people over at Blizzard, or they might just pull out that DMCA whore and trick it out. I smell another bnetd.
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Disclaimer: The above statement probably includes half-truths, because real truth is too complicated.
I feel like my collection might be worth something in the future. It's not unreasonable that WMAs will eventually only be playable in WMP. MS leaned on WinAmp to disable the play-to-file feature for WMA files. When do they lean on them to stop playing them completely?
Besides, I tried some blind testing (recorded some samples, had a friend randomzie the order and play them to me) and I picked the CD and the Ogg, I complained that a ton of detail was lost in most of the sample, which turned out to be all the MP3s up to 256VBR, which was as high as I went.
Even the 56k Ogg kept most of the detail. At 112k the Ogg was undistinguishable from the CD in almost everything.
This was using a fairly decent sound card (SB Live, not great, but not as crap as some) and $90 ear buds that sound better than anything else I've ever owned, speaker, headphone, or otherwise.
So I have a real reason to use Ogg and I'd like to see the format be supported in such a way that makes it usable in the future.