Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Rockbox Replaces Archos Firmware

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the but-that's-unpossible dept.

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!"

1 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What exactly is the big deal? by WNight · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.