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iRiver Ships Linux Media Players
prostoalex writes "The Register talks about new Linux-based portable media players available from iRiver. PMP-120 and PMP-140 feature 3.5'' color screen and 20 and 40 GB drives. The price tag is $500 and $600 respectively. The players support MP3, WMA, WAV and ASF music formats as well as MPEG, ASF, AVI and DivX video formats."
Yet, at the bottom, there's the following:
About iRiver
iRiver is the leading innovator in delivering portable digital media devices. iRiver provides consumers with the viewing, listening and recording flexibility to accommodate their active lifestyles by manufacturing award-winning hybrid products supporting existing and emerging formats, including MP3, OGG, ASF, WMA and WMA-DRM. Milpitas-based iRiver America, Inc. can be found on the Web at www.iRiverAmerica.com.
(emphasis of 'OGG' mine)
The human ear can only detect sounds between 20Hz and about 20kHz (some people can hear higer, some cannot hear frequencies that high).
Audio is typically sampled at 44kHz to eliminate aliasing distortion. Google for "Nyquist" and "aliasing distortion" for more than you could ever possibly want to know.
What the hell are you smoking?
They work with any OS (and I have tried mine with OSX, Linux and Windows), and need no configuration. They do show up as removable storage.
There is a program called "iripdb" which you can use in place of the iriver's database ripper. It's open source so you can theoretically compile it for any platform.