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."

Comments

REAL question is..

[Manip]

The real question is, did IRiver release the source code for their new Linux players?

If they did, have they made it easy for people to change the software on the player?

Do they support open-source software for their player?

Re:REAL question is..

[rixdaffy]

I don't see why they would need to release the source for their player.
They probably should release any modifications they did to the kernel, but AFAIK they don't have to release any apps they make run on Linux. It's not like every company who makes commercial software which runs on Linux is obliged to release the source (would be great if they did though)

Ricardo.

Re:Ogg Vorbis

[FlipmodePlaya]

Hmmm, most iRiver players (such as the iHP series) support ogg. I would be very surprised if this didn't, I imagine it's an error that it is not listed.

Re:Ogg Vorbis

[Donny Smith]

> this isn't what the average free software Joe is crying out for.

Yeah, it isn't and the probable reason is that there's only about 50,000 of average free software Joes compared to 2 billion of all average Joes.

Not to mention that this tiny market segment isn't exactly known for their generosity and lavish spending habits.

Missed a format

[fire-eyes]

Now i've heard some manufacturers say that they don't try support for certain formats because the cpu power on the units is too low.

Being a new unit, and the price, I really think that's BS now.

Of course, the format is ogg. I would consider one (though NOT at that price!) if it had it... Sigh.

Re:Missed a format

[chendo]

Common sense is required here.

If it could play DivX... how could it not have the CPU power to play OGG? It's probably a mistake on iRiver's part to not have included it in the supported formats list.

My $30 CD player can do something these can't...

[nwbvt]

Namely play entire albums. Most MP3 players cannot do this simply because they lack the ability to play songs without sticking gaps in between them, which ruin many albums.

I've heard rumors that the iRiver was planning to support gapless playback, but their latest update doesn't work at all. Until they do, I'll just stick with my CDs when I want to listen to music on the go.

Must Be Gapless

[nathanh]

Until these players are gapless I am simply not interested. Too many of my albums are continuous movements. There's nothing more frustrating than a two-second moment of silence during the music.

The other thing these players seem to be missing is a simple text reader. My #1 use for my PDA is an e-book reader. It would be really sweet if the PMP could double-up as an e-book reader.

Re:FLAC

[Hatta]

Uncompressed audio is so big that even a 40% reduction in size can make a difference. Especially if you're hauling 3 hour Dead shows around on your portable. Or downloading them for free at archive.org

There's also the embedded checksums and the support for vorbiscomments that make it real nice to use. If I weren't a poor grad student I'd definately buy one of these.