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More Linux Portable Media Players On The Way
An anonymous reader writes "According to LinuxDevices.com, Taiwanese motherboard maker FIC will unveil a Linux-based portable media player (PMP) at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. FIC's 'Vassili' includes a 3.6-inch color LCD screen and a 20GB hard drive, and supports files in MPEG 1-4, MP3, WMA, WAV, ASF, AVI, and JPEG format. Speaking of Linux-based PMPs, Archos will also showcase its lastest PMP, the Pocket Media Assistant PMA400 at CES, and other Linux-based PMPs have recently been announced by iRiver, Veritouch, and Zupera."
The Neuros has open firmware, hardware, and software. You currently have to download a trial version of TI's compiler for their DSP, but last I knew there was an effort underway to get a gcc target written for it.
Start here to find out more about its open-sourceness.
Seeing as you're lazy, I'll click those little hyperlinks for you. Maybe I'll get like modded up or something for my efforts:
The FIC Vassili is limited to MPEG4, MP3, WMA, WAV, ASF, AVI, and JPEG.
The iRiver PMP-120 does not currently support it, but they promise it will soon, I think.
The VeriTouch iVue doesn't mention which formats it supports.
Zupera Technology's one is limited to MP3, WMA, WAV, CD and AC-3.
So none of them support it.
- Jax
Actually, This says that the iRiver supports OGG out of the box.
So iRiver does.
iRiver seem to make great players in any case. When I get a new MP3 player, I'll get an iRiver. Especially if Rockbox is ported to it!
- Jax
Valid question.
-Firewire is freely licensed by Apple.
-USB is not. At least last I heard.
-Firewire does not require a CPU, ie a PC, to mediate file transfers.
-USB requires a PC. And originally, Windows, tho that changed eventually.
-Firewire 400 is faster than USB.
-Firewire 800 is faster than USB2. Note that contention on the inferior bus and the mediation of the CPU are two big factors that retard USB and USB2.
-Firewire, six-pin, has a superior ability to power peripherals compared to USB.
-(Bone to pick) Firewire and USB were introduced by Apple and Intel, respectively. Intel used its influence in mobo design and OEM to promote its own, inferior, standard over Apple's. (And Apple waived the licensing fees - $1 per mobo, I believe, early, so that was not a factor). As a result, to this day Firewire still hasn't hit the magic numbers to drop the cost down to parity with USB. Microsoft had no small role in retarding the introduction of Firewire in Windows. MS/Intel swing a lot of weight. They did not exactly like Apple making a new standard.
So we're stuck with a slower data transfer rate in real life and a lousy peripheral power option because Intel wanted to rool over all.