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More Linux Portable Media Players On The Way

Posted by timothy on from the promises-promises dept.

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."

11 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. But the real question is... by mohrt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    can I hack it to run MAME?

    1. Re:But the real question is... by Catbeller · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How about thousands of books? If it can manage an ebook library, I'd think it might be worth it. That said, are all these PMP manufacturers allergic to Firewire? Why am I consigned to USB hell?

    2. Re:But the real question is... by alienw · · Score: 3, Interesting

      -USB is not. At least last I heard.

      USB is royalty-free.

      Firewire does not require a CPU, ie a PC, to mediate file transfers.

      This is irrelevant in most cases (unless you are transferring data between peripherals). The advantage of the USB approach is that the everything is considerably simpler and cheaper.

      They did not exactly like Apple making a new standard.

      How exactly does Intel (or Microsoft, for that matter) profit from USB being the standard? It was just that Firewire was considerably more expensive than USB to implement -- both on the host and on the peripheral side. To this day, the only popular Firewire peripherals I know of are DV camcorders.

      As a result, to this day Firewire still hasn't hit the magic numbers to drop the cost down to parity with USB.

      Maybe that's because the complex protocol makes everything expensive while offering few advantages?

    3. Re:But the real question is... by Catbeller · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This is irrelevant in most cases (unless you are transferring data between peripherals). The advantage of the USB approach is that the everything is considerably simpler and cheaper.

      It's a circuit board and a cable. The costs are negligible in either USB's or Firewire's manufacture; the cost was in the initial implementation in hardware and software.


      How exactly does Intel (or Microsoft, for that matter) profit from USB being the standard? It was just that Firewire was considerably more expensive than USB to implement -- both on the host and on the peripheral side. To this day, the only popular Firewire peripherals I know of are DV camcorders.
      Apple and Intel were engaged in simultaneous R&D on a high-speed serial bus. An old story. Who benefits? Well, for one, Intel didn't want to find it wasted time and money.

      Secondly, and most importantly: Intel is in the business of making processors. They designed USB to require an Intel processor to operate. (3. Profit!) That simply wasn't necessary, and it slowed the actual data rate a great deal.

      Remember, we had to wait a long time before USB2. We were putting up with pokey speeds on bloody everything. Webcams sucked mostly because they were trying to send a video signal down a telegraph wire. Firewire worked fine, but was unavailable because Intel made it clear to everyone concerned that supporting Firewire would not make Intel happy. (AMD wasn't a factor yet.)

      It was a Catch-22 for Firewire. With no boards or peripherals supporting it, no incentive to build same. USB's unit cost dropped, Firewire stayed high. And as electronics companies usually do, they cranked up the price of the technically superior Firewire components because those who needed the speed would pay through the nose for it.

      Maybe that's because the complex protocol makes everything expensive while offering few advantages?

      Firewire was more complex than USB - but a Celeron is also more complex than a 486SX. Yet a Celeron costs less than the old 486SX. After the initial costs are recovered, it's just mass production. Ditto USB and Firewire components.

  2. But is it OPEN? by orthogonal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Serious question: does that mean they are open source?

    I mean, as an end user, I don't much care if something is "linux-based" or "foot fungus-based" if I can't open it up and re-do the way that works best for me.

    I had an Archos, and the guys at rockbox.org went to considerable trouble to reverse engineer it (and I contributed my own smidgen of code to that project), but Archos apparently saved a bunch of money on assembling their machines, and the damned thing broke down (and mine was far from the only one to break down -- I'll no longer buy anything from Archos).

    And Archos's firmware was so ridiculously bad (the Rockbox guys sped up directory browsing alone by a factor of perhaps 50) that I no longer want to buy an mp3 player that I can't hack. Having hacked with teh Rockbox software, I know what I want in an mp3 player -- and I figure I'll have to do it myself.

    I want a new mp3 player, indeed my mom wanted to buy me one for Christmas and asked what kind I wanted, but I wasn't anymore versed on what is open source and what isn't but is reversed engineered and what is totally closed, so I couldn't tell Mom what to buy.

    Loss for me, loss for the electronics store, loss for the manufacturer.

    So "linux-based" I don't really care about -- open source, I care about.

    So reply if you know: what hard-drive based mp3 players have hackable source or open source firmware replacements?

    --
    Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
  3. I hope they use mplayer... (and support NUV) by poopie · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I seriously hope they use mplayer and add support for all of the file formats that mplayer can handle.

    Why?

    Well... mythtv records in this crazy format called NUV. It's opensource, but it's not in any top ten codecs list. But... mplayer supports it just fine.

    I sure would like to have a portable media player that supported "raw" mythtv recordings

  4. Re:No OGG? by Catbeller · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It might have something to with the name. "Ogg" isn't exactly dressing for marketing success. People don't want to listen to "oggs". At least "MP3" sounds cool and techie.

    ".music" would have worked. or: ".tune", ".sound", ".tun", ".mix", ".track"... anything but Ogg!

    Names have power. As Bankie would say, there were the fingers of the Ogg developers, far from the people's pulse...

  5. iRiver violates the GPL? by daveho · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Linux-based digital music players are a great idea, but the manufacturers don't always honor the GPL by making the source available. For example, iRiver appears to be violating the GPL with its PMP-140 product:
    http://www.kerneltraffic.org/kernel-traffic/kt2005 0102_288.html#8
  6. GPL Compliance by PingXao · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I hope all these manufacturers adhere to the GPL and release the source code for their devices. Right now there are several big players in the SOHO router marketplace that do not. The ones that do provide stripped-down versions of what they actually ship, and most of them had to be persuaded to do so. They consider their device driver modules proprietary and don't provide source for those regardless of what the GPL says. Many of these manufacturers are not based in the U.S., so I can see how it might be expensive to bring a court action to enforce copyright, but that shouldn't be an excuse. Restraining orders preventing manufacturers from selling their products can be very effective.

    Will the FSF or other copyright holders finally stand up for their rights? I'm no lawyer, but I seem to recall that if you don't take affirmative steps to protect your copyrights you can lose the protection they provide.

  7. Re:I'll save you all the trouble. . . by scottp · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Unfortunately they sell to the masses and the masses don't know what an .ogg is...just like they don't know what spyware/malware are. Get an iriver, I love mine and all that is on it is .ogg's. If .ogg's were half as easy to download (pirate) as mp3's it would be on every mp3 player produced.

  8. PDAs with hard drives by DaveOf9thKey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That Archos PMA400 that's going to be introduced at CES is really going to be more than just a PVP. It's going to be a full-fledged PDA with a built-in hard drive. You'll be able to keep your calendar and contacts on it, check your email on it via Wi-Fi (or via Bluetooth, if your cell phone lets you do that), and possibly do some web surfing as well.

    So why don't we see more PDAs with built-in hard drives?

    Seriously, is it a battery life issue, or is it just that nobody else has thought of it yet? It seems to me that if a Palm or PocketPC device came out with even a 5GB microdrive inside, it would cause real problems for a lot of MP3 players that aren't iPods. Plus, PDAs with built-in hard drives would automatically have an advantage over most smartphones in terms of storage. Add in a faster processor and some extra memory, and now you're talking about something as close to a PC as you can get in your pocket. (Assuming your pockets aren't quite big enough for that OQO, of course...)

    Personally, I'd be all over something like that Tapwave Zodiac if it could hold 20GB of my music collection, too. Wouldn't you?

    --

    Visit me on the web at Permanent4.com.