After 3 Years, Rockbox 3.0 Released

DarkkOne writes "Rockbox version 3.0 is out. Three years in development, it marks the introduction of many new players since the 2.5 release and offers software-based playback allowing audio of nearly any commonly (or uncommonly) used format on a list of MP3 players by Apple, iRiver, Cowon, Archos, Toshiba and Sandisk. Beyond this it is FLOSS, under the GPL v2 license (or later), and includes a variety of plugins such as games and simple apps. 3.0 is the first official release for any players not made by Archos and more or less marks the beginning of a much more regular release cycle for the software."

Comments

Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[GundamFan]

I'm a relative newbie when it comes to media players and I kind of like just plugging my ipod in and letting it sync with itunes. Having said that the hacker in me knows I have an old ipod that I'm not really using at the moment.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of this software?

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[FauxPasIII]

The chief advantage over the iPod OS is that it plays flac and ogg vorbis files, as well as many formats of video if your player's CPU is fast enough.
It also lets you move media to and from your your player by simple drag-and-drop operations; you don't need a special app to load it, build the iTunes database, etc.

Disadvantages? Well, the interface is different. I like it, you might not.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes!!

Depends on your player for specific advantages, but for me with a Cowon iAudio X5L it means I get some extras features, my favourtie of which is definiately the album art. Skins are nice too.

There are also a lot of plugins for specialist purposes, which of course is the advantage of having FOSS instead of stock.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[AvitarX]

Pros:
Lots of games (a few are decent even)
Music can be copies off with no effort (just files on a disk)
Flac, and Ogg support
Really nice playlist builder on the device

Cons:
Harder to get a playlist from a computer
The database option is nice, but not as seamless as from iTunes (you can browse buy database or by filesystem)

I really like it, I think the whats playing screen looks great, and I like being ably to through a quick playlist together. If a friend has a song I want, I just copy it over, and listen on the way home. I want music on my computer at work, plug it in and copy to the computer.

iTunes may be great within the iTunes system, but in a social world at large I find Rockbox to be more useful.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

For me, the most important advantage was:

it stores and plays music in plain mp3 format instead of some braindead apple DB format.

This means I can play my music on the iPod, but also plug the iPod in my computer and play it on my stereo.

Also, I don't like the 6th generation firmware on the iPod. For one, it uses half the available screenspace to show the album cover, which I don't have and which you can't turn off.

Disadvantage of Rockbox is that it has to reverse engineer the software to make use of the hardware, which is hard and which will probably mean they will never quite get the same quality of utilization of the available hardware (battery life, switching between songs, loading etc).

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[TheRaven64]

This means I can play my music on the iPod, but also plug the iPod in my computer and play it on my stereo.

The hard disk on my iPod (third gen) broke a couple of years ago, so things might have changed since I last used one regularly, but is this really better than just dropping it in the dock? I had my stereo plugged in to the dock, and when I got home I just dropped the iPod in the dock and it continued playing and charged - I only ever plugged it in to the computer after buying more music.

It was possible to play music from the iPod on a computer too - the music was stored in a hidden folder and, although the file names were mangled, the metadata was intact, so any player that can parse MPEG-4 atoms (or ID3 tags if you still use MP3) can index it.

Also, I don't like the 6th generation firmware on the iPod.

I think the iPod firmware peaked with the third generation, and the iTunes UI peaked with 4.x. If they'd been open source they'd have been forked at this point.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Harold Halloway]

The chief advantage over the iPod OS is that it plays flac and ogg vorbis files, as well as many formats of video if your player's CPU is fast enough.

Indeed. I was able to play mpeg movies on a 1st Gen iPod Nano. It isn't exactly hi-def but it works.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Anonymous Coward]

The speed of refreshing the database is the biggest Pro there is. My Sansa's default firmware would take 30 seconds just to refresh by which time my car would already be on the road and I would be unable to select a song for a bit. Rockbox knocked that time down to under 10 seconds. Slayer FTW!!

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[tindur]

Suppose I wanted to buy a good mp3-player now. I could buy one of these cracked players and install Rockbox. Still I think I should rather buy a player that does all I want out of the box. Has anybody recently bought a good player that supports ogg vorbis and Linux? There are compatibility lists but they don't seem to reflect what I see in the shops today.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Meizu M6 has been wonderful to me.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[CastrTroy]

The iTunes database actually has some nice features. It keeps track of what tracks I listen to most often, and which ones I don't. I can have a playlist of stuff I haven't heard lately. It keeps track of what podcasts I have listened to, and only keeps the ones I haven't heard on my iPod, so they don't take up space. It's also trivially easy using other programs to convert videos to formats my iPod can play. I don't see the need to carry FLAC files on an ipod, as it would just eat up all the space, and I don't see the advantage of OGG Vorbis over AAC, or even MP3. People give iTunes a lot of criticism. But I find that it's actually pretty good. The only audio library program I've found that I like more than iTunes is Amarok, which is better by itself, but doesn't have as good iPod integration.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[bozendoka]

I own a Sansa, and most of what was posted here applies. I'd add that the shuffle is a real, playlist based shuffle, rather than the random play that my Sansa firmware uses. I don't know which type iPods use.

To clarify the difference:
Shuffle: Create a playlist, shuffle it, then play the shuffled playlist.
Random: Play a song, then randomly play another song with a chance, however small, of playing the same song again or within a few songs.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[somersault]

Other cool things you get for it are stuff like Doom, a Gameboy emulator etc. Very cool.

I used my old iRiver i120 to play chess once on a long bus journey and plane flight (not to mention listening to music), whereas previously it didn't have any games, and couldn't even do basic stuff like delete/rename files, check free space and get a more accurate reading of how much battery life is left (percentage rather than just 3 bars or whatever it was).

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Nursie]

Some of us don't like the whole audio library concept in the first place. File hierarchies are great, thanks.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[morgan_greywolf]

Most MP3 players that can double as USB storage devices support Linux OOTB without modification. Very few players support OGG, although I have a Meizu Miniplayer SL (aka 'M6SL') that does.

I've seen the 4GB model for as low $50 recently, though $80 is far more typical. It comes in 2GB, 4GB and 8GB.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Cowons players.

I had an X5 (gave it to a friend), and now have an A3.

X5 is definietly a better portable audio player. EXTREMELY durable, good sound, plays MP3, WMA, OGG and FLAC out of the box, along with some video formats, the control is good for use without having to look at the player.

the A3 is a good multimedia player that can be moved (notice I didn't say a good portable multimedia player, there's a difference!). It's not as durable as the X5, and the case it comes with doesn't give you access to the controls without opening it up, nor does the case have a belt clip (no option to buy a case with either). The X5 cases you can buy let you access the buttons/controls without pulling out the X5, and they have cases with belt clips available too.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[c0p0n]

Why? I've got a very large music collection and I seriously don't know what would I do without Amarok.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Nursie]

That's great for you, however I'm happy with a music directory on my NAS that's arranged by band and by album, which I can then stream/play to anywhere, and select chunks of to synchronise with my player as and when.

That's good for me, I really don't need all the extra stuff and I don't want it.

On top of that, having mass storage based access to the player means it just shows up as a hard drive to wherever I plug it in, meaning I can use it to transport stuff around, commit minor acts of piracy (here, have a look at this, take a copy) etc etc, without having things either tied to one machine or having to use special software.

That's what works for me. I have a fairly large (~80GB) collection myself. I also tend to know what I want to listen to by artist and album at any one moment in time.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Locklin]

I have a Samsung YP-U3. It plays ogg but not flac. Since it's a simple little flash based "thumb drive" style player, I wouldn't want to put big flac files on it anyway.

My only complaint is that it's an MTP device instead of a USB mass storage device, but Amarok interfaces with it fine.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[rapiddescent]

I use the Trekstor Vibez that has the benefit of being linux compatible, works beautifully with OGG (all my tunes are Ogg) and also is based on the Sigmatel chipset that is a later version of the popular Rio hardware - so has true gapless playback, Rio DJ and proper sound profiling.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[mcphail]

First of all, I am by no means an audiophile. I have a 3rd generation iPod and a computer with onboard sound and 2 tinny speakers on either side of my monitor.

I quite like the standard iPod interface. I can find tracks quickly using the database and scrollwheel. I've had some issues transferring files with amarok, but gtkPod works well.

Most of my collection sounds fine on the iPod, but I was never very satisfied with orchestral music with a large dynamic range. I'd ripped some Arvo Part CDs to MP3 at increasingly high bitrates using lame. Despite that, the quiet bits (such as the closing bell harmonic at the end of "Cantus") sounded awful: some sort of bubbling distortion. It seemed fine playing through my PC, but I put that down to my dodgy hardware blotting out the bubbling noise. In the end, I resurrected my old windows partition and ripped to AAC in iTunes. It was a bit better. My conclusion at the time? AAC was a better music format than MP3.

Then I installed Rockbox. I didn't like the interface much, and preferred browsing a database of artists rather than reorganising my whole collection into folders. At the time, browsing on a 3G iPod was painful. It would take about 60 seconds to scroll through a moderate sized list of artists. (I submitted a patch to speed this up but it was rejected. In any case it works much better now.) Battery life was poor, and crashes were frequent. I considered wiping it from the machine, but then I listened to those quiet MP3 tracks again.

The difference was stunning.

Crystal clear and without distortion, they sounded as good as the original CDs (and at least as good as the AACs).

My conclusion now? Apple's MP3 decoder on the 3G iPod is appalling. Being a bit of a cynic, I suspect it has been crippled or underdeveloped to push DRM-leaden formats.

Rockbox has come a long way since I tried it. It now seems as stable as the default firmware and I'd recommend it highly.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Anonymous Coward]

My iRiver U10 (similar to their current Clix offerings) supports Ogg Vorbis. Out of the box it's a proprietary MTP device, but iRiver offers an alternate firmware to make it a USB Mass Storage Device (the firmware flasher is a Windows app, though)

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Anonymous Coward]

iTunes actually does use a file hierarchy for the media files it stores. The library itself is just an xml file.

I don't know where pc versions store the library but the os x library is saved to '~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Music' by default.

I let iTunes manage my music and it automatically sets up /Artist/Album/Song for me.

I often use the file hierarchy with soulseex and also play songs directly from the filesystem bypassing iTunes sometime.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[poetmatt]

I actually don't like or care for the "most often, etc" crap. My MP3 player already has that option, but I find that flat out shuffle tends to hit those random songs sometimes too. Ogg/flac/aac sound like a small difference but it's actually huge. Not only is the audio quality better, but they tend to take up a lot less space for the same bitrates. MP3 is nice up to a certain point, not that I have a problem with ti at all. However, ogg/flac/aac are a definite step above.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Just Some Guy]

It also lets you move media to and from your your player by simple drag-and-drop operations

Kinda. I was thinking about installing it on my Sansa e280, but as of last week when I looked at the Sansa project page, that port didn't support USB synching. The SOP was to reboot it into the original firmware, sync, then reboot back into Rockbox. I like the idea, but it still seems pretty rough.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[PopeRatzo]

I call Rockbox "American Express" because my music and media files don't leave home without it.

I use it on my iPod 5G and on my Sansa E270.

I won't touch iTunes or MS-DRM, so it's the difference between useless and wonderfully useful.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[PopeRatzo]

The 8gig Sansa E series (about 70 bucks on woot) works great with Rockbox and Ubuntu Studio.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[PopeRatzo]

iTunes actually does use a file hierarchy for the media files it stores. The library itself is just an xml file.

If it's "just an XML file", why do I need iTunes?

When I have used iTunes in the past, I get a distinct sense that my Qi is being leeched out of me.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Anonymous Coward]

A Cowon D2 would be good. It supports MP3, OGG, WMA, FLAC, WAV. Its seen as a UMS device as in Linux and the built in card reader presents cards as another device. Only drawbacks are 'slower than it should be' transfer rates(you can use a external card reader to avoid this for SD(HC) cards) and the poor(non-existent) playlist support; you have to use folders as playlists or do some hand waving with a program like media monkey.

I bought the 16GB DAB version and have to say it works very well apart from those few niggling problems mentioned above.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[zoward]

Best Buy used to sell the Insignia Pilot, which had 8 GB of memory, supports OGG (not sure about FLAC), has bluetooth support, built-in FM radio, is expandable via an SDHC slot, etc. It has an actual 24 hour battery life (!). I got mine new for $99, and absolutely love it. It mounts under Ubuntu as a stoage device, and I just drag and drop MP3s, OGGs, divx files, JPGs, text files, etc.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Rich0]

I've been using rockbox on that hardware for a year or two and I've been very happy with it. I actually bought this player only for the purpose of using Rockbox (a step of faith considering I'd never used it previously).

Using the original firmware to copy files is fairly transparent. If the device is on and you plug in the USB port, it powers on and automatically boots to the original firmware. Then when you unplug it the system automatically reboots to the Rockbox firmware. I'm sure they'll set it to just boot to Rockbox once it supports USB syncing.

About the only time it would seem to be inconvenient is if you wanted to listen to music while having it plugged into USB. That never happens for me - I can just play music on my PC if I want to.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[vk2]

Why not make use of the Athlon/Sempron machine lying idle in your basement (or your existing machine) by installing http://www.gnump3d.org/? I am a using it since its 1.X version and its amazing.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[keithjr]

The stock firmware on the iRiver H10 requires Windows Media Player in order to sync correctly. As a Linux user, this was a major bummer. There are hacks to mount it as Universal Mass Storage, however, and with RockBox (or EasyH10) I can refresh the database without having Windows do it for me.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Eric Pierce]

> I really like it, I think the whats playing screen looks great

Not to mention that it's pretty straight forward to *totally* customize the "what's playing" screen to your exact liking (I.e., what info to show and the visual look down to the pixel).

RockBox is just awesome. It blows chunks over the firmware provided on my Sansa 250.

EP

Ps. did anyone mention already that you can play Doom on your RockBoxed device?

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[iChild]

I reality this isn't all that onerous. You don't have to boot into the original firmware yourself. Just plug it in. It recognizes that it has been plugged in and it boots itself into the original firmware all on it's own. When you unplug it, it reboots into rockbox.

It is pretty transparent.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Anonymous Coward]

dude! it has DOOM!

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Nursie]

'cos I've got a Debian Linksys NSLU2 running ushare and samba?

Very low power consumption and noise compared to an old PC. Not much processing power but it works for listening to my music from work or streaming audio/video to the Xbox360

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Knuckles]

http://www.cowonglobal.com/

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[aurispector]

I have a sansa e 260 that I bought specifically for the micro sd slot and was very disappointed/pissed off to find that sdhc capacity had been crippled. Once I got rockbox running I could access the card. The only remaining problem with the older rockbox version was that I still couldn't get into the sdhc card from the computer. I have to take it out and use a dedicated card reader, which is a pain in the ass. Still, it works fine once it's loaded so I can't complain.

One annoying thing is that I can't seem to play with the equalizer (or any) settings without stopping the song. Anyone know if this is possible, or if this changed in the new version?

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[hypergreatthing]

I'd say the biggest advantage so far (at least in the iriver build and i suspect in many others) if for some reason you need to boot the original firmware, it's still on there. Just hold down a button when powering up and the bootloader will load in the original firmware. That way you really can't have complaints about it.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[GodEater]

That may be so with the library on your PC - but it's not true of the music iTunes sends to your iPod - which is kept in a bizarre folder hierarchy, and all the files are renamed to weird four character combos like FFRQ.m4a, so you have no idea which artist / album they belong to.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Just Some Guy]

Cool - thanks for the information. I may give it a shot if only to see what all the fuss is about. The one thing that really interests me is the idea of truly random playlists. I'm 99% OK with the Sansa's built-in firmware, but every time you start random play mode, it starts with the first song in alphabetical order. Fixing that alone is worth the price of entrance for me.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[giuda]

Games? Just one name: DOOM.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[skuzzlebutt]

It's been a while since I've used it, but if memory serves, this is the OS I put on my old 20G Ipod to turn it into a recording device to capture my band's marathon 6 hour jam sessions. Just put a mic in the headphone port, and away she ran...kept crashing my ipod, though, so it was a short-lived experiment. Hopefully it's more stable now.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[FunkyELF]

The advantages are that you don't need to use iTunes. You obviously use Windows or a MAC. If thats fine for you great...for me it is not.

I use Linux and I can sync my iPod with a single rsync command.

The advantages are that when you plug a RockBox into another computer it is a disk drive. You drag your music onto it in whatever folder you want and it is available. Because you can store your files on your iPod the same way you store them on your computer you can use it like a backup device.

There are ways to get mp3's off of an iPod that uses the stock firmware but you lose your directory structure.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[X0563511]

The database has vastly improved since then. You can browse by many tags, including Artist, Album Artist, Album, Genre, Year etc...

And as far as sound goes, when you can adjust crossfeed and seperation parameters yourself... you know you have something just a tad bit better than consumer-level firmware.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[drew]

It's not, really. The XML file is (from iTunes' perspective) a write only export of the library. The actual library is a binary blob. If you try to make any changes to the XML file, you will find that iTunes promptly overwrites them. The only time iTunes ever actually reads this XML file is if the main database file is lost or corrupted. It will then rebuild the binary database from the XML file, a process that is inordinately long, and doesn't actually preserve all of the data. This is a useful trick if you want to move your library to a new location on disk for example, but the XML file is not very useful for most of the kind of things you might normally want to use it for, such as, say, syncing your song ratings between instances of iTunes on two separate computers.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[villindesign]

I use a cowan d2 that supports ogg and linux. The d2 has a touch screen interface.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[timster]

I had huge problems with high-bitrate VBR MP3s on the 3G iPod... never looked into it much after I re-encoded into AAC, but I don't think it had anything to do with DRM as a lower-bitrate MP3 actually sounded much better and the AAC versions don't have DRM anyway.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[drew]

Does it have any kind of "Smart Playlist" builder? That's the main thing keeping me on iTunes these days - it has about the only sane implementation of a smart playlist that I've found. foobar2k is alright, but I have to rebuild the playlists when I add new music which is a little irritating.

On the other hand, does anyone know of a good way to sync library information between multiple copies of iTunes? The biggest thing that has kept me looking for an iTunes replacement is that I have my music on 3 different computers, and since iTunes stores things like song rating in its binary database rather than in the file's ID3 tag, there's no good way of coping my files from one computer to another and having it keep that information intact, short of designating one computer as the master and periodically dumping the iTunes libraries on the slave and reloading them from the Master's xml file.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[muellerr1]

I use the chrisjs build (not sure if the USB part is different from vanilla Rockbox) and plug in after I boot into Rockbox which charges it while at the same time lets me listen all day. I hate my pc sound, the e200 has really great quality audio. You have to restart in original firmware to move files, but it's not like it takes a long time to start or anything. I have high hopes they'll get native USB mounting soon.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

If you have a dock, that's probably your best option.

However, I just like to move my music up AND down using any old tool my OS makes available, not some proprietary piece of software of very poor quality ... iTunes.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you've just given a reason to check out Rockbox. Amarok is better than iTunes, and with Rockbox, you are not tied to iTunes for updating your iPod.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm running rockbox on an e series sansa (260; but it differs from the 280 only in capacity). While the lack of support for usb sync is a nuisance, it is somewhat ameliorated by the fact that the rockbox bootloader recognises when it is plugged in via USB, and responds by booting the stock firmware. Not perfect; but at least the ugly workaround is automated.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but will it run on my Rio Karma?

(/me ducks and runs... ;-)

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[seidojohn]

Disadvantage of Rockbox is that it has to reverse engineer the software to make use of the hardware, which is hard and which will probably mean they will never quite get the same quality of utilization of the available hardware (battery life, switching between songs, loading etc).

I've used Rockbox on a Sansa e250 for at at least a year now, and I've found that, compared to the stock firmware, everything is more efficient. I get longer play-time out of the battery, updating the database is faster, finding songs in general if faster, and there is no pause in playback when a song ends. But, as was mentioned before, creating playlists on the fly is not the most convenient thing in the world. It is functional, though.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[JThundley]

As an owner of a Cowon iAudio x5, YES! The stock firmware is absolutely horrible, I really lucked out on the rockbox support. 2 years later, I've filled up my x5's drive and am shopping for a replacement. I bought an older ipod just for the purpose of installing rockbox. Most of my music is in ogg vorbis and I've written a small program to automatically synchronize my music with a rockbox player. I never have to add or delete music again!

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[reddog093]

I've got it on my Sansa e250. I like the customization that you get with Rockbox compared to the standard OS. More equalizer settings, DOOM!!, more themes and other UI settings. THe database updates quickly enough for me with dragging/dropping music/video. I can't wait to try 3.0

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Anonymous Coward]

The great thing is, I use Songbird with my Ipod to sync it with the database and I just installed Rockbox 3 this morning. It can read the database and lets you throw on music on the side without issue. The audio also sounds a bit better on the mediocre headphones i'm using. I am liking it, though I haven't tried playing any mpegs on it as of yet.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[hey!]

Well, I've been watching this project for years. I've wanted to use it, but it doesn't run on anything you can buy new except iPods. Given that the iPod already has pretty good firmware, I'd be spending a lot of money to potentially brick a perfectly good music player.

If it'd run on the current generation Sansa players I'd give it a go; if I <em>owned</em> one of those players and didn't like it, I'd be even more motivated.

As its stands, its only practical appeal is for experimental or hack value. Some people will be interested in Ogg, I suppose, but most people can live with high bitrate MP3 for a portable music player. The attraction is tinkering with a device to get it to do different things. I'm not insensible to that, but I'm not going to haunt eBay looking for an old music player somebody's dumped. I've got better uses for my limited hacking time. If there's a player I can get off of Amazon for less than a hundred bucks which supports the majority of the interesting features in RockBox, I'd be there.

It'd be really nice if some contract manufacturer somewhere figured out that supporting RockBox would be a cheap way to sell lots of players over outlets like Amazon.

Of course what I'd really like to see is some mid range media player turned into a viable application platform. If you could port Android to the Zune, that would be really cool.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Creepy Crawler]

I have 2 of those (one for me and my sis).

The US firmware was crippled to not play oggs. Some deal with MS or something. Instead, you can use the international firmware that disables MTP and crap and converts it to standard storage and adds in OGG. You cant play crippled MS files.. Shucks.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Hurricane78]

Hierarchies are useless to me. I think they are pretty unnatural and retarded.
In real life, things are not hierarchical. They are a net of relations with variable strengths.

You can get most of that by allowing soft/hard links and tags in file systems. But ultimately, a semantic file system, like http://www.tagsistant.net/, is the only real solution. The trick is, to put it in a comfortable interface. Something still missing a bit, but I'm working on it. (I'm not related to tagsistant.)

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[ameyer17]

but it doesn't run on anything you can buy new except iPods.

Wrong. It runs on 1st through 5.5th generation iPods and 1st generation iPod Nanos so even that's not true.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Uggy]

Only the V1 models. Be careful. I bought an e280 and got burned as it was a V2 model (tiny tiny print). Some folks are working on a Rockbox port for the V2, but it's slow going.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Eli Gottlieb]

I thought they stopped making those things! I had one that was my favorite MP3-player ever, but I grew to hate the company when it broke and they refused to replace it.

Did they finally come out with the flashmem version, too?

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Pollardito]

I actually use a "Least often" sort of list on iTunes for listening to random songs. I have a smart playlist with the top 200 least listened to songs, so as it shuffles around within that list things drop out and are replaced with stuff that has one less play. That way I don't randomly listen to the same sorts of stuff more often, and the 200 song length insures that it's not just going alphabetically through my library or sticking to the same artists too much in a row.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[DarkkOne]

You never had to stop the song. I imagine you haven't read the manual, and keep hitting the Power(stop) button to leave the WPS, rather than the select button (leave WPS but continue playing).

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

Huh? But iTunes does file hierarchies.

The only difference is that iTunes does it for you, automatically, as opposed to manually.

Think of it this way:
iTunes sorts the books, places them in the stack, creates the index, and then keeps the index sorted AND searchable.

Otherwise you would have to manually sort books, place books, write indexes, etc, and that takes a lot of time and effort.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

iTunes and iPod do everything you just listed!

iTunes sorts it by band/artist/album/genre (filesystem, as well as library)
iTunes can stream to any iTunes client on the same network (limit of 5 clients at once)
iTunes allows you to sych by playlist, autofill, or drag-drop
iPod classics (now up to 120GB) have been mass storage from day one

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

The... ignorance in this thread is frightening.

What does using iTunes have to do with DRM? iTunes automatically sorts your files on your computer according to artist, album, and genre, it maintains a database so you can quickly search and sort, it streams music on a LAN, and it allows for synchronization by playlist, shuffle, or drag and drop (within iTunes).

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so you are clear, Rockbox peacefully coexists with the native iPod firmware. I have my iPod set to Apple firmware most of the time, and only go to Rockbox when I need to do something other than listen to music like playing Bejewled. There's really no reason NOT to install it and try it out.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[vaz01]

Tags are more of a pain to maintain, but can be more useful. I actually make use of the genre tag quite a bit (after fixing the genre tags on my songs to whatever I feel like calling them). Having a ton of compilation albums, I like being able to search by artist and find single tracks on V/A's that otherwise I'd forget were there. Etc.

Organizing on the filesystem is fine and has its advantages too, unless you own an ipod or other music player that organizes by tags. It's enough of a pain to fix a thousand filenames or to fix a thousand sets of tags, but I don't want to do both. I'd rather ignore the filenames or have my music player name/rename/move things for me based on the tags.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Goldberg's Pants]

Don't forget you don't HAVE too let iTunes manage your files though. You can have it just browse your usual directories.

I used to be all about the hierarchy stuff. But with over 8000 songs, a lot of which are just individual songs rather than a whole album, that became unwieldy so when I got my iPod Touch I figured since I had to use iTunes anyway, I'd try it.

For the most part I like it. I still have Foobar as my default music file player though when double clicking.

Wish Rockbox supported the Touch, because if I recall Rockbox plays back SID files (C64 music), something I really want on my iPod. (There is a SID player supposedly being developed but I'm starting to think it's vaporware.)

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most media players that create a library store the actual files in a hierarchy pretty much like what you described.

By default for example, iTunes will store as // - . under whatever directory you have set to be your music storage location.

I use (mulitple) media players that have a music db interally, and I also use a iRiver H340 and can just drag over the files from where the music files are stored.

Using a media player that uses a library in no way removes your ability, and actually reduces work for you, in having a filesystem hierarchy of your music files.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[hkmarks]

A lot of Samsung players support OGG. A bit picky about format otherwise, though they come with pretty good conversion software.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[aurispector]

Well, the bits I've read didn't really touch on this. Thanks for the tip - hitting the power button was a habit left over from the stock firmware.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Fweeky]

It plays Doom, too.

*squint*

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[ConceptJunkie]

The pedantry on this thread is frightening. Clearly he was talking about ITMS.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[xiaomai]

I bought a YP-Z5 which supports OGG (I've been really happy with it--the last firmware update gave it 50+ hours of playback). That said, the newer models, don't support OGG (or at least in America--I've read there's some controversy there involving Microsoft). I bought a YP-K3 for my wife, and it's MP3 only.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[xiaomai]

Thanks a lot for making me want to spend more money. That thing looks awesome. Now what do I do with my other two MP3 players?

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[xiaomai]

Mass storage in this context is referring to this:

USB mass storage

Which the ipod does not support.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

Why is that clear?

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

The iPod has been a mass storage device since 2001. Only the mini/nano and iPod touch eschew the feature, though I believe both can be hacked to do so.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Mattsson]

I've used it for most mp3-players I've had.
Had the original Archos 6000, the one Rockbox was first developed for, and Rockbox-compatibility has been a requirement for every mp3-player I've bought since.

Advantages:
- Really good file-handling. You can choose a song by selecting the actualfile. A rare functionality in media-players, even after more than 10 years of development.
- Really good random play.
- Gapless play. Only important for certain albums.
- Does not require special software to transfer media. Anything that can copy/move a file is enough.

Disadvantages:
- If you're using a media player by Apple, and actually like itunes or the ipod GUI, this isn't for you.
- If you want a GUI that's filled with useless eyecandy, this isn't for you.
- Probably voids your warranty.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Mattsson]

iTunes and iPod do everything you just listed!

With the disadvantages that I would have to use itunes, which is an application that I do not let onto my computer. Even removed it from my Mac.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[fat_mike]

I asked everybody in my office that has and iPod if they'd heard of Flac or Ogg music formats.

None of them had any clue what they were.

The 99.9% of music listeners that aren't Slashdot members don't give a shit about free audio formats or libOggVorbis or libFlac or any of that. They just want to listen to their music.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

What is wrong with iTunes?

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Nursie]

It doesn't do sensible USB mass storage (i.e. names and file heirarchies get mangled on the iPod).

"iTunes sorts it by band/artist/album/genre"

OK, but so does CDex.

"iTunes can stream to any iTunes client on the same network (limit of 5 clients at once)"

So what? My linux machine can stream and share files on it's drive over whatever protocol and to as many people as I choose.

"iTunes allows you to sych by playlist, autofill, or drag-drop"

Search is not a requirement of mine. Nor, really, are playlists. I like albums.

"iPod classics (now up to 120GB) have been mass storage from day one"

It doesn't do sensible, straightforward USB mass storage (i.e. names and file heirarchies get mangled on the iPod).

Why the hell should I use iTunes when my operating system does all these things even better?

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Nursie]

"Huh? But iTunes does file hierarchies."

So does my operating system. iTunes is redundant. Why do I need it?

"The only difference is that iTunes does it for you, automatically, as opposed to manually."

CDex dumps stuff into the right directories when you rip a disk too.

"Think of it this way:
iTunes sorts the books, places them in the stack, creates the index, and then keeps the index sorted AND searchable."

Why would I care? My stuff is sorted and I can find what I want immediately, plus I'm not stuck with a system that wants to stay resident in memory, sell me stuff or mangle file and directory names when I load things onto a media player.

I want to drag and drop folders from my file system to my mp3 player. That is very non-Apple, the good thing is that it doesn't require ANY software other than the operating system.

"Otherwise you would have to manually sort books, place books, write indexes, etc, and that takes a lot of time and effort."

No, it doesn't, in fact it takes zero effort.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Nursie]

Look, in both your (similar) posts you mention iTunes can do (badly) the things I already do without it.

This really leaves me wondering why you would bother. It's not that I'm saying iTunes is bad, I just don't see a need for it to exist.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Nursie]

"Hierarchies are useless to me."

Good for you.

Artist/Album/Song suits me perfectly, thanks.

"I think they are pretty unnatural and retarded."

They are an intuitive and useful way to relate data. Sorry if you don't get that. Personally the "everything is a database related by metadata" model seems to me to be overrated and overcomplicated.

"In real life, things are not hierarchical."

A lot of things are. And a lot of stuff breaks down quite naturally into heirarchies of folders. Categories and subcategories. Look at the whole goddamn tree of life!

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

iPods "mangle" for efficiency. IE, the files are sorted into a hash table for quick lookup and easy sorting.

Why should you use iTunes? Because you want it to organize for you (I have better things to do with my time), because you want it to index for you (my file system at the time had horrible search, I have since switched to Mac and no longer care since both use the same index), and because you don't know what a protocol is.

Since you would rather all do it yourself there is obviously no need to use iTunes. For everyone else, iTunes is a solution.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

Oh, and another point: Who cares if the files are "mangled", you aren't interacting using a file system on an iPod, you are interacting with the iPod. Or put another way, to argue about the iPod 'mangling' is the same as arguing about how a FS "obscures" the underlying data... Duh!

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

Most people CAN'T do what iTunes (and you) do. Most people don't know anything about file systems, don't know how to search, and don't know how to create indexes.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding: The rise of the iPod as 73% of the market.

You don't need iTunes, but it needs to exist for the remaining 80% of the population that can't do anything you can do.

Rip
Store
Sort
Index
Synch

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Nursie]

OK, sure, most people can't (in computer terms) do much more than tie their own shoelaces.

In a thread asking whether "Anyone" prefers Rockbox to stock firmware, is it not reasonable to say "me, I'm a geek, I prefer to do things my own way and get a few capabilities that iTunes and iPod don't give me?"

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Nursie]

I care if the files are mangled, because then you can't plug into another computer and drag/drop the files back onto there from what is effectively an external hard drive.

"Or put another way, to argue about the iPod 'mangling' is the same as arguing about how a FS "obscures" the underlying data... Duh!"

  No, it's not, see above, it limits what you can do with your files.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

No it doesn't. All the metadata is embedded in the files, so if you can hack the hash-table, you can certainly deal with repopulating the fs data from the metadata.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[morgan_greywolf]

Two words: E and Bay.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Nursie]

"No it doesn't. All the metadata is embedded in the files, so if you can hack the hash-table, you can certainly deal with repopulating the fs data from the metadata."

Why the hell would I bother with writing a program to do that? I could just plug a none-mangled device into any other computer and use drag and drop with file names intact. Metadata be damned.

I'm sorry, but iPod and iTunes do not only not give me what I have already without them, but make life more difficult to do what I want to do. It may not be what everyone wants (or is capable of), but it would not only not add anything to the ease of use of my music collection, but take serious work to get back to where I am without it.

No thanks.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[ConceptJunkie]

Because iTunes the software is just a music player (and a crappy one at that, IMO). iTunes the store is where you buy DRM-ed music from Apple.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

Why is it clear he was talking about iTunes the store (where 1/3 of the music is actually DRM free) and not iTunes the app?

You mean because he says "I won't touch iTunes or MS-DRM" that he means "I won't touch iTunes DRM or MS DRM"? He never says anything to the effect that he means iTunes or MS-DRM vs iTunes DRM or MS DRM.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Mattsson]

Personal preference.
Itunes where ok in the beginning, but they've kept adding useless features, making it a huge piece of software with a GUI that I think suck.
And to top it all, it installs services for the ipod even though I don't have one and it requires me to install quicktime. That was the drop.

There aren't many good music-players out there today, in my opinion.
Itunes and MS Mediaplayer started a trend with big bloated interfaces and lots of useless stuff integrated that too many seems to follow. =/

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[ConceptJunkie]

re: pedantry

I rest my case.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

Without Quicktime, iTunes can't play MP3s, M4A, M4V, etc. So in that sense, Quicktime is the codec library where iTunes is the interface.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

Except you would be wrong. Even within this thread there are posters bashing iTunes the program (and not the store), so it isn't immediately obvious that the OP was talking about iTunes the store vs iTunes the program!

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Mattsson]

Exactly. One of the reasons why I don't use itunes.
Which brings us back to the benefits of rockbox on an ipod.

Apple-firmware + ipod = not easy to use without itunes.
Rockbox-firmware + ipod = easy to use without itunes.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

That doesn't make any sense. Codecs don't materialize out of ether. Some library needs to be loaded to decode audio and video. Without QuickTime you still need SOMETHING on your computer to play and load the files you place on your iPod.

So it is still a question: What is wrong with iTunes? Quicktime is not a sufficient answer unless you can tell me what is wrong with Quicktime.

And as a corollary, what do you use instead of Quicktime if you don't have Quicktime?

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[Mattsson]

Yes. But I prefer my decoders, and other software, to be small and unintrusive.
No tray-icons, update agents, services running, or other things loading at startup/logon.
And, of course, some of my dislike of quicktime is simply leftover loathe of the horrible quicktime-player. It has tainted that name.
It simply goes against my grain to have anything called "quicktime" installed.

Regarding itunes itself, the main part I don't like is how the interface is designed.
As I said earlier, it's simply a personal preference. Some people like X, some people like Y, some people like Z.
When it comes to music-players, I'd like something that more or less simply let me navigate the file-hierarchy via the keyboard. Selecting a file should play that file. Selecting a directory should play everything recursively in that directory. Selecting a playlist should play everyting in that playlist.
Simple. Fast. Easy to use.

Re:Anyone prefer this to the stock firmware?

[2nd Post!]

Re: Quicktime, Quicktime doesn't load any tray-icons, services, or other things at startup-login. Maybe you have Quicktime confused with iTunes? iTunes has an iPod helper, iTunes helper, and a mobile device helper. As far as iTunes is concerned, Quicktime IS a small unobtrusive library that is only loaded as necessary.

Re: iTunes, that is exactly how iTunes works: Select a song, play the song. Select the album, play the album, select the genre, play the genre, etc.

Poor name for software

[patio11]

Next up:

* OSS firmware-updater: Brick
* Rails anti-virus plugin: acts_as_used_tissue
* Microsoft patch utility: BrokenWindows
* Apple iPhone widget: iPaid2Much

Re:Poor name for software

[IBBoard]

What's wrong with Rockbox? It makes your little music box rock, so it's the perfect name.

If the wife hadn't thrown her old and broken iPod out (I was going to buy a new disk for it) then I'd probably have put Rockbox on it.

The one player missing from that list...

[Lumpy]

That reallly needs the firmware... the Zune.

I wish someone would crack that player. It's great hardware just crippled with really crappy software and DRM. If they could crack that puppy and get their firmware os on it I'd be snapping up all the unloved brown zunes I could find.

Honestly it's only now that the ipod has the screen the zune had when it was released, the Zune could have made a dent in ipod sales if the managers at Microsoft did not have their head so far in their rear you couldn't see their shoulders.

Re:The one player missing from that list...

[jacquesm]

I'm still trying to make out if they have legs or not. The zune has to be the biggest case of crippled by design ever. Just think of what that hardware *could* do if it was accessible to hackers.

Re:The one player missing from that list...

[Anonymous Coward]

But if just anyone could write firmware or apps for the Zune, how could Microsoft guarantee that it "PlaysForSure"?

Re:The one player missing from that list...

[Anonymous Coward]

Same way the toshiba gigabeat was rockboxed right away and it has "plays for sure"

the zune is simply a modified gigabeat S with the wifi added onto it. and a crapload of "protect the music from the evil users" software in it.

Rockbox on a zune would give it the share music function that actually works. Imagine meetup with friends, whip open your rockboxzune and snaggin' the tunes you dont have from your buds while your boardin' and shreddin' yo! that would be bitchin'!!

Oops, sorry.. the early 90's came back there.

Re:The one player missing from that list...

[plasmacutter]

Honestly it's only now that the ipod has the screen the zune had when it was released, the Zune could have made a dent in ipod sales if the managers at Microsoft did not have their head so far in their rear you couldn't see their shoulders

Microsoft has a nasty habit of acting like they already have a monopoly in markets they are merely exploring.

I would consider this propensity a godsend, otherwise, you would see it only AFTER they drove everyone else out of the market.

Re:The one player missing from that list...

[walter_f]

That reallly needs the firmware... the Zune.

Great Hardware? This does not surprise me at all.
After all, the Zunes are, hardware-wise, designed and manufactured by Toshiba (afaik).

Then again, the real Toshibas are known for their excellent audio quality *and* (some of them at least) are being supported by Rockbox.

So why bother with an under-cover Toshiba, hampered by mediocre third party firmware?
Get a real one (Gigabeat). ;-)

Re:The one player missing from that list...

[GodEater]

Unfortunately with the Zune, M$ fixed the security hole that Toshiba left on the Gigabeat S, and it will no longer run custom code :(

Re:The one player missing from that list...

[Anonymous Coward]

So why bother with an under-cover Toshiba, hampered by mediocre third party firmware?
Get a real one (Gigabeat). ;-)

Because the Gigabeat T-Series is only up to 4GB memory. The Zune is up to 120GB. I have 55GB of music and counting...not much good a Gigabeat will do me.

Infact, I'm thinking of getting rid of the entire 'portable media player' market and getting one of these:

http://www.inoi.com/English/mh720.asp?gclid=COf7kZjj-ZUCFQSPFQod5Wa0Ew

My truck's stereo setup (device of choice plugged directly into the amp) would allow this to work, as would my home setup.

I never use my Zune with headphones anyway. It's primarily my truck's stereo.

On another note: since the Zune is so crippled with encryption, and since my software now refuses to install and enable the ZuneBusEnum process, which is essential to start the software, my Zune is now a brick. I've tried everything short of a fresh install of Windows, so I've been thinking of getting rid of it anyway.

Anyone want to buy a black 30GB Zune for $150 OBO?

Email me at sotec_productions@yahoo.com if you're interested.

There is very slight cosmetic damage, if at all. I've kept it in really good shape. All accessories and manual included, in original box.

Re:The one player missing from that list...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody really is trying to hack it because it doesn't seem that attractive... There are more worthwhile devices out there it seems

Re:The one player missing from that list...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like things are with their software, such as IE?

Re:The one player missing from that list...

[cbhacking]

You're thinking of the 1st-get 30GB Zunes. While I don't know who makes the new ones, the design is in-house - they're certainly not just re-cased Gigabeats. Besides, even the Gigabeat doesn't have WiFi - which if used properly could do all kinds of great stuff. The Zune 3.0 firmware unlocked a lot of that potential, allowing users to browse, sample, and purchase music on their Zunes wirelessly without a computer present at all, but there's still more that they could stand to have.

My only SERIOUS complaint about the Zune, aside from the 3-play limitation on transferred songs (which I understand, but is occasionally irksome with stuff that's freely licensed to redistribute), is the inability to use it as a USB Mass Storage device. This limits it to Windows (thankfully the new software is far better than that crappy re-skin of WMP that version 1 had) and prevents me from using the gigs of storage that I don't have any media for. My next biggest complaint is the inability to use ogg or FLAC, though that's not a big issue since FLAC can be transcoded and I don't seem to have more than a couple ogg files.

Re:The one player missing from that list...

[Anonymous Coward]

They're working on it actually. Check the forums.

Been using this for years...

[meringuoid]

... installed it long ago on my iHP-140 when I finally accepted that iRiver would never make good on their promise to get us gapless playback and working shuffle in a firmware update. Absolutely terrific: huge improvement on the stock firmware.

The site being currently very /.'d, does anyone know what's new in this release, other than the 'officially supported' status?

Re:Been using this for years...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use the daily builds on my Iriver H340 player, amazing improvements over the stock firmware.

I seriously doubt there is anything major, they probably just fixed enough of the *bad* bugs to make a proper release.

Re:Been using this for years...

[theantipop]

There seem to be big battery life improvements, especially with the 5g ipods.

Re:Been using this for years...

[maxume]

The biggest thing is probably that there is a cross platform utility that will install the firmware and bootloaders automatically, or at least guide the user through it (I haven't used it, just noted that it exists, so I'm not real clear on what exactly it does).

The other changes seem to be mostly the smoothing of (dozens of) rough edges on the various supported players (better battery life here, less crashes there, support for radios, second processors, etc.).

Re:Been using this for years...

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you expand please?

Do you mean better battery life over the default firmware, or previous versions of Rockbox?

Re:Been using this for years...

[maeka]

Battery life of the 3.0 branch is ~80% of Apple stock on MP3. Should be even better with the daily builds, as MP3 decoding was split to run on both cores post feature-freeze.
Rockbox performs (slightly) worse than the stock firmware (battery wise) only on the PP502x iPods. On all other targets Rockbox meets or (sometimes greatly) exceeds OF runtime.

Re:Been using this for years...

[GodEater]

Much better than previous versions of Rockbox, and on some ipods, *slightly* better than the original firmware.

Re:Been using this for years...

[X0563511]

Basically they did what Debian does, they froze development on new features and just hammered away at bugs.

As far as the difference from the previous "release", there's simply not enough space here to describe. Three years of solid SVN commits to go through...

Re:Been using this for years...

[udoschuermann]

I've been running Rockbox on my iriver 140 since shortly after v2.5 was released and been upgrading it every few months when the fancy struck me. Then I sort-of lost track of it in late 2006. The software was good, did what I needed it for, and that was it. Two weeks ago I grabbed a new copy and was amazed at all the new functionality, the huge amount of work on the interface, and the way it has all come together. Rockbox 2.5 was better than the original firmware; Rockbox 3.0 blows it away. Yes, it rocks!

Oh, and to add actual value to my blather: Rockbox has a software emulator for several operating systems on which you can play with their software and explore its functionality without actually having to install it on your player. I've not used that emulator but thought it worth mentioning. And if you do install it on your player, there's a way to get rid of it again or at least skipping to the original firmware, so you're not really hurting yourself by exploring. At least it works that way on the iriver.

Does it come with a web server as well?

[Anonymous Coward]

Feels like the site is being hosted on one of these devices.

Re:Does it come with a web server as well?

[Ilgaz]

Some of players they support and "rescue" from Vendor firmware/lock-in costs like $300 and even more.

Dare to ask the amount of donations they get? I don't ;) I can guess, that is why.

Re:Does it come with a web server as well?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's running sort of like Emacs-style... with the webserver being embedded into the music played by the mp3 player software to be decoded and run through the mp3 library/player.

I hear Britney Spears and Paris Hilton played backwards will make Slashdot into a site about Satanic rituals and the Satanic bible. Perhaps even some content about World of Warcraft too...

Re:Does it come with a web server as well?

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch out Tinkerbell so you don't get thrown into a Rockbox...

You never know what those uhm, nehalems... uhm, nihilums... uhm, nihilists will do..

/Best regards
/Your ex-pally Achtila

Superior

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty cool. I use rockbox on my sansa and it is worlds better than the stock. It fixes stupid problems the sansa has like volume leveling... Plus its pretty.

Rockbox is great!

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

I actually traded my brand spanking new 6th generation iPod because the idiots at Apple encrypt the firmware so that you can't install alternative firmware anymore. I bought a second hand 5th generation iPod with half the capacity to be able to use Rockbox, just because I severly dislike the Apple firmware.

I can tell you, it was the first and last Apple product I bought and will ever buy. If you think out of the box ( in this case: Apple's straightjacket ) they will do their utmost best to block you from utilizing the product like you would want to.

Re:Rockbox is great!

[TheRaven64]

If you think out of the box ( in this case: Apple's straightjacket ) they will do their utmost best to block you from utilizing the product like you would want to.

They tried to do this with computers in the '80s, and it cost them most of their market share. Now they're trying to do the same thing with music players and phones.

Apple's success is largely due to the fact that they don't design for focus groups, they design for Steve Jobs, who generally has good taste. If your usage is close to his usage, then you'll be happy. The more your usage diverges from his, the less attractive they are.

Re:Rockbox is great!

[glop]

Wow! I did not realize that.
I am glad my coworker is getting a Sansa and not just an ipod as I had suggested given the fact that mine worked fine with Rockbox... Well, of course it helps the Sansa is much cheaper...

Well, I guess I must make sure to tell my wife not to get me anything from Apple the next time around. Too bad, I liked the hardware.

Re:Rockbox is great!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not 100% true. They're extremely receptive to folks tweaking out their AppleTVs.

Re:Rockbox is great!

[raddan]

Actually-- Apple used to use focus groups. I don't know if they do this anymore-- they do seem to design for The Steve's taste-- but the original user testing was very influential in developing the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. There's one story about it here at folklore.org. Unfortunately, Apple seems to have completely discarded the HIG for Mac OS X.

Re:Rockbox is great!

[X0563511]

Beware! See my post above. Sansa v2 family support is in progress but currently unusable.

Re:Rockbox is great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's success is largely due to the fact that they don't design for focus groups, they design for Steve Jobs, who generally has good taste.

We're talking about the same Steve Jobs who wanted the original Mac to be shaped like a human head and banned the engineers from including a floppy drive? The Mac would have been a flop if the engineers hadn't literally snuck in the president of the floppy supplier and hid him in the closet when Jobs visited the lab.

Rockbox rules

[kcbanner]

I've used it on my iRiver h120 player and it is 100x better than the stock firmware for that player. It boots faster, clean file browser, better power management and it can play OGG and FLAC and all that good stuff. Its awesome.

Re:Rockbox rules

[Anonymous Coward]

Your h120 is almost an antique. Still a great player, I use my h140 daily, running rockbox in car optimized mode (power settings).

I honestly wouldn't know what to buy if my h140 would die on me. :(

X.

Re:Rockbox rules

[Jiyunatori]

Got it running on a H140 and it's really nice. to me the only drawback is that it tends to be slow when you start browsing files. To me the main edge is the recording possibilities. simply incredible.

Re:Rockbox rules

[Jiyunatori]

These are not the shitty sentences you are looking for.

Re:Rockbox rules

[giuda]

I had an H10 with Rockbox. I loved it. Too bad my unit was faulty and I had to return it. :( Playing FLACs was awesome. Also there was DOOM.

Re:Rockbox rules

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still using my Rockbox'd iHP-120 (old name for H120). Thing works like a charm. I'm never giving this thing up until a Rockbox emulator gets ported to OSX Mobile or Android.

Re:Rockbox rules

[Anonymous Coward]

The recording options are also far, far superior to the stock firmware. Level meters, and being able to change the input level while recording alone make it worth the trouble of installing it. I tossed it on almost two years ago, have updated from tiem to time, and haven't looked back.

Re:Second post

[neokushan]

He can count to 2 fine, it's 1 he missed.

*winces*

[Anonymous Coward]

buy = by
through = throw

Re:*winces*

[AvitarX]

shame on me!

Creative?

[neokushan]

Any word on compatibility with Creative's players? They're a pretty big part of the PMP market and the next company that comes to mind (for me) after Apple.

Re:Creative?

[fuzzix]

Any word on compatibility with Creative's players? They're a pretty big part of the PMP market and the next company that comes to mind (for me) after Apple.

It appears to be in the very early stages.

I'd love to see a Rockbox port to the flash based ZENs if only to fix the pathetic functionality of the SD slot... How Creative got away with calling it memory "expansion" or "upgrades" is beyond me.

Re:Creative?

[neokushan]

Indeed, I am in the same boat as you. I love the player, it does me perfectly (especially since I'm not a heavy music-listener) but it does have it's shortcomings and I'm sure they're nothing a firmware upgrade can't fix. Except for perhaps the pathetic FM radio they threw in that can barely get a signal anywhere.

Re:Creative?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are working on a few of the players. Look in the forums under New Ports.

Re:Creative?

[X0563511]

My Sansa e200r (v1) had poor radio reception. Rockbox somehow fixed that. But for me, that fix was being allowed to tune at 0.05mhz increments, instead of the standard 0.10mhz. For some reason, my tuner is offset by 0.05mhz and to hear 97.90mhz clearly, I actually need to tune to 97.95mhz.

Rockbox player with high quality audio output..?

[scalarscience]

I used rockbox YEARS ago on one of the 2nd gen ipods and it was an improvement even then (at least for my usage which isn't itunes centric). I've been using a midrange flash recorder (that has dual mics & mp3 support) but wouldn't mind a dedicated player again. So what player would have: - High quality audio conversion (DAC) and op amp/headphone amp - Excellent Rockbox support (does rockbox do video now?) - Good processing performance (for games and ?video?) ?

Video

[The Nipponese]

I don't see any video codecs listed. Will my 5g iPod loose video playback capability?

Re:Video

[RiotingPacifist]

I think there is an mplayer plugin

Re:Video

[maeka]

With the iPod Video it is suggested you boot into Apple firmware to watch videos. Rockbox does not support the Broadcomm video decoder, and thus must attempt to drive the large screen with CPU decoding. You will not get 24FPS in MPEG2 on the 320x240 screen with the iPod's 80Mhz processor.
Most all other targets have a much better processor to screen size ratio and play video better.

Re:Video

[GodEater]

While you can use Rockbox on the 5G ipods to playback video using the MpegPlayer plugin (not based on mplayer as other comments suggest) and MPEG 1/2 format movies, we actually recommend still using the Original Firmware (OF) for movie playback (which is fine, since Rockbox allows you to dual boot back to the old OF whenever you like). This is because the 5Gs include a hardware video processor which no public specs are available for, and which Rockbox is therefore unable to use. It far outperforms our software video rendering sadly.

Re:Video

[X0563511]

It only really supports MPEG2 (the one DVD uses, specifically). You also have to encode it to particular framerats, aspects etc..

See this page for details.

Re:Video

[X0563511]

I should have included more details, sorry. (would have posted anonymously to avoid karma whoring, but for the retarded mandatory-anonymous-post-delay)

MPEGplayer is an MPEG video player viewer plugin. It is currently capable of playing back MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video streams with MPEG audio multiplexed into .mpg files (MPEG Program Stream) and raw MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video streams. To play a video file, you simply select it in the Rockbox file browser. If your file does not have the .mpg, .mpeg, .mpv or .m2v extension, you will need to use the "Open With..." context menu option and choose "mpegplayer".

NOTE: MPEGplayer does all video and audio decoding using your device's main CPU. It does not use any special video decoding hardware such as the Broadcom Video Processor found in the iPod Video. MPEGplayer therefore performs very badly on such devices in comparison with the manufacturer's original firmware.

Why not for meizu?

[fmrbastien]

I have a meizu m6, and there is no need to change the firmware, it plays all types of music (including OGG Vorbis), it's ergonomic and I don't need the video player, but it looks fine.

I think it's better to buy a good player than buy a bad one and try to hack it after...

Re:Why not for meizu?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorance is bliss. Once you try Rockbox you can never be happy again with the official firmware on any device.

Rockbox has so many audio features that even many computer audio players can't match. Once you get used to all these, you can't use anything else.

Re:Why not for meizu?

[maeka]

I have a meizu m6, and there is no need to change the firmware, it plays all types of music (including OGG Vorbis), it's ergonomic and I don't need the video player, but it looks fine.

I think it's better to buy a good player than buy a bad one and try to hack it after

Do you have a five band parametric equalizer?
Replaygain support?
Last.FM logging?
Crossfeed? (I'll assume you have crossfade).
Dithering?

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Re:Why not for meizu?

[fmrbastien]

It sounds to be very cool! Thus in other words I made a good choice by acquiring a mp3 player that respects standards and offers a full choice for sound files format, and I'm punished!

There is no need for this player to add ogg support or standard usb connection. RockBox will never be ported to the meizu.

People who buy a full closed apple(c)(tm)(r) with non standard transfer protocol, only some closed files formats supported can install rockbox and have an access to all the cool stuffs that it provides!

next time I will listen to the ads...

Re:Why not for meizu?

[maeka]

No, Rockbox is ported to devices which somebody with the talent and desire chooses to port it to.
The iPods, with their huge user base, is statistically likely to get a port.
You'll notice the newer iPods, with their encrypted original firmware is unlikely to get a port.
The discussion on work towards your device can be found at:
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=10078.0

Re:Rockbox player with high quality audio output..

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't know about the quality since I don't own one of them, but once my H140 dies I'll get a 5.5th-gen iPod...

Ipod Nano 2nd gen support?

[WDot]

TFA is slashdotted, so I can't get at it, but does anyone who read it know if the Ipod Nano 2nd gen is supported? I know there was a problem supporting it before because of some encryption mechanism, but has that been fixed or is my flac collection still useless with this Ipod?

Re:Ipod Nano 2nd gen support?

[jackpot777]

I just checked too, because I have been waiting for someone to crack that hardware and bring out a video player for my little iPod nano. And the short answer: no. Come ON, Apple. Bring out an update to allow us all to play video on our old hardware. /stupid thing to say. They want me to buy another one.

Re:Ipod Nano 2nd gen support?

[freg]

That's very sad news, I have a 2nd gen and am seriously considering downgrading to a 1st gen just for rockbox...

Battery Life?

[cloneofsnake]

I use iTunes to auto organize my music by author / album on my macbook, then I rsync the entire folder to my 5G ipod running Rockbox. It's all good, except battery life now lasts 1 day instead of 2~3 days. :( The HD seems to continue spinning no matter what! I hope they've fixed that problem in this version!

Essential

[pastraga]

I replaced the original iRiver firmware for Rockbox a while ago. Won't ever go back and from now on will check first whether Rockbox has been ported before considering a player. Too many features and customization possibilities to enumerate. Essential.

The best combination

[poity]

Go to buy.com and choose one of their recertified Sandisk Sansa players (I got one of the E series) and slap rockbox on that thing. You now have yourself a $40 player with $200 worth of functionality. No more worrying about losing or dropping it when it's so cheap.

Re:The best combination

[walter_f]

Remember, in order to run Rockbox, you have to get a rev 1 Sansa (no more available as new stock, just as used items or in refurbished lots).

On a v2 Sansa, Rockbox will not run.

Re:The best combination

[GodEater]

Be careful to make sure that any of the sansa's you pick up this way are version 1.0 of the hardware. There is a v2.0 which replaced all of the internals which (currently) won't run Rockbox. www.froobi.com (if you're in the USA/Canada) certify their sansas as "Rockbox ready" so you *know* you're getting the right hardware version.

Re:The best combination

[X0563511]

Progress is being made but it is still far from useful.

Blame Sandisk for changing the whole board and using that system-on-a-chip, and for not being completely open with documentation.

You don't like "box of rocks"?

[Futurepower(R)]

You don't think "box of rocks" is a good name? LOL.

Other poor names:
Image manipulation software: GIMP. A gimp is a cripple.
Beatles: They named their band after a kind of insect? Some unlikely names don't stop success.

I am very impressed with the fact that the Rockbox team lists all the contributors.

Re:You don't like "box of rocks"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, Led Zepplin chose a crashing airship image on purpose.

When Jimmy Page was assembling the group, Keith Moon (drummer from The Who) got word of his plans and predicted the group would go down "like a lead balloon" (this is a common English expression). Bassist and keyboardist John Entwistle thought it would be "more like a lead zeppelin." Page took the phrase and manager Peter Grant changed the spelling to "led" in order to avoid mispronunciation.

Re:You don't like "box of rocks"?

[rmadmin]

I think GIMP is actually a great name for it. Compared to Photoshop, it certainly is crippled. Kthx.

Re:You don't like "box of rocks"?

[namain]

No, not box of rocks, it Rocks your Box! Also, the GIMP is actually an acronym - the GNU Image Manipulation Program.

Re:You don't like "box of rocks"?

[Mister Whirly]

Beetles are an insect. The Beatles name was inspired by the Beat poets.

Re:You don't like "box of rocks"?

[MilesAttacca]

No no no, as John Lennon said, a man in a flaming pie came to him in a dream and said "From now on you will be the Beatles with an 'a.'" :)

And as the history books are more likely to say, the Beatles were first the Silver Beetles. So I would say that the insect heritage is obvious.

Re:You don't like "box of rocks"?

[MaxwellEdison]

The Beatles were a take at Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Spelled it 'beat' to be clever. You want a bad band name, you can't go wrong with Puddle of Mud.

Re:You don't like "box of rocks"?

[Mister Whirly]

That was Lennon's (typical Lennon) tongue-in-cheek answer because he was sick of the question. The non-humorous story is as follows -

In his second revised edition biography of the Beatles (1985), Hunter Davies intimated that Taylor told him the name was inspired by the film "The Wild One." A black leather-clad motorcycle gang is referred to as the Beetles. As Davies put it, "Stu Sutcliffe saw this film, heard the remark, and came back and suggested it to John as the new name for their group. John said yeah, we'll spell it Beatles, as we're a beat group.

or alternatively, -
The story is repeated once more in Pauline Sutcliffe's "BackBeat," (1994) with a slight twist.

Gene Vincent was going to be backed by the Beat Boys. How about "The Beetles?" One of the motorbike gangs in "The Wild One" was called that too. A brainstorming session with John warped eventually to "The Beatles" -- you know, like in "beat music."

Source

Re:You don't like "box of rocks"?

[Anonymous Coward]

GIMP has made virtually no progress that I've seen in the past 3 years. I hope my projects aren't cursed with that kind of "success".

ISTM that projects with geekier-sounding names encourage geekier behavior in the program itself. Programmers are OK with adding obscure functionality to an app that only a geek could appreciate, if it has a geeky name. The name is usually given by the project founder, and sets the tone for the project.

And if anybody still thinks "the GIMP" is an acceptable name, or that "it's just a name", where does it end? Would you be OK with a program called "Nigger"? "Faggot"? "SpankMyMother'sAss"? You only have to be laughed at once, for proposing "the GIMP" as an alternative to "Photoshop", to see how much harm that name is causing.

Re:You don't like "box of rocks"?

[cyberthanasis12]

For non-native English speakers, GIMP is a fine distinct name, which is nothing more or less than pentium (it does not mean anything, it's just a name). In fact it is better than windows, or photoshop because it is shorter :)
And ROCKBOX immediately reminds me of ROCK music (which is, I believe, a universal word), not a box of big stones.
So, when you make comments, think that the majority of people might, just might, have a different opinion.

Still no support for iPod Classic...

[holiggan]

Well, it still won't support the 6G iPod Classic... So I'll just have to keep my stock firmware.

Does anybody know why? Maybe some new encryption or something? I'm happy with my ipod as it is, but I would definitly would like to take Rockbox for a spin ;)

Re:Still no support for iPod Classic...

[GodEater]

1) Apple have hacked their MSC mode on the classic to completely hide the firmware partition away. 2) The firmware itself, once you get to it, is encrypted - which means you can no longer run your own code on the Classic (and other models of ipod since the second gen Nano).

Re:Still no support for iPod Classic...

[holiggan]

Oh, so it's really out of the question to "hack" my Classic... Oh well, it's no biggie for me, but it kinda sucks.

X2 on all positive comments.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 60GB video that freezes at random times since day one. Apple did nothing for me except try and belittle me in front of my wife. I loaded rockbox and haven't had an issue for over two years. Well done rockbox!

Re:X2 on all positive comments.

[Colonel Korn]

There are four gen1 Nanos in my family, and all of them froze and wouldn't turn off without a forced reboot (and sometimes not even then) since they were a month old. The mini and shuffle also suffer from similar problems. The only iPod I don't have trouble with is my gen...er...2 or 3 iPod, which not only doesn't crash but also has better battery life with my $7 replacement battery than it ever did on the original. I hadn't thought of the Rockbox as a stability fix, but given your post I think I'll switch over my two devices and try it out.

I don't think I'll buy anything with Apple software ever again.

Star ratings and play date-time

[Paul Carver]

Does Rockbox support star ratings and automatic tracking of play count and last played date/time?

My favorite iPod feature is the ability to rate songs on the iPod and the ability of the iPod to update playlists based on star rating, play count, and last played date.

My most frequently used playlists are:

Highest play count
Not played in last week
Not played in the last month
Star rating >= 3, 4, or 5 depending on my mood

Rockbox v 3, hooray!

[Ravalox]

This is likely to be uninformative but I'm a huge fan of Rockbox, I've been running it trouble free for nearly a year on my mp3 player.

How do I get random shuffle?

[Rick Richardson]

How do I get random shuffle over random albums?

Re:How do I get random shuffle?

[GodEater]

Read the manual ? It's very comprehensive.

Re:How do I get random shuffle?

[Rick Richardson]

Have read the manual...

Re:How do I get random shuffle?

[GodEater]

Have read the manual...

In that case I suggest posting a question on our own forums (not /.ed yet) explaining which bit of the playlist section in the manual has you confused, and we'll do our best to help you out. http://forums.rockbox.org/

Re:How do I get random shuffle?

[Keith_Beef]

Put your entire collection (i.e., all tracks from all albums) into a playlist, then shuffle that playlist.

I understand your confusion... I've had Rockbox on my Sansa c250 for probably a little over a year, and it took me a while to get used to the way playlists work.

Manuals are not always easy to understand. I find it helps to read it, go away and play with the thing for a week, then come back and read the manual again. This is true for most software, firmware and hardware devices, not just Rockboxed players.

K

Re:How do I get random shuffle?

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Hope you'll still read this: in addition to Keith_Beef's post, you can press and hold the select button on the now playing screen, and it will show you the option to shuffle ... this allows you to jump to and from shuffle mode in a given playlist without having to shuffle it beforehand.

Yes it took me a while to discover this.

Stumbled upon it and was surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a refurbished Sansa e250 (2GB) player a few months ago for $30. I never had a portable MP3 player and thought 30 bucks was cheap enough to give it a try. I had never heard of Rockbox before. Alone, the player is a cool little device, but while searching for firmware updates, I stumbled upon Rockbox. I gave it a try and loved it.

The selling point for me was all the supported formats. I generally try to store my music in FLAC format, but also have OGGs, ACCs, and even Matroska files, in addition to my MP3s. Rockbox can play them all, so now I don't have to worry about converting anything to MP3 just so I can listen to it on my Sansa. It also supports Micro SDHC cards, which the original firmware does not, so I went out and got an additional 8GBs for my player.

I look forward to seeing what improvements 3.0 brings... if their site ever comes back up.

Re:Stumbled upon it and was surprised

[X0563511]

Just bugfixes. There was a feature-freeze for the bughunt prior to 3.0 release.

Better than Stock. Why isn't it more widely used?

[internic]

I got an Archos Ondio flash-based player years ago, but after the newness wore off I found the usability sorely lacking. I was really disappointed. I heard of Rockbox fairly early on, but I figured the last thing I wanted to deal with was troubleshooting problems with firmware on my mp3 player, so I thought "not now, but maybe some day". A year or so later, I was finally so fed up with the Ondio I figured I'd give it a try. Man was I sorry I'd waited so long. The Rockbox firmware made the player much more useful, and it even added features that had not existed at all before (e.g. grouping via ID3 tags). To top it all off, I don't recall ever really running into any bugs in the firmware.

What this really leads me to wonder is, why don't some of these player manufacturers team up with Rockbox to make that the official firmware of their player? It seems like, with people inside the company to help with the hardware interface part of it, Rockbox would be a very solid choice, and the company wouldn't have to pay a license fee or write firmware from scratch. And, of course, they could even make the version on the player branded and incorporates whatever eye candy they please.

stability improvements?

[Diabolus777]

I have a grayscale 4th gen ipod, and I always hated the fact that I need it managed by some sort of library. I think the best way to use the player is like a usb key that has an embedded player. Rockbox made me happy except for the fact that it would crash or freeze on average 3 times in an hour of continuous play. I had to revert back to apple's crappy firmware after 6 months because of instability. I know I'd prefer to use rockbox but it really needs improving. It's been something like 2 years since I stopped using it, can anyone tell me if I should try it again?

Re:stability improvements?

[GodEater]

Definitely. I use my ipod as my primary player with Rockbox (although I have five compatible models!) and it's not locked up on me once in two years of usage now.

Re:stability improvements?

[maxume]

I first used it on a H10 in ~August 2007 and it was OK, but some features on the player (like the radio) did not work. I tried it again this August and there was support for most of the features, and things were just 'slicker' or whatever. I don't use that player a lot, but I now use Rockbox when I do use it.

If you are comfortable with the install process, you should probably give it another shot.

Some things are not working in 3.0

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using rockbox on my iRiver H120 for the last three years and have never looked back. Just a few weeks ago, I picked up a refurbished Sansa E270 just because it is rockbox compatible and I love it. There are a few issues, though, that should be pointed out. The battery life on some of the iPods is not all that great with rockbox and on the Sansa E200 series players USB does not work. When you plug it into a USB port the player reboots into the original firmware, which does not support micro SDHC cards (rockbox does, though). So to load music onto a micro SDHC card, you must use a micro SDHC card reader.

Re:Some things are not working in 3.0

[GodEater]

The battery life for *most* of the ipod range is now superior to the original firmware, and the remaining models are on a par with it. We already have our own USB stack for mass storage which will work on the sansas (and other portal player based targets), but we've had issues with it when used with SD cards plugged into the unit, which is why it's not currently enabled by default. Of course work is progressing to fix these issues.

Re:Some things are not working in 3.0

[Keith_Beef]

We already have our own USB stack for mass storage which will work on the sansas (and other portal player based targets), but we've had issues with it when used with SD cards plugged into the unit, which is why it's not currently enabled by default.

Now, there's something I would like to see! Native Rockbox USB support, with 4GB (and higher) microSD support!

I didn't realise that it was there, but not enabled... does this mean I can just turn it on, or do I need to download the source and compile it for myself?

K

Re:Some things are not working in 3.0

[erayd]

You will need to download the source, and compile it with USE_ROCKBOX_USB and USE_HIGH_SPEED defined.

Bah

[MrZaius]

Everything this does I can already do with my Sansa Clip (which has easier to manage audiobook and podcast support out of the box, assuming your's ships with current firmware) and with my N800. That said, I considered purchasing an MP3 player to run this on before picking up the Clip and was disappointed by the hardware available. Nearly all of the hardware this runs on is no longer available new in stores and no manufacturers have picked up and run with the software on standardized hardware, from what I've been able to gather. This project will be a lot more interesting when you can buy it, stock. As it is, it only really affects people dedicated enough to hunt down used hardware or people far enough out of the OSS community that they bought DRM-laden iPods in the first place. Maybe this is something Neuros could do to bring back their portable line?

Re:Bah

[X0563511]

Everything this does I can already do with my Sansa Clip

Have you actually used Rockbox? I guarantee Rockbox has more capabilities. If you don't have a v2, I would suggest you try it. You can uninstall Rockbox, or even just boot the original firmware from inside Rockbox.

Ipod Nano 2nd Gen Support

[Glowing-Wind]

Damn. I got excited when I read this, this morning, until I noticed there is still no 2nd Gen+ Nano Support. I know it's different enough from the previous firmware that the Rockbox developers are having a hard time justifying the time needed, but it's still disappointing. I just can't go back to a 2.5" HD portable mp3 player; the battery efficiency (or lack there of) alone is a deal breaker. Not to mention how often my wife's U2 "Special Edition" Ipod has been sent to Apple's RMA dept is discouraging; got my moneys worth on that extended warrenty, no doubt.

Does anyone know of either another flash based mp3 player with large flash memory or, preferably, modular flash storage that can be swapped out/upgraded reasonably easy, but still has the same or similar interface that made an Ipod ergonomic?

Plan B, maybe finding a reasonable, unoffical way to upgrade a 1st Gen Ipod Nano's storage to allow larger capacity but still use the Rockbox firmware? I mainly just can't stand arbitrary limitations on what formats I can or can't play on my portable music device, but being able to play Flac format doesn't help much with just 4GB of capacity, anyway.

However, I couldn't stand my previous Dell Jukebox's interface, either.

Re:Ipod Nano 2nd Gen Support

[Glowing-Wind]

Well, a more specific reason why it doesn't work on Nano 2nd Gen and newer...stupid draconian design. I grew up on Apple // hardware had used to have a distinct nostalgic appreciation for the company, even though I haven't used the platform since System 7.

Lately, it's turned into loathing.

Re:Better than Stock. Why isn't it more widely use

[theantipop]

Well, my instant thought is that most people today prefer library software like itunes to manage their music. Take a look at every single piece of shitty bundled software that gives its users a half-assed itunes/Amarok. While Rockbox isn't necessarily incompatible with such software (it supports a library file), I've yet to see any such relationship developed.

I'm content to see Rockbox stay the way it is as an alternative for those of us who prefer a file hierarchy on our device of choice.

Does it still suck?

[nurb432]

Last time i tried it, you couldn't even charge your player with the firmware running. And forget managing your music files.

It was a nice 'work in progress' but nothing more.

Re:Does it still suck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time you tried it? This is the release of a major revision, why not try it again rather than shit over a product you haven't even used.

Re:Does it still suck?

[muellerr1]

I can charge my e200 while listening to Rockbox. The sound quality is also much better than the stock firmware.

Re:Does it still suck?

[nurb432]

Because it was a pain to get running just to find it didn't do 1/2 the things to make it useable.

it makes more sense to ask here for facts from people who have tried it, then to once gain spend the time just to be disappointed.

And again i did say it was a nice work in progress, i don't think that would qualify as slamming it.

Re:Does it still suck?

[nurb432]

The previous release wouldn't do that with my e260 which was a shame. I didn't dare risk my ipod however.

Still no 6g support

[craigavonite]

3.0 is looking good, but still no 6g iPod (iPod Classic) support. From what I've read the 6g's have a checksum on the firmware, hopefully they'll find a way around it soon

sansa v2 hardware support - in progress

[X0563511]

Just beware, the Sansa v2 family is not supported, the vendor went and implemented a whole new board. The new one is some sort of system-on-a-chip that they are working on, but so far is unusable.

See this forum thread. You'll probably agree with me that some of these developers know their stuff.

Note: One of the holdbacks is that the vendor will only give a particular developer documentation, under the condition that he/she can't share it with others. Nice.

Re:Second post

[Anonymous Coward]

heh... i can count to eleventy-one! i just don't know the numbers in between...

P.S.: yes... this one goes to eleventy-one. because i said so!

this comment strictly for the Dopers

[Nick Number]

Rockbox, I burning your dog!

iPod Firmware Hassles

[Triv]

My iPod is driving me up the wall. Apple included a neat feature a few revisions back - the iPod will detect when your headphones are unplugged, say, while walking with the player in your pocket, and automatically pause playback until you plug them back in. Cute, right? It WAS cute...until it started doing it on its own, say, in the car with a tape adapter plugged in. This is maddening enough, but it isn't anywhere near as maddening as Apple's insistence not to offer an option in the firmware to turn the feature OFF if you don't want it. They assumed that everybody would like the feature, and if it worked, it would be great. But it doesn't so we're stuck with it. Rockbox offers the ability to turn the feature off, but without access to a windows machine, getting my iPod to work with the alternative firmware involved me hosing the device, then resetting it, over and over until I gave up.

Finding a non-iPod Rockbox compatible DAP

[wrkerr]

My first DAP was an Archos Jukebox 5000, and 2 years ago I put rockbox on it, and was really impressed. Rockbox was great then, and now I'm sure it's much better. The problem though, is that that DAP has long since gathered spiderwebs, and I'd like one with more storage.

Where could I find one of the Rockbox compatible DAP's for a reasonable price? The Cowon iAudio all seem very overpriced, and the SanDisk SANSA's all have too little storage. I need at least 20GB of storage. Am I looking in the wrong places?

Re:Better than Stock. Why isn't it more widely use

[DarkkOne]

Now that we have 3.0 out the door, one thing I want to try to do is get in contact with devs from Amarok, Mediamonkey, and other similar projects. Rockbox has its own database format, but as it's open and our code for interacting with it is GPL many of these projects should be able to add support for syncing to Rockbox AND updating our database from host-side. What this means, in theory, is that there could be several library-management programs users could pick from, and those would support all Rockbox devices and a library could be migrated from one to the next easily if you bought a new one, and so on.

So what's the best hardware to use?

[IronChef]

So we have this great project... Now what is the $89 deal of the century on hardware to use it with?

Re:So what's the best hardware to use?

[DarkkOne]

See the BuyersGuide page on the wiki but popular hardware are the e200 (there's a website called Froobi that sells ones they make sure are the v1 hardware for the e200 series, since the v2 is not yet compatible) or the Gigabeat F or S. All of these can generally be had for USD100 or less.

Re:Better than Stock. Why isn't it more widely use

[ZipR]

There has been discussion with a few companies about this. There has also been some work by individuals on creating a couple of DAPs specifically for Rockbox. When the site comes back up, you can find info about it on their wiki.

Oh Jeez

[fm6]

Not being into hacking common gadgets, I usually don't pay much attention to this kind of project. But I am so going to give this one a hard look. I only use my player for one thing: listening to spoken word content. Almost all players suck for this purpose: no automatic bookmarking, impossible to navigate without squinting at the screen (I listen a lot while driving), etc.

Cowon's U2 is pretty close to ideal. But it's been EOLed, and the U3 is a piece of crap that tries to be an iPod touch, only without a touch screen! When I lost my old U2, I replaced it with a used one off eBay. That source can't last forever.

Obtaining the knowhow and equipment to burn custom firmware into an MP3 player that only I will use is sort of overkill. But I listen to mine a lot, and having the feature set I want just might be worth it.

Re:Oh Jeez

[RPoet]

As a podcast listener, I feel your pain. I am clinging to my three-year-old Creative MuVo 256MB for dear life. It's not great, and the capacity sucks, but it seems like everything else on the market these days is useless. I need a decent display, good Linux support (read: mass-storage support), I need to be able to easily pause, skip, and forward/back without taking it out of my pocket (meaning: keys must feel distinct and be easy to locate blindly), and since I delete each show after listening to it, deleting must be painless as well.

I only dream of bookmarking support. Man, that would be great.

Sigh.

Re:Oh Jeez

[erayd]

Rockbox has all of this.

Bah...Sansa View not supported

[DrVomact]

I checked, and was really disappointed that they're not supporting the Sansa View. I don't suppose I can really blame Rock Box...how many other people bought one of these dogs? Thing is, the hardware is really fine. Nice big screen (hence the name, I guess), 16G of built in memory, plus I put in an 8G MicroSD card. But the firmware makes this product absolutely awful. Instead of the stated battery life of 35 hours playing MP3 music, I get maybe 5! I've seen plenty of complaints from other users about the same problem. I don't understand how Sandisk can continue to advertise such a patent falsehood. The player's database regularly gets corrupted so that it thinks I have multiple copies of the same song (when I don't), and thus plays the same song over and over again. The album art is rarely in synch with what's really playing, response to control input is slooooow...and new bugs are introduced with every firmware update.

I notice the Sansa e200 series is supported. I had one of these and really liked it...figured the View had to be just as good, but with more capacity. Wrong! It feels bad to get took.

Re:Better than Stock. Why isn't it more widely use

[internic]

That's a good point. I realized that the other answer to my question is that many people will want to be able to play DRMed music (Plays For Sure, Fairplay, etc.) and won't be able to do that on Rockbox.

Player Recommendation?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm going to buy a new player to use with RockBox, what is the best option in terms of price/screen size/stability/usability?

Thank you RockBox

[John Sokol]

Rockbox is very well written clean code.

  I have been working on an NXP ISP1582 driver, this is for USB2.0 Device interface and Rockbox has been one of the cleanest example code pieces for this, demonstrating how to use this chip.

I hope to eventually release my code in to the Linux kernel although it doesn't look anything like the RockBox code, they help me get past some roadblocks on how to communicate with that chip.

So Thank you Rockbox, I hope it will have a long future ahead.

Re:Better than Stock. Why isn't it more widely use

[Keith_Beef]

That sounds admirable, and I would really like to see it, even though I would probably not use it...

My Sansa reverts to factory firmware when plugged into the computer, and said factory firmware can't handle the 4GB microSD card. So unless you get the Rockbox firmware to handle USB communication with the host, I'll carry on doing what I do now: plug the microSD card into an adapter, into the cardreader of my computer, copy files into an artist/album hierarchy, and have Rockbox update its database when booted.

K

Do they have any groupies?

[Futurepower(R)]

There is a band named Puddle of Mudd? Yup.

Re:Better than Stock. Why isn't it more widely use

[erayd]

Rockbox now has a native USB stack, although it's disabled by default - you'll need to compile a custom build to enable this ( with USE_ROCKBOX_USB and USE_HIGH_SPEED). For the most part, it works impressively well.

Read Drew's informative post above (and Mod up)

[PopeRatzo]

Thanks for the info, Drew.

Very informative.