Dont expect vorbis encoding or even decoding anytime soon on this thing.
Internally, i'm 95% sure the rio central uses a strongarm 206mhz cpu (i think the empeg team has only used the strongarm and a cirrus 7212). To encode vorbis, someone would have to implement an integerized vorbis encoder, since there's no way it would run fast enough with floating point emulation. I'm guessing the only person with enough knowledge about vorbis to do this is monty, and monty doesn't like doing consequential work without making money off it (understandably so).
Unfortunately, SonicBlue is unlikely to ever spend money on vorbis, because nobody uses it. So unless the "open source community" decides to take on this project of building an integerized vorbis encoder, i doubt it will ever happen.
I actually looked at the same thing a while ago. The SV24 is a nice looking case, yes everything is built in, but i've heard a few things about it: specifically, the on board audio is not that good, the power supply fan is very loud, the case internally gets rather warm if you use a p3-800 or faster, and it has no hardware dvd decoding.
but yes, for a person like me, i'd rather spend the $700-$800 to build up a sv24 like solution and just write the software myself.:)
In some strange twist, it's actually not just you; it's also the company you mention in your sig. Centralized storage and intelligence will be the future of home computing, and instead of trying to make expensive, do-everything boxes, people will make simple cheap devices that hook into the PC.
Interesting thought. The easiest way to do this would be to have some sort of firewire->wireless adapter. In terms of "automatically" doing it, that may not be so easy, just because the power considerations of constantly searching for other devices. But i'm sure you could just have an on/off switch and leave it at that.
The harder problems involve mobility; if two devices attempt to sync music collections, and one of them moves out of the wireless range in the middle of a transition, you have a partial song. It just gets messier from there.
Hmm, maybe if they had a wireless cradle that did power and firewirewifi...
The company i work at could potentially license their code. What their MFC app looks like doesn't matter, we're not buying that; the important part is the core code. With codecs, it's very very specialized; there are not a lot of places to shop for stuff like this. So flash, marketing, and snazzy UIs dont really matter, because people will come knocking and will buy regardless of how good looking their office or their wrapper app is.
yes, i think the failure in the original argument is that "copyright" is the right to copy; that is, the manufacturer of the book/software/photo has the right to copy and distribute the item, but others do not. this right is protected by copyright law.
Actually, WAV is a container format (just like AIFF) that can hold many types of media. One of the optional types is raw PCM data. "PCM files on audio CD's" (they're not files fyi) dont have headers; it's just raw PCM audio. You have to read the table of contents (TOC) off the cd to get info about sample rate, number of channels, and track length (which is based on the LBA on the disc).
From what i understand the bitrate management is actually not that nice, and really isn't intended for mass use.
In terms of hardware support, you'd be surprised at how little is done in hardware these days for audio decoding. I think the last device that used hardware mp3 decoding was the diamond rio (the original one), since then most of it happens on cirrus logic processors or TI DSPs.
Re:Windows Media Format...
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Heh if i had mod points i would totally bump this up. MS paid musicians to say WMA sounded better than mp3 when wma first came out.
I remember hearing that one musician messed up his line and accidentally said "This MP3 track sounds much better than the WMA track" instead of the intended line.:)
what would be funny is if an economist worked on the gnutella project, and they wrote up a paper on how the new napster business model would never succeed.
indeed, we have used doxygen on projects here. most of the open source/sdk style packages we have worked with have also been documented with doxygen. very good product.
I have no financial interest in zapmedia. At most i have a technological one, since my company has worked on similar products. But there's no partnerships or propreitary information here.
Yes, you are indeed entitled to your opinion, however, my original comment was that you didn't really deserve the moderation you got for your opinion, because it was baseless.
Yes, i am claiming this device is *not* a computer because it is prepackaged and targeted towards a specific use. A computer as the world currently knows it is a general purpose device capable of running a variety of software; this is a purpose built device capable of running the zapmedia software. Additionally, computers are not consumer electronics devices. If they were, dont you think you could go to CES in January and see the latest lineup of computers from Dell? Also, computers crash. When was the last time your VCR or tuner crashed?
In terms of it being underpowered, you are fixated on what you can buy the components for on the street. I dont really see what the point is here though - you're not going to run custom software on it, and their software runs really well on their hardware (this is another difference between consumer electronics devices and computers).
With 3Com they were trying to sell the kerbango device (what did they call it, audrey i think), and it was ugly and proprietary - it only played RealAudio, didn't have a very good UI or screen, and i personally would have been embarrassed to own one. Note all the issues with the device have nothing to do with what kind of internals it had - the whole point is you dont need to know that.
At this point, i think i'm done. Your complete lack of understand of the point of such a device, misrepresentation of technical details (do you even know how many people in america have broadband?), and failure to recognize the value of this device (which is the software, not the hardware that you can go buy on the street) make it impossible to carry any sort of reasonable discussion with you.
I'm impressed by your ability to judge software that you've never seen. I've seen one of these before, i had one in my cube at work, hooked up to my TV set. I know what the software is like. Thank you for your uneducated opinion on the matter, however.
In terms of having no choice for software, you're absolutely correct, you cannot choose the software that runs on the device. You can only choose which device you want, and there are a handful to pick from. This is just like every other consumer electronics device out there.
By thinking that this is a computer, you are completely missing the point. In fact, the whole point is that this is _not_ a computer.
If you were the head of engineering at TiVo, you'd have a better idea of the possible markets for such a product. I can assure you that there are people that will pay $1500 for consumer electronics devices. Additionally, you didn't specify "computer", you said box. Now that you claim your comparison was about "computer" to "mass produced consumer electronics device", i have to ask, what the hell was your point? That's like saying "oh wtf, why does a an iPod cost $400, when i can build a p2 with a 10gb drive for that much, and decode mp3 faster".
Yeah, except most OTS parts you buy sell at 5-10% margins, whereas consumer electronics devices sell at much higher margins. Additionally OTS parts are more likely to be spot buys, or inventory clearing. If you tried to make 50,000 of these devices you wouldn't be able to get OTS pricing.
I dont see why this is insightful. The poster has no idea about what it requires to bring a product to market. Simply given the cost of the hardware components on the device, there is no way they could release it at a $700 price point. Additionally, if you look at what the software does, this device is not targeted towards the "do it yourself geek" - it's targeted towards the more standard home user.
In terms of what you could do yourself, it's important to keep in mind quality sacrafices that people make when doing their own projects. Specifically, when you do it yourself, you'll probably be happier with a less polished UI, a little bit more noise from the case, etc. Additionally, i doubt you could write the most important part of their package - the software. They have an extensive and well thought out software system on the device that would take a single person at least a year to write.
Every device for the past 2 years has been firmware upgradeable. That's really not the limitation. The problem is that most handheld mp3 players use a small integer only CPU (cirrus logic 72xx family). There are a couple people working on integerized versions of the ogg libraries, plus there is at least one company that has a working integerized version of ogg available for licensing.
The thing about ogg is that it is a more active format than mp3 or WMA. It'd be hard for a software company to keep their firmware up to date with the current version of ogg.
Open firmware is a huge liability unfortunately. It would be very easy for people to write "plug-ins" etc that would maliciously format the flash, or other such nasties. On embedded devices such as MP3 players there really isn't memory protection, or user vs. kernel mode.
For stuff like the zapmedia zapstation, the entire system is written in java (iirc), so they might as well let you write java components for it. They have like a celeron in it, and user/kernel mode differentiation, so having a plugin sdk would be a great plan for them.
Slashdot Mirror
Close, but i believe stereo components are 17" wide, so the case you mentioned would be a bit narrow.
Dont expect vorbis encoding or even decoding anytime soon on this thing.
Internally, i'm 95% sure the rio central uses a strongarm 206mhz cpu (i think the empeg team has only used the strongarm and a cirrus 7212). To encode vorbis, someone would have to implement an integerized vorbis encoder, since there's no way it would run fast enough with floating point emulation. I'm guessing the only person with enough knowledge about vorbis to do this is monty, and monty doesn't like doing consequential work without making money off it (understandably so).
Unfortunately, SonicBlue is unlikely to ever spend money on vorbis, because nobody uses it. So unless the "open source community" decides to take on this project of building an integerized vorbis encoder, i doubt it will ever happen.
I actually looked at the same thing a while ago. The SV24 is a nice looking case, yes everything is built in, but i've heard a few things about it: specifically, the on board audio is not that good, the power supply fan is very loud, the case internally gets rather warm if you use a p3-800 or faster, and it has no hardware dvd decoding.
:)
but yes, for a person like me, i'd rather spend the $700-$800 to build up a sv24 like solution and just write the software myself.
In some strange twist, it's actually not just you; it's also the company you mention in your sig. Centralized storage and intelligence will be the future of home computing, and instead of trying to make expensive, do-everything boxes, people will make simple cheap devices that hook into the PC.
heh, when a product goes down to half price, it's a good sign that the manufacturer is junking inventory and probably discontinuing it.
i.e. you may not want to be an owner of such a device.
Interesting thought. The easiest way to do this would be to have some sort of firewire->wireless adapter. In terms of "automatically" doing it, that may not be so easy, just because the power considerations of constantly searching for other devices. But i'm sure you could just have an on/off switch and leave it at that.
The harder problems involve mobility; if two devices attempt to sync music collections, and one of them moves out of the wireless range in the middle of a transition, you have a partial song. It just gets messier from there.
Hmm, maybe if they had a wireless cradle that did power and firewirewifi...
Allow me to summarize this as follows:
Are you actually going to license their codecs?
The company i work at could potentially license their code. What their MFC app looks like doesn't matter, we're not buying that; the important part is the core code. With codecs, it's very very specialized; there are not a lot of places to shop for stuff like this. So flash, marketing, and snazzy UIs dont really matter, because people will come knocking and will buy regardless of how good looking their office or their wrapper app is.
if they spent all their time working on a slick MFC app instead of writing a good decoder, i wouldn't be impressed.
think about it: any flunky can write mfc apps, how many people out there can do codec work? not many, i assure you.
yes, i think the failure in the original argument is that "copyright" is the right to copy; that is, the manufacturer of the book/software/photo has the right to copy and distribute the item, but others do not. this right is protected by copyright law.
omg, it's a female geek on slashdot!!! *glom*
Why would you want 8 virtual machines when you can have 8 physical machines? Isn't the whole point faster processing in a cluster?
Most people dont plug $250 headphones into $150 mp3 players. :)
Actually, WAV is a container format (just like AIFF) that can hold many types of media. One of the optional types is raw PCM data. "PCM files on audio CD's" (they're not files fyi) dont have headers; it's just raw PCM audio. You have to read the table of contents (TOC) off the cd to get info about sample rate, number of channels, and track length (which is based on the LBA on the disc).
From what i understand the bitrate management is actually not that nice, and really isn't intended for mass use.
In terms of hardware support, you'd be surprised at how little is done in hardware these days for audio decoding. I think the last device that used hardware mp3 decoding was the diamond rio (the original one), since then most of it happens on cirrus logic processors or TI DSPs.
Heh if i had mod points i would totally bump this up. MS paid musicians to say WMA sounded better than mp3 when wma first came out.
:)
I remember hearing that one musician messed up his line and accidentally said "This MP3 track sounds much better than the WMA track" instead of the intended line.
what would be funny is if an economist worked on the gnutella project, and they wrote up a paper on how the new napster business model would never succeed.
or maybe only i would find that funny.
indeed, we have used doxygen on projects here. most of the open source/sdk style packages we have worked with have also been documented with doxygen. very good product.
I have no financial interest in zapmedia. At most i have a technological one, since my company has worked on similar products. But there's no partnerships or propreitary information here.
Yes, you are indeed entitled to your opinion, however, my original comment was that you didn't really deserve the moderation you got for your opinion, because it was baseless.
Yes, i am claiming this device is *not* a computer because it is prepackaged and targeted towards a specific use. A computer as the world currently knows it is a general purpose device capable of running a variety of software; this is a purpose built device capable of running the zapmedia software. Additionally, computers are not consumer electronics devices. If they were, dont you think you could go to CES in January and see the latest lineup of computers from Dell? Also, computers crash. When was the last time your VCR or tuner crashed?
In terms of it being underpowered, you are fixated on what you can buy the components for on the street. I dont really see what the point is here though - you're not going to run custom software on it, and their software runs really well on their hardware (this is another difference between consumer electronics devices and computers).
With 3Com they were trying to sell the kerbango device (what did they call it, audrey i think), and it was ugly and proprietary - it only played RealAudio, didn't have a very good UI or screen, and i personally would have been embarrassed to own one. Note all the issues with the device have nothing to do with what kind of internals it had - the whole point is you dont need to know that.
At this point, i think i'm done. Your complete lack of understand of the point of such a device, misrepresentation of technical details (do you even know how many people in america have broadband?), and failure to recognize the value of this device (which is the software, not the hardware that you can go buy on the street) make it impossible to carry any sort of reasonable discussion with you.
I'm impressed by your ability to judge software that you've never seen. I've seen one of these before, i had one in my cube at work, hooked up to my TV set. I know what the software is like. Thank you for your uneducated opinion on the matter, however.
In terms of having no choice for software, you're absolutely correct, you cannot choose the software that runs on the device. You can only choose which device you want, and there are a handful to pick from. This is just like every other consumer electronics device out there.
By thinking that this is a computer, you are completely missing the point. In fact, the whole point is that this is _not_ a computer.
If you were the head of engineering at TiVo, you'd have a better idea of the possible markets for such a product. I can assure you that there are people that will pay $1500 for consumer electronics devices. Additionally, you didn't specify "computer", you said box. Now that you claim your comparison was about "computer" to "mass produced consumer electronics device", i have to ask, what the hell was your point? That's like saying "oh wtf, why does a an iPod cost $400, when i can build a p2 with a 10gb drive for that much, and decode mp3 faster".
Yeah, except most OTS parts you buy sell at 5-10% margins, whereas consumer electronics devices sell at much higher margins. Additionally OTS parts are more likely to be spot buys, or inventory clearing. If you tried to make 50,000 of these devices you wouldn't be able to get OTS pricing.
Yeah, honestly, dont dis the software on this device. I've used one before, it's really feature rich and fairly easy to use.
I dont see why this is insightful. The poster has no idea about what it requires to bring a product to market. Simply given the cost of the hardware components on the device, there is no way they could release it at a $700 price point. Additionally, if you look at what the software does, this device is not targeted towards the "do it yourself geek" - it's targeted towards the more standard home user.
In terms of what you could do yourself, it's important to keep in mind quality sacrafices that people make when doing their own projects. Specifically, when you do it yourself, you'll probably be happier with a less polished UI, a little bit more noise from the case, etc. Additionally, i doubt you could write the most important part of their package - the software. They have an extensive and well thought out software system on the device that would take a single person at least a year to write.
Every device for the past 2 years has been firmware upgradeable. That's really not the limitation. The problem is that most handheld mp3 players use a small integer only CPU (cirrus logic 72xx family). There are a couple people working on integerized versions of the ogg libraries, plus there is at least one company that has a working integerized version of ogg available for licensing.
The thing about ogg is that it is a more active format than mp3 or WMA. It'd be hard for a software company to keep their firmware up to date with the current version of ogg.
Open firmware is a huge liability unfortunately. It would be very easy for people to write "plug-ins" etc that would maliciously format the flash, or other such nasties. On embedded devices such as MP3 players there really isn't memory protection, or user vs. kernel mode.
For stuff like the zapmedia zapstation, the entire system is written in java (iirc), so they might as well let you write java components for it. They have like a celeron in it, and user/kernel mode differentiation, so having a plugin sdk would be a great plan for them.