sub_tex
02-06-2006, 11:30 PM
not sure if any of you are aware of or using the Rockbox firmware for your mp3 players, but you really should check it out. http://www.rockbox.org/
I have an iRiver ihp-120 mp3 player that, while doing pretty much everything I want it to, still lacks some features I would love to have. The goood news is that with the Rockbox firmware, not only do I get all the features I wanted, but the original iRiver firmware is still there whenever I want to use it, giving me a dual booting player!
Some nice bonuses of Rockbox are:
1. True gapless playback of oggs. Mp3s, can sort of be gapless, if you've ripped them using lame and the "--nogap" parameter: http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/GaplessHowTo
2. Complete, and I do mean COMPLETE, control over the LCD on the main device plus the remote!
3. FLAC support!
4. Complete playlist control, naming, rearranging, on the fly creation, etc.
5. Search for files using partial name matches, etc. This is really cool. It only works if you are using the tag database instead of directory browsing though. Basically you get a full screen keyboard of sorts and you navigate to the letter, selecting the ones you want, spelling out your search term. It's very similar to a psp, or any game console.
6. Drag and drop support for mp3 players that don't support it, like ipods.
There are plenty more, but that's just a sort of an overview of what I found most useful.
The LCD control is really my favorite thing right now. It supports images, conditional statements, alignment, etc. Very very nice.
Peep the doc on making your own here: http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/CustomWPS
Unfortunatley, designers have yet to find Rockbox it seems. Of the many wps (While Playing Screen) files I've looked at, only 5 or so are uncluttered and easy on the eyes. And one of them is only so because it's an exact copy of the ipod screen. :)
You can view some here:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/WpsGallery#iRiver_H100_WPS_config_file_gall
See what I mean? Some of those are just hideous. Complete info overload. But there are some, like PhillipBonnevie's "simply large" and MikeSobel's "Marquee" that are very clean and nice. Again, the beauty here is that if you find one that is close to what you like, you can just edit the text, save it, and reload it!
But nicer ones are on the MysticRiver forums:
http://www.misticriver.net/showthread.php?t=26193&page=2
Check out the color ones people have made for the iRiver h3xx series players:
http://www.misticriver.net/showthread.php?t=35852
Being able to flash your player and get new codec support and features is such a cool thing. My biggest beef with the lovely iPod is the lack of Ogg support and drag and drop. With Rockbox, both of these features can be had.
As of right now, they only support the 4G ipod colors and the Nano, but the 5G ipod video port is on it's way. Currently they have it booting fine, there's just no sound....heh. But really, builds happen daily, and upgrading is as simple as overwriting files and folders on the drive.
There's a thread where someone posted a pic of Rockbox running on his Nano:
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=2544.0
I recently got an ipod video for free (yeah, i know), and was going to sell it (Since the majority of my portable music collection is all Ogg, and I like a driver-less player) I started looking at alternative firmware for it, remebering I had read something about this stuff a while back.
I found the ipodLinux project, but it seems they don't suport the 5G ipods (Nano and Video) yet. Some more searching led me to Rockbox.
As with all open source, hacker friendly stuff, this isn't for everyone. And if you want a nice looking UI, you'll have to not only find a theme you like, but mayeb edit it a bit to suit you (or post in the forums for some nice person to make a version that does what you want).
The main UI (settings, browsing, etc) is just fine though. You have the option to change the font to anything you want, including size. There are tons of fonts on the Rockbox site itself: http://www.rockbox.org/fonts/, plus you can make your own using a tool they provide. you can't beat that.
A big con for some people will be the fact that it can't play any DRM media at all. So if you're a big wma or itunes music store person, stay far away from this thing!
Anyhow, it's a new toy, so to speak, and I'm excited about it. I'm looking forward to them getting the 5G ipod up and running so I can use mine with it.
I have an iRiver ihp-120 mp3 player that, while doing pretty much everything I want it to, still lacks some features I would love to have. The goood news is that with the Rockbox firmware, not only do I get all the features I wanted, but the original iRiver firmware is still there whenever I want to use it, giving me a dual booting player!
Some nice bonuses of Rockbox are:
1. True gapless playback of oggs. Mp3s, can sort of be gapless, if you've ripped them using lame and the "--nogap" parameter: http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/GaplessHowTo
2. Complete, and I do mean COMPLETE, control over the LCD on the main device plus the remote!
3. FLAC support!
4. Complete playlist control, naming, rearranging, on the fly creation, etc.
5. Search for files using partial name matches, etc. This is really cool. It only works if you are using the tag database instead of directory browsing though. Basically you get a full screen keyboard of sorts and you navigate to the letter, selecting the ones you want, spelling out your search term. It's very similar to a psp, or any game console.
6. Drag and drop support for mp3 players that don't support it, like ipods.
There are plenty more, but that's just a sort of an overview of what I found most useful.
The LCD control is really my favorite thing right now. It supports images, conditional statements, alignment, etc. Very very nice.
Peep the doc on making your own here: http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/CustomWPS
Unfortunatley, designers have yet to find Rockbox it seems. Of the many wps (While Playing Screen) files I've looked at, only 5 or so are uncluttered and easy on the eyes. And one of them is only so because it's an exact copy of the ipod screen. :)
You can view some here:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/WpsGallery#iRiver_H100_WPS_config_file_gall
See what I mean? Some of those are just hideous. Complete info overload. But there are some, like PhillipBonnevie's "simply large" and MikeSobel's "Marquee" that are very clean and nice. Again, the beauty here is that if you find one that is close to what you like, you can just edit the text, save it, and reload it!
But nicer ones are on the MysticRiver forums:
http://www.misticriver.net/showthread.php?t=26193&page=2
Check out the color ones people have made for the iRiver h3xx series players:
http://www.misticriver.net/showthread.php?t=35852
Being able to flash your player and get new codec support and features is such a cool thing. My biggest beef with the lovely iPod is the lack of Ogg support and drag and drop. With Rockbox, both of these features can be had.
As of right now, they only support the 4G ipod colors and the Nano, but the 5G ipod video port is on it's way. Currently they have it booting fine, there's just no sound....heh. But really, builds happen daily, and upgrading is as simple as overwriting files and folders on the drive.
There's a thread where someone posted a pic of Rockbox running on his Nano:
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=2544.0
I recently got an ipod video for free (yeah, i know), and was going to sell it (Since the majority of my portable music collection is all Ogg, and I like a driver-less player) I started looking at alternative firmware for it, remebering I had read something about this stuff a while back.
I found the ipodLinux project, but it seems they don't suport the 5G ipods (Nano and Video) yet. Some more searching led me to Rockbox.
As with all open source, hacker friendly stuff, this isn't for everyone. And if you want a nice looking UI, you'll have to not only find a theme you like, but mayeb edit it a bit to suit you (or post in the forums for some nice person to make a version that does what you want).
The main UI (settings, browsing, etc) is just fine though. You have the option to change the font to anything you want, including size. There are tons of fonts on the Rockbox site itself: http://www.rockbox.org/fonts/, plus you can make your own using a tool they provide. you can't beat that.
A big con for some people will be the fact that it can't play any DRM media at all. So if you're a big wma or itunes music store person, stay far away from this thing!
Anyhow, it's a new toy, so to speak, and I'm excited about it. I'm looking forward to them getting the 5G ipod up and running so I can use mine with it.