Rockbox Plans Open Source Firmware For iRiver Gear

PlayerBlog.com writes "The crew at Rockbox, the venerable open source replacement firmware project for Archos audio players, has put together an effort to port their firmware to the popular iRiver H1xx-series of devices. In the wake of iRiver's much-maligned (and delayed) attempts to update their proprietary firmware, this is excellent news."

Wishlist...

[Gentlewhisper]

I hope to see the same for iPods too. Do you guys know that if you buy a new hard drive for the store to install into your faulty ipod with a dead drive, there is nothing you can do to get it working again?

Some even hypothesize that Apple encoded something special into the firmware of the drives they buy as part of an anti-hacking measure.

I'd say to them "Go fsck yourselves!" to think that there are so many features that they did not implement, like a *real* EQ, and gapless playback, and even OGG format support, and yet their engineers have a lot of time to do stuff like these?

That stupid POS!

TiVo

[xsupergr0verx]

Hopefully these companies pick up on the hacks like TiVo did and implement them into their newer models.

Cool but

[sanmarcos]

Will it keep the same features?, what if if my iRiver gets messed up with the new firmware?, then I doubt iRiver will replace it for a new one :/

O is for Opinion

[Bon bons]

I'm skeptical about the success of this. One of the reasons the rockbox software was so popular and great for the original Archos Jukeboxs' was because their original firmware was terrible.

I wouldn't say that the iRiver firmware is great, but it's not as bad as the original Jukebox. The iRiver, after all, already plays Vorbis.

I would personally like to see software that sped up the loading time on the player.

This is good news but perhaps not why you think

[Lurks]

I'm not sure what's up with iRiver and the broken promises of new firmware. iRiver apologists have been banging on about how this is all a bonus and one should live with the state of the player as shipped but ... iRiver certainly made a selling feature of the upgradable firmware.

On the other hand, there isn't a hard-drive player on the market which touches the iHP-100 range (sadly including iRiver's next product the H300-series) and I've pretty much tested them all in a professional capacity as a journalist. The existing firmware is, it must be said, damn good. The way it just works with your file structure if you prefer (and I do), the way navigation works, the way settings work, switching modes, voice recording etc - it's all just right.

So iRiver really do know what they're doing when it comes to software engineering. It's actually the iRiver software that makes it stand out from the crowd. However there's a few glaring problems - the biggest, for me, is the lack of a real shuffle mode. It's easy to end up with the 100-series playing the same sequence of tracks when in random mode. That sucks. Gapless is the next most important for me with the rest of the options such as on-the-fly playlist editing and and file deletion taking up the rear of my priority list by some margin. I can live without that, to be frank. (You can still be Ann)

But let's look at what's good here. With the existing software, you can configure what sorts of play modes you like including shuffle modes. Then when you press and hold the A-B button (on the unit itself or the fantastic remote control), it will cycle through just your preferred modes and not every one of them. Brilliant.

What iRiver needs more than anything else is just a rocket up them to fix the issues and deliver what they've promised. They're a fairly typical Korean company in that 99% of the noise out there from customers doesn't reach anyone making decisions but I think that will change now a slashdot story about a vaporware opensource alternative has appeared.

That's why it's good news. Of course if someone could pressure them into dumping the proprietary software and incorporating the same USB mass storage approach as the 100-series for the otherwise-brilliant iFP-700/800 flash players, that would be the icing on the cake. Then I could switch to something smaller and lighter for the British summer.

(Meanwhile most other manufacturer's of flash-based MP3 players tell you that you don't need USB 2.0. Sigh)

wishlist:

[Anonymous Coward]

.sid and .mod playback! pls :-)

Re:Wishlist... (OT by the way)

[Gentlewhisper]

The Rio Karma has similar hardware to the iPod but does it just fine. Supports OGG too.

Re:Too little, too late

[Tim C]

. The iRivers present as perfectly ordinary USB mass storage devices, and the database created by the Windows driver is completely optional, allowing for cross-platform compatibility without needing to fiddle with anything.

Indeed. I've had an iRiver IHP-120 since February, and I've not even opened the packet that the CD came in. Sure, that means that I'm missing out on stuff like the db creation tools - but I can't say I feel the loss. Plug the player in, drag 'n' drop files to it, unplug it. Easy. No computer support required bar USB and support for USB mass storage devices.

They've also got *really* cool remotes

That was what swung it in the end for me - the remote. I don't like carrying any more than I have to when I'm out and about, so whatever player I got was always going to be in a pocket, or on my belt, or whatever. Having a remote control with a display is really, really useful. After several tape and MD players that had cut-down remotes in terms of features, having one that can do everything the base unit can (bar displaying text files) is ultra-cool.

Gmini?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who can help these guys with the Gmini firmware?
http://www.donat.org/archos

Next on the agenda, how will this be tweaked?

[KitFox]

With custom coded firmware being made for a device that looks like Just Another Hard Drive to your computer when plugged in, how long will it be before we end up with some odd - and possibly not-good - tweaks to the system?

Obviously, some tweaks could be useful, depending on what the firmware can do with the onboard hardware. I'd love to hear some ideas on those... How to make a media device into something more than a media device, from odd screen displays to any number of other things.

But then what about possible tweaks that could be harmful? Put an autorun file on the drive, have it search the computer it is connected to for something, copy it to the device, and then have the device hide the info in some way?

"Oh, no, sir, I was just hooking it up to the computer so I could listen to MP3's over the better speakers. More relaxing work environment makes for better productivity."

So, what might be able to be done?

Re:This is good news but perhaps not why you think

[ashridah]

Some enterprising person found an entertaining workaround to the issue of broken shuffle.

He found that if you add a bunch of really short silent mp3's, the player will re'random'ize the shuffle if you delete one of them within the player with the latest firmware. just add about 10 of them, and delete them as you find the shuffle being repetitive.

Better than nothing for the time being. :)

Shuffle's not really something i use personally tho. OTF playlists would be nice, but about all i'm interested in eventually seeing is the gapless playback. currently the player has gap delete working (ie, removing silence from inside music files) but not a prebuffering system to start playing the next song immediately. it was never scheduled for the first of the two upcoming firmware releases anyway, tho.

ashridah

Re:DMCA

[Gentlewhisper]

"If you're writing an OS for it, then you'll have it scanning your hardware and extracting info in a way that was not meant to be by the manufacturer/distributor (who solely intend this product to play sound files with a possible restriction -maybe not ATM but later, re-read the product EULA...- to DRM'ed stuff)."

Well, the First Sale Doctrine which appears in section 109 of the Copyright Act of 1976 states that the rights owner can not longer control the use of the copyrighted product once it's been released into the stream of general commerce.

Even if the said player is has "IP" in it, there is nothing that says I can't do whatever I deem fit to MY purchase.

I don't need anybody's permission to do anything with my property. If iRiver wishes to do something to my player, then they better seek MY permission in writing first!

Re:Note from Rockbox project manager

[waxline]

Have you thought about porting to the Neuros?

http://open.neurosaudio.com/ [neurosaudio.com]
http://www.neurosaudio.com/ [neurosaudio.com]