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RockBox on iPod
comment: 2 | Monday, January 30 (2006) 02:13PM | Posted by Austin Vaughan
Those crazy kids at RockBox.org are working on another port of their popular open-source firmware. This time, they're going after the Apple iPod.

28 January 2006 - Rockbox boots and appears to be stable on the iPod Color/Photo, the Nano and the Video. Plugins and codecs work, including audio on the Color/Photo and Nano. There is no audio on the Video yet.

Could this mean that we'll finally see gapless playback and a custom EQ? Yes, I think so. Plus, you won't have to use iTunes to manage your music collection since a file browser is included in the GUI.

That's like, awesome and stuff... See the project status HERE.




via Head-Fi.org forums
Comments

Flid

Comments: 262
 		Jan 30 (2006) 02:17PM  

Dammit... I was just about to post this in the chatbox, as it didn't seem to be mentioned. Best News EVOR.



undesign

Comments: 801
 		Jan 30 (2006) 02:18PM  

Now theres a reason why Id get an iPod. Gapless and custom EQ? Sounds good. I wonder what battery life times will be with rockbox? Better? Worse?

Also, if thats the GUI on the rockbox ipod, eh...kinna nasty and looks someone just did it via Visual Basic.



Austin Vaughan
Location: Lenexa, KS
Comments: 770
 		Jan 30 (2006) 02:21PM  

you skin the GUI however you want. that's just one example i found.



undesign

Comments: 801
 		Jan 30 (2006) 02:23PM  

austin: sweet, good thing i can use my design skills for it, haha



Sebhelyesfarku

Comments: 398
 		Jan 30 (2006) 02:26PM  

Apple should pay a nice sum for these nice guys who turn their fashion crap into a music player



undesign

Comments: 801
 		Jan 30 (2006) 02:39PM  

Apple should pay a nice sum for these nice guys who turn their fashion crap into a music player


Quoted for truth.



joshley

Comments: 3
 		Jan 30 (2006) 02:51PM  

If RockBox on the iPod gives gapless playback, WMA support and lack of necessity to use iTunes, I'd buy an iPod over an X5. I think I shall wait. Good things can happen!



Enter260

Comments: 10
 		Jan 30 (2006) 03:19PM  

so let me get this straight.
every player that rockbox works on WILL have gapless?



dasmenneke

Comments: 135
 		Jan 30 (2006) 03:31PM  

if the chipset is capable of it probably yes, and I remeber some article that mentioned that the karma has gapless because of good firmware and not really because of a superb chipset.

What I'm hoping for is that they'll improve battery life (which they've done with archos ones) allow wma to be played and even wma protected :p would be so funny :d maybe microsoft should hire them to make Ipod support wma songs, when it's also UMS it will be perfect for most people. Also I hope that some video software ubergeeks team up with rockbox so the Ipod would support Xvid Divx etc., aah would be so funny :p



elinenbe

Comments: 16
 		Jan 30 (2006) 03:31PM  

Enter260: Yes, as long as there isn't a dedicated DAP (such as the Archos players rockbox was originally created for) all of the features of rockbox get ported with the software... thus you'll get things like:

gapless playback
customizable WPS (while playing screen)
on target playlist editor
extreme playlisting options
more codecs than any other player
plugins, games, etc...



enCORe_XTG

Comments: 317
 		Jan 30 (2006) 03:40PM  

beware
customs user EQ for iPod might reveal it's true power...



bloodycape

Comments: 725
 		Jan 30 (2006) 03:56PM  

What is the difference between this and the Ipod for linux that has been out for a while.



egloskerry

Comments: 410
 		Jan 30 (2006) 04:36PM  

File browsing? An ipod looks more appealing now.



zip22

Comments: 1816
 		Jan 30 (2006) 04:39PM  

theres a page just for you, bloody
[Linky]

i do not believe colors are working yet, and theres no chance protected WMA or WMA will be supported



Echo_

Comments: 60
 		Jan 30 (2006) 04:43PM  

is there id3 tagging for rockbox?



Philip_0729

Comments: 22
 		Jan 30 (2006) 04:44PM  

The problem with WMA is that it is a microsoft format and there therefore are not very many free/opensource decoders to port... that is just about the only codec not supported at least in part by rockbox at present IIRC



Toge

Comments: 11
 		Jan 30 (2006) 04:46PM  

why wasn't this mentioned before!?

now an ipod might be a viable choice!



zip22

Comments: 1816
 		Jan 30 (2006) 04:47PM  

because its just becoming a reality.

echo, i believe its only filetree navigation right now.



Hartmeister

Comments: 33
 		Jan 30 (2006) 04:51PM  

Slightly confused here. I read the website for Rockbox and I understand the port is being made. But is it actually done?



zip22

Comments: 1816
 		Jan 30 (2006) 04:52PM  

from what i have heard it is very basic. no color, and i think the 5g either doesn't play now or just recently gained the ability to play music. the nano and the 4g can play music.



Will

Comments: 75
 		Jan 30 (2006) 04:54PM  

Ugh, Pantera!



ZaphodB
Location: Nova Scotia, Canada
Comments: 129
 		Jan 30 (2006) 04:54PM  

Apple industrial design plus Rockbox firmware? The mind boggles. This rocks.



twentythree

Comments: 1
 		Jan 30 (2006) 04:54PM  

they only do audio stuff, is that right? maybe in the near future they can add divx playback? seems like the decoder chip supports that...



chicubs

Comments: 915
 		Jan 30 (2006) 05:01PM  

ill have to keep my eye on this.



Poekoek

Comments: 45
 		Jan 30 (2006) 05:07PM  

This is not working on a 4th generation with a greyscale screen? Too bad...



Allen
Location: Dub Vee Ooo
Comments: 1511
 		Jan 30 (2006) 05:10PM  

Now this might be a reason to get an ipod...



Lone

Comments: 973
 		Jan 30 (2006) 05:38PM  

"beware
customs user EQ for iPod might reveal it's true power..."

Quote of the day!



Parijizzle

Comments: 58
 		Jan 30 (2006) 05:56PM  

I took them about 6 months to develop the h100 firmware to where it is now, a very advanced state, its going to take longer to develop the ipod.



zip22

Comments: 1816
 		Jan 30 (2006) 05:59PM  

i dont know, they have a lot of ipodlinux to just build off of.



derekdru

Comments: 33
 		Jan 30 (2006) 08:03PM  

gapless on my pod? i just wet my pants. form and function.



monkeyboy

Comments: 78
 		Jan 30 (2006) 09:09PM  

Hmm. The mind boggles at the possibilities!



ts-x

Comments: 4
 		Jan 30 (2006) 09:50PM  

"i do not believe colors are working yet, and theres no chance protected WMA or WMA will be supported "

Based on the most recent logs it looks like color is now working on the two ipod targets. As far as non-drm wma goes - there is an open source decoder out there, but my understanding is that it needs an interested developer and some serious conversion work before implementation. A search on the Rockbox site will reveal more information about this.

Based on my experience so far with Rockbox on the iRiver H3xx, your enthusiasms are well warranted. It's an unbelievable piece of software. Considering working color targets have only been around for 2 1/2 months in Rockbox land, I can only imagine what another six months or so of maturation will bring to it. The entire Rockbox team should be applauded for their efforts.



Mikedguy

Comments: 6
 		Jan 30 (2006) 10:14PM  

A few comments, from one already in iRiver/Rockbox-land:

1. Development of ports seems to go faster, not slower, over time.

2. MP3 play is near gapless--every now and then, you might detect something (at least, that's what I find). But generally, the first time you use it, it's a shock: What happened to the gaps?!?!?

3. The user-configurable screen is a blast--you will (waste) much time.

4. It has a basic ID3 tag database system, for artist, album and title. It needs further work and a new system may be being worked on right now (that's the thing about open source firmware). It also has a powerful search facility as part of this (how about Boolean searching, campers?), but which also could use further development to streamline the process interface-wise.

5. Battery life: good.

6. What else? Lots of options . . . . It breathes new life into a player.


Mikedguy

Comments: 6
 		Jan 30 (2006) 10:36PM  

Oh, and by the way, the firmware already works on certain models of Ipods, for those who like to brave forward . . .

[Linky]



Swifty McVeigh

Comments: 27
 		Jan 31 (2006) 12:32AM  

more advice from "the man who knows everything about nothing" - zip22



zip22

Comments: 1816
 		Jan 31 (2006) 01:17AM  

Swifty! how wonderful of you to contribute your profound insight on the development of rockbox. you have been such an asset to this discussion.

FYI, this is under constant development and at the time, the things i posted were accurate to the best of my knowledge. wma does not have a large following. who wants crappy formats? maybe for subscription, but thats a whole other can of worms.


If anyone finds some pictures of the UI, it would be nice to see it instead of just read about it.



Fluidity

Comments: 190
 		Jan 31 (2006) 06:58AM  

No WMA but OGG on the IPod is a very welcome addition. If rockbox gets a little more user friendly then this makes a lot of sense as I could have a 60 gig, gapless thin music player. I'm happy messing about with it on my H340 for now though but the more platforms rockbox appears on, the better!



Flid

Comments: 262
 		Jan 31 (2006) 07:35AM  

Just a few extra colour screen shots (taken from the H300 port @ MysticRiver).... but this should whet your appetite.

[Linky]

The other "cool" thing that I'd completely forgotten about, which rockbox does.... is VOICE. As in.... you don't need to look at the screen to navigate. It'll talk to you instead. Maybe there will be a port for the Shuffle!

Zip. If you're feeling adventurous. You can install a desktop simulator to try out the interface. However.... from memory, it's not straight forward to do. I tried it once, years ago, failed and never tried again (since rockbox went stable enough on Archos' quite quickly).

Other great features...
Editable playlist.
Insert new track (to play next) within a current playlist / album.
Viewable current playlist (next tracks, ad infinitum).
Savable playlists (which you can bookmark play position, and return to at any time).


Donnie

Comments: 247
 		Jan 31 (2006) 08:30AM  

Very nice flexibility there.



Deano

Comments: 123
 		Jan 31 (2006) 08:59AM  

See, this is making me sorely tempted to pick up a 60gb iPod when it matures a bit further. I will be keeping an eye on this. Simply because I want a box on which to play my FLACs. This seems a logical choice, but we shall see. The range of fileformats this thing supports is ace.

It doesn't support WMA, but then I don't think a lot of people will be thinking about using WMA on a Rockbox'd iPod when you have fileformats like .ogg, .mpc and .m4a

Simply the Rockbox team... well... rock. xD



Intelli

Comments: 125
 		Jan 31 (2006) 12:31PM  

This is truly awesome news!



LedFloyd

Comments: 1
 		Jan 31 (2006) 08:27PM  

I have a rockboxed H320, which is quite possibly the greatest combination to ever. Thank you Rockbox!

I actually did consider buying an iPod because of Rockbox, however, I don't think even Rockbox can fix the iPod's naturally average sound quality. That's probably a hardware limitation. If anyone who has a rockboxed iPod wants to prove otherwise, I'd be grateful if you could!



Cassiopeia

Comments: 188
 		Jan 31 (2006) 11:28PM  

If and only if Apple includes decent user equalizer in iPods, I will consider buying one.



derekdru

Comments: 33
 		Feb 01 (2006) 12:31AM  

If all these features are implemented Ipod takes 90% of market share?



zip22

Comments: 1816
 		Feb 01 (2006) 12:53AM  

cassiopeia, are you familiar with rockbox? they will or have implemented user eqs on the ipod.



Dominic
Location: Ireland.
Comments: 2405
 		Feb 01 (2006) 08:00AM  

yes yes yes....the ipod can be great as well as slim now....nice to know



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Step666
Apple, perhaps, is a bad example for the reason Pondy points out.

But the point in general stands, most people don't want to carry round multiple devices, especially not two that are near-identical in terms of features.


In other news, the Eels are amazing live.

Pondlife
largely=larger

See atrocious.

Pondlife
cab=can.

Damn my typing sucks atm.

Pondlife
Well that was partly in what I said

But the Touch comes in largely capacities too doesn't it?

For the touch and iphone I think we cab assume a fair amount of ibuyanythingfromapplesyndrome.

bloodycape
From what I can tell from visiting mac forums, there are quite a few users with the Touch, and the iPhone. Partially for the reason Pondlife said. Not to mention it the case of Apple the Touch cost less for more space(v. iPhone).

Pondlife
So you only have to deal with the one interface but have a music back up on your phone for when mp3 player battery goes. Cheaper than buying two phones.

Well hopefully.

Step666
You wouldn't buy a Touch if you had an iPhone though, would you?

So, if you have a high-end Android handset (which a number of people here either do or are looking at getting), why would you then buy a second device that gives you the same functionality sans the phone element?

bloodycape
It is partially the same reason why the Touch is doing well.

TheDarkSide
Not everyone wants a phone, so what's so hard for some of you to comprehend?

Step666
I don't see why you'd buy either of them over a Galaxy S (or one of it's sister devices).


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