A call for an open media gadget [LWN.net]

Your editor, recently faced with some long flights, went out and bought himself a portable media player. Despite certain, predictable marital problems caused by the acquisition of yet another expensive electronic toy, the new device has been a great success. It is Linux friendly, plays Ogg files, sounds good, and makes it possible to carry vast amounts of music in a shirt pocket. Since your editor is a fan of live music, he has been especially pleased by the combination of the player and the vast library of concert recordings which is downloadable - with the artists' permission - from archive.org.

On the other hand, this device has its annoyances. It boots slowly. The user interface has clearly not been through a serious usability program. The device has a beautiful color display, but most of the space is wasted with silly decorations so that song titles must be scrolled. There are no games to keep the kids happy. And so on. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to go in and hack on the code so that this hardware, which is so full of potential, could be enjoyed fully?

Efforts like the open graphics project seek to push forward the state of free graphics through the creation of entirely open hardware. That project is worthwhile, and we wish its developers the best of luck. But here is a question worth asking: might there not be value in the creation of an open media gadget?

One could easily put together a wishlist of features: a nice display, substantial internal storage, good analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog hardware, an FM tuner, a low-power FM transmitter, an integrated camera, Bluetooth and/or WiFi networking, etc. But gadgets already exist with most or all of those capabilities. What's missing is this: the platform should be based on Linux, all of the source for the base system should be available, and it should be easy to install new software (and replace existing software) on the system. This gadget should not just tolerate having its operating software ripped out and replaced; it should be designed with that in mind from the beginning.

A solid, open platform can inspire a great deal of creativity in the wider development community. Can you imagine what sort of community might gather around a media gadget which is not only open, but which actively encourages its users to hack on it? This device would rapidly develop capabilities unimagined by its creators; if a way could be found to produce it at a reasonable price, chances are that it would be a raging commercial success. Your editor - once his credit card has been returned to him - would gladly buy one.

Thanks to over twenty years of work from the free software community, many of us can do our core computing with entirely free systems. But this freedom has not yet extended into many of the other computers that we use every day. Maybe, someday, the consumer electronics industry will realize that, while it makes great hardware, it can do better by letting its customers create much of its software for it. But, while we're waiting, perhaps there are some people with the same sort of drive and skills as shown by the Open Graphics Project who would like to show the industry how it can be done?

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The Mystery Gadget

Posted May 19, 2005 1:51 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Oh, OK...it's an iRiver H340. A nice device, but frustrating because it could be so much nicer.

The Mystery Gadget

Posted May 19, 2005 3:58 UTC (Thu) by bk (guest, #25617) [Link]

The Rockbox project is working on Free firmware for the H1xx series of iRiver players, hopefully they'll support your H3xx model too pretty soon. Other than the screen (color on 3xx, 2 bit greyscale on 1xx), the architectures are very similar.

Of course I agree with the theme of your article; we wouldn't need to wait for volunteers to hack free alternatives if the devices were free and open to begin with.

The Mystery Gadget

Posted May 19, 2005 6:51 UTC (Thu) by edomaur (subscriber, #14520) [Link]

It could also have been a Cowon iAudio. Ogg, FM, 40GB, USB2, etc. But the user interface has been ultra-botched. Slow boot and astonishingly counter-intuitive interface.

A call for an open media gadget

Posted May 19, 2005 16:12 UTC (Thu) by xtifr (subscriber, #143) [Link]

There are dozens. A quick google search came up with an advertisement for mp3 players: http://www.bumblesmp3players.co.uk/mp3_players/portable_m... which marks the ones with ogg vorbis support. (Note: not an endorsement of the linked-to company; I'm merely using them as a random example.) I'm not even sure how up-to-date that list is. With the recent release of a cheap single-chip vorbis decoder, expect more and more devices to provide ogg support.

BTW, although the article didn't mention it, the Internet Archive's live music collection may well be the largest single collection of ogg vorbis files in the world. Certainly the largest fully-legal collection. :)

Open hardware specs and free software

Posted May 19, 2005 2:18 UTC (Thu) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

You're asking for two things:

One is that the hardware specifications be open, allowing free software to be written targeting the device. I don't know how many of these are based on architectures already familiar to GNU/Linux like ARM, but that seems to be a prerequisite.

The other point seems easier to collect: a platform of software with the features and extensibility you speak of.

<URL:http://www.mythtv.org/>>

A call for an open media gadget

Posted May 19, 2005 7:13 UTC (Thu) by komarek (subscriber, #7295) [Link]

The Neuros folks really do seem to have their hearts in the right place. Both the electronics and the software have been opened. I'm running a beta firmware, and third-party firmwares (with some crazy features) are now available.

Another company that I like so far is Momitsu. I have their 880N networked DVD player. It arrived region-free. It is running uCLinux (on a Sigma Designs board). They use apache+tomcat for their network media server. When I emailed support, one of the responses was something like "Many of our users know more about our player than we do. If you have a hardware enhancement that you would like us to incorporate, please send photos along with a detailed description." They also read their tech support email on Saturdays.

Wish I could hack my iRiver 1GB

Posted May 19, 2005 9:37 UTC (Thu) by shapr (subscriber, #9077) [Link]

I recently purchased a 1GB iRiver. It plays Ogg, mounts as USB mass storage, runs for many hours on one AA battery, and does not squish when I fall off my unicycle.

Even so, I very much wish I could hack the user interface myself. It boots slowly. It has beeps for some events but not others. It requires at least two button presses to get music, one to boot, then several seconds later another press of the same button to start playing.

I wish I could hack in instant boot or at least single button boot and play.

The iRiver microphone is quite good, I also wish I could plug it into my USB port and use it for headphones and microphone for VoIP.

spec list

Posted May 24, 2005 13:06 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

The <a
href="http://www.rcaaudiovideo.com/Cultures/en-US/ModelDetail.h...">RCA
Lyris RD2012</a> I have would fit your musts (which match mine), but not
your shoulds.

spec list

Posted May 26, 2005 19:07 UTC (Thu) by barrygould (guest, #4774) [Link]

FWIW, VFAT/FAT32 is approaching it's limits of usefulness (max partition size=127GB).

I don't know what alternatives there are after that, as it needs to be compatible with Windows/Mac/Linux.

Barry

The next generation of Palm Devices?

Posted May 19, 2005 15:07 UTC (Thu) by smeg4brains (subscriber, #207) [Link]

Could what you want be found in the next generation of palm devices?

I use my palm for basically the same purposes. It plays ogg, mp3, and even divx. It's not that big of a strecth that someone might come out with a palm with the hardware spec that you're looking for, and the newer palms are supposed to be running their same old gui, but on top of a linux os that deals with the hardware.

I've never seen a palm device with an FM radio (standard that is, you can get it added easily enough), but Samsung is coming out with an mp3/(ogg w/ software), voice recording, 320x320 screen, palm os phone. If I recall, it's also got a camera with a flash (not positive). Palm also just game out with their lifedrive or something like that which is basically a 4 gig palm (still with the SD expansion), a 320x480 screen, mp3, bluetooth, 802.11 etc etc. It was rumored to have the linux backend, but didn't actually have it when it came out, But I've heard it'll probably be available in an update. The lifedrive doesn't have all the toys possible just yet, but I'm sure it's just the first in a series, and I'm sure the price will come down. Right now at $499 it's a little steep.

Just CF!

Posted May 20, 2005 2:13 UTC (Fri) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

It doesn't even need any onboard flash. It can boot *and* play from the CF card. It doesn't need USB. It doesn't really need a display. (A single row of LEDs can be a display, if you are willing to swing it back and forth. :-) All else it needs is a battery holder, a few buttons, and a phone jack. On board, a DSP whose clock starts up again when the output fifo gets near empty, a regular processor to feed it Vorbis once in a while (and shut itself off, too, the rest of the time), and a pair of D/A converters. It ought to cost about $5 to make, and sell for $25. I'd buy lots of them.

CF bad

Posted Jun 2, 2005 21:59 UTC (Thu) by yem (guest, #1138) [Link]

Having just paid for an expensive repair of a digital camera due to a bent pin in the CF slot, I hope CF dies a quick death. Would much prefer SD which does not use pins as such. Yeah I know CF is superior in some ways, but its form factor is a dead end IMO.

A call for an open media gadget

Posted Jun 3, 2005 20:45 UTC (Fri) by HoserHead (subscriber, #828) [Link]

> chances are that it would be a raging commercial success

I'm afraid that I'm going to have to disagree with you on that. The iPod is a "raging commercial success," and it has none of the openness that you (and I) would like. (I own an iPod, btw.) The developers of such a beast might be able to make a living, but the population of people who'd want one is much smaller than we (as people on the inside of that population, looking out) would believe.