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

A call for an open media gadget

Posted May 19, 2005 1:28 UTC (Thu) by frazier (guest, #3060)
Parent article: A call for an open media gadget

It must be asked, what is the "Linux friendly, plays Ogg files, sounds good, and makes it possible to carry vast amounts of music in a shirt pocket" device mentioned in the article?

Thanks.

-Brock Frazier

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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. :)