Two new initiatives from the FSF

Posted May 17, 2007 2:05 UTC (Thu) by AJWM (guest, #15888)
In reply to: Two new initiatives from the FSF by guinan
Parent article: Two new initiatives from the FSF

That's a nice price. the VLSI price list quotes that chip (VS1000A) as $20 in quantity 1. (or 100@$10, 500@$4, etc). VLSI also have a demo board which is a complete player (includes flash, etc) for $100.

Thing is, VLSI also offers other chips (eg VS1002, VS1011) that (at a quick glance) seem to be equivalent except speak MP3 and not OV -- and they charge the same price with the Thomson license thrown in. Makes it tough to show a price advantage for Ogg.

I just bought a player for my wife, a Samsung T9 which - the specs on the web said - plays Ogg Vorbis (and MP3 and WMA). BUT -- if you buy one in North America you get the MTP (Music Transfer Protocol) firmware loaded on it, not the USB, so you can't just plug it in and copy files. If you load up the Samsung Music Studio software (on Windows, of course, and it insists on making sure you've got DirectX 9c installed which in turn insists on installing Windows Genuine Advantage -- ain't proprietary software fun?), that refuses to recognize .ogg files as a meaningful format; however, if you rename the .ogg file to .mp3 it loads and will play just fine. Of course I said screw that noise and reflashed the firmware so that the player now acts as any other USB driver as far as file loading, and lets you load .ogg files.

I hope Samsung got a good deal on their WMA license for that nonsense, I can't see any other reason for it. (Well, there's the whole DRM thing too, I guess.) But it shows the kind of hurdles that one has to go through -- and this was for a player that was advertised (in some places, not all) as playing Ogg. Which it does, once you figure out how to get Ogg files on the damn thing.

Two new initiatives from the FSF

Posted May 17, 2007 5:27 UTC (Thu) by guinan (guest, #4644) [Link] (3 responses)

I had a similar bad experience with a Samsung device, the tiny YP-F2J.

I wonder if Samsung and other lucky MS partners knew about the Zune?

Anyway, your post inspired me to look for a firmware upgrade for my Samsung unit. I have a few links that look promising, but if you wouldn't mind sharing where you got yours, post here or email me. Thanks!

Two new initiatives from the FSF

Posted May 17, 2007 9:10 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

That's weird, I have a Samsung YP-F2 (maybe YP-F2XB if that means more, it's only tiny so the writing is... rather concise)

It worked out of the box as an MP3 / Vorbis player. It came with some MP3s and I've since loaded it with lots of Vorbis files at 60kbit/s or so which work fine. Maybe it's about where you buy it as the previous poster suggested

My only complaint about it is that it doesn't take mini-B USB connectors, having instead some arbitrary custom connector. I understand it's too small to have a built-in A connector, and that per USB specifications the custom connector lets the manufacturer relax some electrical tolerances that might save him a few cents here or there, but if I had the choice over I'd pay the extra for mini-B to be able to use the same charging cable as my GPS etc.

Two new initiatives from the FSF

Posted May 17, 2007 16:43 UTC (Thu) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]

I googled for the model number, "ogg", and "linux" and found a few good pages. The actual firmware I downloaded from Samsung's site (http://www.samsung.com/download/ then click "Global Download Center" and accept the disclaimer that if you load the wrong firmware, it's your problem), then find a similar but slightly different model number (ie the last few letters differ) to get the different firmware (on the page with the actual file link, it should mention which countries it's intended for).

For the YP-T9 model, at least, firmware filenames with "_MTP.zip" is the US firmware that was already installed, and "_UMS.zip" was the file to load to get better USB and Ogg support. (Eg, I dl'd the file "20070322175558375_YP-T9_V1.67_UMS.zip"). Updating is just a matter of unzipping the file and copying the contents to the root or data directory on the device (either on Windows (what I did) or using mtp-sendfile on Linux, it comes with libmtp (http://libmtp.sourceforge.net)), the T9 reflashes its firmware on boot if it sees the files. NOTE, this may well be somewhat or completely different for your device. YMMV, etc.

Even if you don't find appropriate firmware, libmtp may do what you need. There's also mtpfs (http://www.adebenham.com/mtpfs/) which is a FUSE filesystem that supports MTP devices. I haven't tried it though.

Good luck.

YP-2F followup

Posted May 17, 2007 18:39 UTC (Thu) by guinan (guest, #4644) [Link]

@tialaramex: mine says YP-F2JXB/XAA on the back, my wife got it as a gift for me at Target here in Mass. With the default firmware, Windows wanted me to upgrade to Media Player 10, etc., the whole "Janus" end-to-end control nightmare.
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5183692.html

Linux tried to treat it as a mass storage device, but it didn't respond, and dropped off the USB bus after a few seconds.

@AJWM: I ended up going through the samsung.com.au site, and found a V1.501 firmware that makes the thing into a mass-storage device. Works great now! I copied some .ogg files to it, they play back just fine. Thanks anyway for the procedural tips - I used the Windows tool from the .zip file to update it this time, but I may try your method if I upgrade again.

Link where I found the .au idea (btw I share the author's disgust regarding the Janus DRM thing):
Crippled By DRM & An 800-Pound Gorilla

Vorbis hardware

Posted May 17, 2007 17:12 UTC (Thu) by andrel (guest, #5166) [Link] (1 responses)

The Vorbis Hardware section of the Xiph wiki tries to track the state of hardware Ogg Vorbis playback. It'd be great if you could post there with details of how you fixed your player.

Vorbis hardware

Posted May 17, 2007 20:36 UTC (Thu) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]

Yes, that wiki helped get me started on the fix -- and also influenced my choice of player in the first place. I'll add some details there, thanks for the reminder.