Rockbox 3.0 firmware breathes the life back into your MP3 player
By Stephanie Patterson 
posted Sep 25th 2008 4:31PM
posted Sep 25th 2008 4:31PM
[Via Ostatic; thanks Eric L]
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No Zune support? :( I have an old 30 gig that I wouldn't mind trying out something like this on.
They are almost done with the Gigabeat S, which the Zune 30 is based on
That's what I want to know
Won't happen. Nobodies been able to crack the Zune.
Aww, no Zune support?
Oh well, I guess the Zune's present firmware is okay. Cool firmware though, I would like to give it a try.
While I agree that the present Zune firmware's decent, I'd still like some DivX/XviD support.
@Mark
I was thinking the same thing. Nothing I hate more than converting my movies! That's why I loved my Creative Zen Vision M..
Didnt think about xvid support, dang that would be frickin sweet! All my bootlegs on my zune, whoo hoo!
Well that's because Archos pretty much supports all of them (well most, codecs, at least).
no dude, it's because the Archos models they are supporting are as old as McCain
really the only modern players are the iPods and the aging Sansas
wow, that looks pretty slick
Really? I was thinking, "Features = Good, Interface = crap on a stick"
that's exactly what I've found previously w/ rockbox. you CAN do a lot of things with rockbox, but it's a bit of a pain to use, as it's not very intuitive...perhaps there's something new w/ the 3.0 firmware--definitely will be trying it out, but I'm not very hopeful on the interface side.
whats the word on battery life? I have an old ipod 5G with an earlier version of rockbox on it, and the thing just dies after a few hours or so.
respect that avatar there ben
Yes, it does play doom. For about 30 minutes and your battery shits out.
At least that's how it was when I first dove into Rockbox 2+ years ago. I even submitted a skin to the gallery for iAudio X5s before I lost interest and stopped dual-booting into Rockbox altogether. I expect that they've optimized the ports for each mp3 player, though, and that it doesn't eat your battery life like it used to. If anything I think Rockbox, when ported over to a player thoroughly, increased battery life. I was going to equate a Rockbox final build with Duke Nukem Forever but there was always visible progress with Rockbox. Good job, guys.
Aww fuck, responded to the wrong post. Anyway, you're going to have to ask someone in the forums how the final build is on a 5G iPod as battery life differs from port to port.
battery life is good, people seeing comparable to the apple firmware for mp3 playback these days (16-20hrs not unheard of, depending on codec used and how you choose to theme your user interface)
@Forrest and Karl
would you really want to give up the zune firmware with the wireless features for more codecs?
although I guess I agree in principal, I prefer my devices hackable.
Oh, I have an 80gig Zune that I wouldn't think of touching with this - I LOVE my Zune. But I have a first gen model just collecting dust. If this would let me be a little more flexible in terms of formats (especially video) that I use, and allow for mass storage, it might be nice. Plus it would be fun to try on hardware that I really don't use anymore.
if you have an old zune collecting dust send it to me, I'll use it.
ive been using rockbox on my sansa for a week now. OMG ITS AMAZING. its like....the butters son! it MAY kill battery alil faster though, even though you can decrease screen brightness. this is open source at its tops!
SWEET!!! this is awesome, if i had an ipod... lol... wait! no iPod Touch support? or is there? hmm must research.
I don't think you understand the point. The Rockbox firmware is an alternative to the dated, crappy iPod classic firmware. The iPod Touch firmware does just about anything you'd want the machine to do, outside of the extra codec support.
Hopefully they fixed the issues with database corruption and slow database updates, those issues prevented me from fully adopting RockBox on my iPod nano last year.
That seems awesome! Except that it'll make your iPod look like one of those Chinese fake though..
Wow. Beautiful. Well I just might hang on to my 6 year old iPod Video afterall.
6 years old huh. i'd say closer to 3.
6 year old? the iPod video came out in late 2005. It could only be 3 years old max.
No... see, he has the iPod video that hasn't come out yet. It has holographic support and built-in literal "Time Machine" support... so it could easily be 6 years old. :-)
Oh for fucks sake. My point will never be discovered while hidden behind this inaccuracy.
"My point will never be discovered while hidden behind this inaccuracy."
Best comment in a while! 2 thumbs up!
wow engadget is so late today. i bet the next post will be iphone 2.2 beta or how the metallica cd audio quality blames ipod.
i've had it on my iRiver H340 since the day it was ported
i also bought a 1st gen iPod nano just so i could use use it with rockbox
it won't work on zune, or later generation iPods due to the fact that the firmware is encrypted, making it very hard to get the bootloaded on there.
RockBox has been around for a very long time. I had it almost 2 years ago on my nano (which got lost) then my friend video ipod (which got stolen. Its very customizable and surprised everyone that saw my custom GUI.
Link to the theme I made on the RockBox Forums
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=14125.0
I wonder if using this firmware enables it to be used as a webserver beacuse it would appear that they are being hosted from an 1st gen ipod...
damn now i wish i wouldn't have sold my Gigabeat S30
I might be in the minority, but I think the iPod UI looks better without Rockbox. Rockbox makes it look gimmicky/cheesy and a little bit busy. I, for one, LIKE the clean look of the iPod's UI.
Agreed. I wonder if you can keep the iPod UI... yet free your iPod from iTunes and its file format restrictions...
BTW, there are MANY different skins; actually ~51 as of now for the 5G iPod Video.
@podaman: I believe I read that if you hold the left arrow button down for 10 seconds while starting up, you can get your original UI back..don't know how true that is
Its dual boot. Turn it on and put on the 'Hold Key' and it boots into normal iPod mode
Hooray needless ornamentation!
Well, I'm going to upgrade to rockbox 3 from the previous version on my sansa as soon as I find my charging cable ... stupid proprietary USB cable, does anyone know where I can find a 3rd party one for the e200 for under $6 incl. S&H (besides eBay)
Easy, monoprice.com
I'll definitely try the new Rockbox on my Sansa C series.
Hey, thanks, I'll probably buy from there if I don't find mine soon.
I'm seeing some clean, design-led elegant UI graphics on the left. and a dogs dinner i'd get sacked for passing off as design on the right.
but seriously, the iPod has consideration given to white space and margins (which on such small screen estate is laudable), to clear, considered type heirarchys, and clear use of a careful restraint. the 'improved' one on the left is pretty much the direct opposite, with superfluous angles and gradients, terrible colour choices and textures that look like computer software box art from 1995 and almost illegible type.
all that to add freetard crap like .ogg and .flac. could they not have kept the award-laden UI and packaged the codec support as a plugin?
Well, no, they couldn't have. If the iPod firmwares were open, they could have, but since they aren't, you have to go with the "freetard" firmware to have options. There are different themes, BTW, and if none of them meet your standards, you can make your own. A lot better to start with a crappy UI and be able to fix it, than to start with a crappy backend and be able to do nothing about it, IMHO.
iff Ogg and FLAC is freetard crap to you, I'd say your ears might be in the same boat.
http://www.vorbis.com
http://flac.sourceforge.net
I've never used anything like this before, so was wondering if its easy to go back to the original ipod firmware?
Yep :] Theres a simple in/uninstaller
me too.... i want to know if it deletes your music when u install, and is it easy to get back to the way it was ?
yeah, you can reboot back into the original firmware if you want (don't even need to uninstall - it's dual boot for most devices)
It's dualboot, so you can go back to the apple os anytime you feel by flipping the hold switch when you are starting it up. Or, you can go to the ipod linux site and install the ipodloader to have a list of available os's pop up when you start your ipod.
Yea, to go back to the old firmware you just have to put the hold button on.
I just installed this on my ancient 4-G greyscale ipod and it kicked some new life into it. The stuff you can do with this firmware is great. Customizable EQ, games, applications.
I'm loving it.
so after hundreds and hundreds of misplaced comments, you're telling me i'm the first guy here to say,
"IT PLAYS DOOM!"
get on the ball, people.
it would be good if this came to the samsung p2, the p2 interface is good but its pretty much the same as every mobile phone and i want something different. (i do know that you can get different styles of themes but i dont like them)
a quick question, if you download this firmware to an ipod then realise you dont like it, can you change it back?
Looks really cool. can't wait for it to come out for the Zune.....
Wait a minute, before Rockbox I was listening to Demon Days and now that I have it I'm listening to We Something (Radio Edit). That's some pretty powerful software.
All those codecs aren't in there for music PLAYBACK. They can actually turn one song, into another song, at a high bitrate, and better quality.
second one down on the right, media player clone, ouch, the ipod UI beats that one hands down
I'm getting ready to install Rockbox specifically to use that Media Player UI. It looks awesome.
does this mess with music/videos purchased from itunes? because if not, i won't get it. it looks cool and the description of it sounds amazing! can anyone tell me? thanks.
oh never mind. i poked through the faq and it does mess with the DRM'd songs. :(
To all the Zunies that are crying they want this, they should step back and be grateful that Microsoft allows older models to be upgraded with newer firmware. I have a 5G iPod that I'd simply like to update to the iPod Classic UI, but Apple thinks I should throw away my perfectly good $300 player and pay them an additional $250 just for the nicer interface. At least they give iPod Touch owners a $10 upgrade option - why not the rest of us?
I would want this for Zune for the codec support and it will let you be able to use it as a hard drive instead of using the Zune software. That is what is holding me back from upgrading from my 3 year old 20gb iAudio X5 with a dying non-replaceable battery. If The Zune 30 or 80 could handle ogg and flac files without using the Zune software I'd drop $250 on it no problem. The closest thing is a Cowon A3 but I don't like the landscape setup it has.
if you end up not liking the UI can you go back to the original ipod UI?
Its dual boot. Turn it on and put on the 'Hold Key' and it boots into normal iPod mode
You probably don't want it, its not that great. So don't download it, so the server will free up and I can.
Any word on battery life? That's really the only thing that's holding me back. The iPod firmware does all I need it to do so there's no point in messing with it if it's just for fun and if I'm going to get worse battery life.
Still no love for the 6Gen iPod. Poo.
Man, if only someone could crack the new ipods, that way we could have a good player with a high storage capacity.
For players these days, it seems you can get either good, OR high capacity :/
Zune 120 is the best compromise on the market for now, but it's still not really ideal.
Well, you can still get Rio Karmas if you look around, and they've been modded to nice high capacities (they take 1.8" PATA drives). I don't have that kind of music collection, though; a 16GB SD is more than enough for me.
Hmm, so the only music-related feature is that it supports a bunch of encoding formats I don't use? All that in exchange for weaker syncing to my iTunes library? I'll pass, thanks.
Aww man, I was hoping this was going to be the easy way to hack my old 4th gen iPod Photo to play video. I've heard it can be done, but not by any means I'd be comfortable trying...rats.
Why would I want to turn Demon Days into Dream Dance Volume 33?
i can't believe a single person has said this looks cool, its f*** ugly. the codec support etc is nice but if peeps are that concerned about running normally unsupported formats on an ipod, why did they buy an ipod in the first place, and not a creative zen touch, which came out the same time, was cheaper, and featured most of the things that rockbox provides 3 years later when its been superceeded numerous times?
Does anyone know if rockbox will work with iPod docks? Also iPod -> Car interfaces...
David: http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=17841.0
David: http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=17841.0
Rockbox 3 was a battery vampire for my iPod 5th Gen 30GB.
I get about an hour of video playback with the standard firmware, but Rockbox died after a few minutes of indexing my songs.
Does 3.0 have integrated video hardware acceleration? or is it still runing off the cpu / horrible fps.
Xvid?
RockBox always made me wish I had an old hard drive player kicking around...
I've always been interested in this, but sadly it doesn't run on the new Classics.
Wow, I had already given up on this guys due to the lack of updating the video library.
I didn't have any issue using Rockbox for audio. But, I also wanted to watch my videos.
Still no iPod classic support?
want zune support...
I love Rockbox. It's playing nicely on my 80GB Video, and the theme I have (FSM for the main theme, Cabbiev3 for the wps) is great.
Best of all, it can play my ogg theora music effortlessly.
I want my classic support :(
It's the only media player I've got, and my dad has a 3rd gen Nano, no support for that either.
Ballin'
does not support current gen ipods. =(
its about time...
i had the previous version on a sansa e200 about a year ago... havnt seen an orginal pmp coming near it since.
Does this mean I can get video support on my first iPod Nano?
awww... no support for my zen vision m =[
No Nano 2G Support ?!?!?!
just got my hands on some cheapo chinese knock-off ipods. 1gb each, a few "shuffle" and "nano". this won't work, but does anyone know of a product that would?
can be installed on an iriver x20 FM 2 GB and where can I get software / firmwire
If you just want to make the interface look pretty your better of at ipodhacking or ipodwizard, getting quite good with the firmware these days...