Official Rock Box Lounge For IHP 120/140 ONLY

[sirVicious]

This is great news! All this only 1 month after Rockbox booted on Iriver . So already mp3 and flac decodings are working , great!
about 50% of the files I have on my H140 is in flac, yeah yeah I know, too big, why not convert to ogg. Well, I don't have time.

[DreamTactix291]

Nothing wrong with FLAC, but yeah it is slightly large for a portable.

The plus is when Rockbox is done you'll be able to play them no problem

[sirVicious]

Indeedy The iriver firmware sucks, I'm using about 25gb of 40gb and already the boot up times slows considerably, from 14s to 21s, that's a 50% increment.
Judging from the pace, I would just venture an uneducated guess that Rockbox will be at least in Alpha stage (usable and somewhat stable, not bricking) in about 2 more months. They still have to get audio driver working. Or atleast that's my hope.

[DeadMan]

Yeah API is tough plus they have to write the codecs. BTW 104% realtime is not that good for MP3 playback. The Motorola codec used by iRiver firmware does it in 20% CPU or something which equates to a lot higher realtime % than 104% (From what I was reading on the IRC channel). The problem is that libmad is more accurate than Motorola and is not yet wrriten to the wire for iRiver. I might be wrong there so maybe one of the Rockbox guys can clarify. iRiver use 96Mhz of the Coldfire CPU not it's full 140Mhz because it does get rather warm at full speed. Still. There is lots of room for improvements and optimizations.

EDIT: Actually the statement about 20% from the Motorola decoder seems to be totally bogus. Ignore that as Linus just told me he does not know how much CPU iRiiver's decoder uses.

[linus]

Originally Posted by DeadMan

EDIT: Actually the statement about 20% from the Motorola decoder seems to be totally bogus. Ignore that as Linus just told me he does not know how much CPU iRiiver's decoder uses.

The glossy product sheets from Motorola claim that their MP3 decoder requires only 19MHz to run in real time ("Worst case data and assume single cycle memory accesses"). However we

1) don't know if iRiver uses the Motorola codec

2) know that it can't play all MP3 files

[XavierGr]

Thanks to HCl and nooby I have rockbox up and running in my iHP (I update every day fresh daily builds) as I have already said.

Just to clarify some things about OTF playlist, delete etc.

These kind of things are already implemented!!!
Ok I know that there is no mp3 playback to have a practical use for them, but things like that are already part of Rockbox waiting for mp3 playback to work.

For example if you go to a file or folder (and that includes all sort of files not only audio) and you hold the joystick down a menu will pop up with varius options. Such as:
1.Playlist (I guess to make or enque a playlist)
2.Rename
3.Delete
4.Open with
5.Create directory

Also the scrolling of text is already implemented and full customizable from the settings. You have 4 parameters in scrolling:
1.Scroll Speed
2.Scroll start delay(how many ms scrolling will occur)
3.Scroll step size(how many pixels every step will be)
4.Bidirectional Scroll Limit

P.S:When I set it to scroll in high speed the scrolling text gets blury and I cant read it. Any comments on it Linus?

The LCD backlight timing as well as the Hard Disk Spindown is fully customizable to the user. Of course there is no HD spin bug.

On top of that there are many fonts and languages to choose from.
You can choose to very big and fat fonts to very small ones!

There are a lot of options for playback and sound as well (which some of them I couldnt imagine or know ex. karaoke?)

Text documents can now be read on the fly. No worry to put the Text file to a directory called TEXT. You can open a txt file like any other audio file.
(Same applies to Game boy games)

Overall the Rockbox firmware is simplistic but fast and understandable.
Dont expect fatty pictures and shiny banners in the menus.

I cant imagine a better firmware than Rockbox. There are so many options that I am lost....

And to add the cherry to the pie, there are, many plug-ins, games(game boy games, snake, snake 2, tetris, solitaire etc.) and little programs(calculator, metronome, stopwatch etc.)

For you that want further information download the manual from the Rockbox site (Documentation)
I will try to post some pics of the menus and options if someone is interested.

[benschi]

pls post many many pictures...

[Jonny]

Yes please do. I am wondering what the 'Open with' option in the menu does. Surely you can only open an mp3 file with the mp3 decoder and a Gameboy game with the Gameboy emulator. Is this not the case?

[robkiger]

Originally Posted by XavierGr

Dont expect fatty pictures and shiny banners in the menus.

I'm sure that if somebody could take the time out to do some fancy, good looking menus then there'll be a lot of people very, very happy .

[Mike]

Thanks for the report, Xavier--very exciting and can't wait until the ware is officially released!

[TCK]

Originally Posted by robkiger

I'm sure that if somebody could take the time out to do some fancy, good looking menus then there'll be a lot of people very, very happy .

To be honest, I wouldn't of thought so. If you want fancy menus, you're better off using the iRiver firmware. If anything else, less clutter is better. Just look at the iPod firmware.

Besides, it's customisable enough, and I'd imagine adding graphics would limit customisability.

I'd like some of those pictures too. I'm still nowhere near confident enough to even think of putting Rockbox on my player, but an indepth preview would be nice.

[ChrisMofNS]

I'll second the request for pictures of the interface.

[ManchesterUnited4Life]

Well it'd be cool to see what it looks like at least, Xavier, please ....

I'm thinkin' about d/l'ing the Firmware (even though it doesn't play mp3's just yet) 'cause once I'm tired of fiddlin' around w/ settings and/or games, (as I understand it) all that's needed is to switch off, restart and select the original iRiver firmware to listen to music ... if that's indeed the case, then we can all play the cool games whilst we wait for efficient mp3 implementation ....

[bagder]

Originally Posted by Jonny

I am wondering what the 'Open with' option in the menu does. Surely you can only open an mp3 file with the mp3 decoder and a Gameboy game with the Gameboy emulator. Is this not the case?

No, it is not.

You can open an mp3 file with the id3 tag editor. Or the mp3 split editor. Or the mp3-add-weirdo-sound-effects plugin. Or the encrypt-my-file-with-a-secret-password plugin. Or why not the 'vbrfix' plugin that actually exists and fixes the XING/VBRI header that is so often bad.

(Ok, so some of these programs I named are imaginary but I used them to prove why the concept is there.)

[bagder]

Originally Posted by ManchesterUnited4Lif e

(as I understand it) all that's needed is to switch off, restart and select the original iRiver firmware to listen to music

That's correct. Currently if you start the Rockbox bootloader while pressing the REC button, or you start the unit using the remote, it starts the original iRiver firmware instead of loading Rockbox.

[TCK]

Originally Posted by nobby, from the Rockbox forums

we've heard of one dead box allready (it did JUST ABOUT manage to survive enough to reflash back) so dont do it unless you want to help develop rockbox for iriver.

remember, iriver serves no real use for end users now, it cant play music yet.

Don't go thinking the current build is that stable, people. The last thing you want is to spend another $250+ just to use Rockbox.

Just a warning, tis all.

[ManchesterUnited4Life]

Originally Posted by TCK

Just a warning

*note taken*

Cheers for that TCK, am not going to chance it now, especially having just got my EX71's back (after a 3 week wait) ...

[XavierGr]

Here are some photos that show the magnificent work, all the devs have done for this firmware!

Download the zip file for more Photos.

I cant wait playback support.............

[linus]

Originally Posted by XavierGr

P.S:When I set it to scroll in high speed the scrolling text gets blury and I cant read it. Any comments on it Linus?

The LCD in the H100 is very slow. The communication with the CPU is fast, but the actual pixels take a long time to change. It's a chemical/electrical issue, so we'll just have to live with it.

[cormie]

Will it be possible to have the background black and the font white?

I don't think there is any need for pictures, there are none in the current H1xx firmware. But I do think a nice border and side menu would look nice. Also, when you are in a folder, can you see the parent folder?

Keep up the great work

[XavierGr]

Originally Posted by cormie

Will it be possible to have the background black and the font white?
Keep up the great work

Yes there is such an option. You can make the screen colour inverted so that letters will have white colour and the screen black. You can even turn the screen upside down!!!