My experience with Rockbox (first hour)

[polo4455]

This thing Rocks!!  

I downloaded 25gb of music in less than 40 mins using simply copy/paste. I installed my favorite themes and started playing my music. Started also playing with the sound settings and man... The possibilities that Rockbox gives you are endless. Blows everything else out of the water!

Rockbox simply converted the mediocre (due to firmware) Gigabeat into an awesome mp3 player. Respect to those responsible for this gem  8-)

[lights0ut]

glad to see you're enjoying yourself kudos to the devs

[vsl2005]

Yeah, since I found this for my Archos JBV2's I won't buy a player unless it ports Rockbox. Speaking of which - my two JB V2's are getting somewhat long in the tooth. Can anyone recommend an alternative to the iPod available in the 80Gb range?

Once again thanks to all the developers for one of the best pieces of software ever!

[betamaxman]

Yes same here, the aqua theme is my fav. Same time line as well an hour. Sadly though I may not keep it on my ipod. I use an AV ipod dock connected to my home theater. This one allows for a full screen ipod like menu system for accessing ipod files (unlike others). It requires ipod tv mode to be enabled so unlikely to jive with rockbox. I realy like this otherwise. Is there a jpg plugin. Nevermind , on my way to look.  8-)

[polo4455]

Yeah, the only problem with Rockbox is that it will limit my options for my next player. I will have to find something that can be Rockboxed... And the case of my Gigabeat F40 is so revealing: the most important aspect of these type of gadgets is the software not the hardware (granted that there are no huge discrepancies between the main manufacturers).  

[gnu]

@ betamaxman: you can use both the original firmware and rockbox on your ipod.

[betamaxman]

Been seeing that, but a bit confussed. Will the rockbox bootloader boot the apple OS? Or do I need podzilla? Podzilla is nice but all the features I need and want are on rockbox anyway. Please point me in the correct direction searching dosen't seem to be helping me much I must be "search challenged" and thanks that would be cool.  8-)

[lights0ut]

flick the hold switch on your iPod when you turn it on (at the apple logo, before rockbox loads) and you will get into the apple OS. I think holding menu also works.

p.s.

linux rocks

agreed

[betamaxman]

Ahh, thanks I will give that a try.  8-)
It plays jpgs by the way beautifully, and the video quality is great. Nice not to need itunes if I feel no need to. Having a bit of trouuble converting my fav video podcast dltv with winff have the propper html presets. Might be a corrupted file though.  thanks again.

[betamaxman]

This is great the dual boot works wounderfully thanks. Anyone using an itunes placed library is best served to use the "database" option to play files though, due to the itunes/ipod folder structure.  8-)

[djrichwoods]

I'll wait for a stable release of Rockbox for the Iriver H320.  Too buggy and my battery life is nonexistent (like 2 minutes) while using Rockbox.  Booting into Iriver I have no problems whatsoever so Rockbox went bye bye...

I still want to use it as Iriver doesn't have anything that maintains consistent volume between different leveled tracks but it's gotta be rock solid.

Shame, it really has potential...

[Febs]

I'll wait for a stable release of Rockbox for the Iriver H320.  Too buggy and my battery life is nonexistent (like 2 minutes) while using Rockbox.  Booting into Iriver I have no problems whatsoever so Rockbox went bye bye...

When was the last time you tried it?  Power management issues on the H300 series were fixed about a year ago, and Rockbox battery life should equal, if not exceed, the original firmware.  Rockbox is also quite stable on the iriver H100 and H300 series these days.

[djrichwoods]

When was the last time you tried it?  Power management issues on the H300 series were fixed about a year ago, and Rockbox battery life should equal, if not exceed, the original firmware.  Rockbox is also quite stable on the iriver H100 and H300 series these days.

I was using the build from 3 days ago... I tried building the database and poof it dies and the rebooting won't work because the battery was dead.  Recharge the battery, try to change the .wps to boxes and poof the unit dies and the battery is dead.  Recharge it, just try to play music, after 2 minutes poof the unit dies and the battery is dead.  Recharge it, boot up into iriver and play music for hours with the battery icon showing as full.

And not only that, the menus kept jumping around and the unit kept wanted to start playing music when I hadn't pushed play.  All in all it was a frustrating experience.  I wasn't digging the text only GUI either... I know that apparently there's a lot you can do to improve that but after my dead battery experiences I didn't want to spend any more time playing with it less I'd have to recharge my battery for 2 hours again.

Rockbox was installed correctly, I flashed the bootloader to iriver firmware 1.30E and used the current build from April 27 and extracted the fonts to the root folder.  I read the installation instructions thoroughly several times to see if I missed anything that might explain my experiences but all the bases seemed covered.

I thought it might be a dead battery but the fact that I can play music booted to Iriver with no problems whatsoever seems to render that idea moot.

So how long before they finally decide the H3xx release is stable?

[pondlife]

Something's definitely wrong with your H320 or Rockbox installation.  I've used Rockbox nearly every day for 8 months on my H340 and it *is* stable .  The only remaining problem I have is the occasional display of the wrong track details (which is a general playback bugs on all non-Archos targets).

Also battery life here is better under Rockbox than the original firmware; from a full charge, I get about 16 hours from Rockbox versus about 13 hours from the original.

Edited to ask: Do you have a remote plugged in? Does removing or plugging one in make a difference?  I run both with no remote and a non-LCD remote, FWIW.

pondlife

[djrichwoods]

No remote.

I should add a caveat that I bought this used from someone off Craigslist who told me that it still worked perfectly.  And when running Iriver it does run perfectly.

I also should add that I formatted the drive (using the Iriver format option) before installing Rockbox so I was starting with a clean drive.

I believe people when they say that Rockbox is stable on their H3xx unit... I didn't find this to be the case...