Been away for a while - what's the status of RB and iPod?

[ImagoX]

  I was lurking in here several months ago when my beloved iRiver was looking shaky - back then the RB support for the 80GM iPod video was still in its infancy and not all the various video codecs were supported.  I wonder of that nut's been cracked and if RB is now a full-function OS for that unit?

  Also, I'm interested in getting an iPod, simply because of the wealth of accessories/speakers/boomboxes available to go with it but NOT for iTunes...  I have no interest in giving Mac money for songs, installing a bunch of DRM on my PC, or in having to load a shell OS just to do file transfers.  I have about 4000 songs ripped from my own CDs and add 1-3 CDs a month that I purchase and never download tracks from iTunes.

  What I want is something that will allow me to download my existing song library along with their file structure to the player, as well as use my extensive list of .M3U playlist files on the iPod - will Rockbox allow me to do this with the Mac player?

[LambdaCalculus]

Well, I can give you the status thus far; read all about it:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodPort

And there's some useful tools listed here; see if what you're looking for is listed:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/UsefulTools

[ImagoX]

  Seems as if there's a plugin for video playback now...  that wasn't the case the last time I checked.

  Also, I didn't see any mention in the FAQs about .M3U playlist use... there's a plugin that seems to be intended to allow you to use playlists made in iTunes under RB, but that's not what I'm after.  Simply put: I have about 5 years invested in about 150 .M3U playlists for my car, the gym and other uses, and I don't relish having to re-do all of them on the new player.  

  Last - I wonder of someone can talk about the video playback on the iPod?  I often see shows on NBC that put iPod download versions of episodes on that service and I wonder of anyone successfully uses their iPod with RockBox to access them?  I assume that you would need to reboot into the Mac OS, then access iTunes to be able to accomplish something of this nature?  Yes?  No?  Could downloaded movie content of this kind be played using the Mpeg video plugin, or would they have to be played under the Mac OS due to DRM?

[LambdaCalculus]

or would they have to be played under the Mac OS due to DRM?

You win the $64 question!  

In all seriousness, the MPEG player in Rockbox is not quite up to speed yet. This is especially true of the iPod videos, since we have no documentation on the Broadcom video chip these models have in them, and therefore we can't really get good FPS rates out of them... maybe 10 FPS at the most with MPEG2 video encoded at 320x240. We're doing everything in software at this point, which is one reason why video playback is so terrible on the iPod videos.

[ImagoX]

  Ah... so it sounds like the RB community is still chewing on that one.  

  But am I correct in my assumption that it's possible to use Rockbox for all my daily MP3 playback needs, using M3U playlist files and then rebooting to the Mac OS for iTunes video playback?  I'm not sure how a iTunes video download will save to the unit's HDD if I have my own files downloaded onto the hard drive - has anyone tried this?  I know that iTunes creates a master directory list of anything and everything downloaded to the player via the iTunes software, so my music transferred via Rockbox should be "invisible" to iTunes, yes?  

  The way I access my M3U playlists on my iRiver (with Rockbox) now is to navigate to a "playlists" folder I have on the player and then select one.  Rockbox reads the M3U file and plays the tracks.  

 

[LambdaCalculus]

With dual booting, you can play your tunes in Rockbox, and then switch back to the Apple firmware to watch videos or listen to any DRM tracks you may have purchased from iTunes.

You have the right idea about how iTunes and Rockbox work when it comes to storing music. With Rockbox, you can create your own folders and drop your music in, but iTunes does that wacky obfuscating of your files by stuffing everything into the iPod_Control folder that's on the drive. You can, however, build a database in Rockbox and just access your music using that.

As for iTunes playlists, I don't think those transfer over to Rockbox.

[ImagoX]

  No - you need to use a converter plugin to make iTune playlists into M3U - so that playlist format MUST be supported in the iPod version of RB.

  I'm honestly tempted to just back up my entire music library, load up iTunes and take the plunge...  My main concern about iTunes has been and continues to be the introduction of DRM into a music library that I've spent literally YEARS assembling from my CDs and which I share on several different PCs and players (at least 3 PCs and two players).  Up until now, I've controlled the library for all these diverse computers and players via M3U playlists, and I don't see a way in iTunes to convert them to whatever proprietary format that software uses (IS THERE?)

  Does anyone know if iTunes messes with previously-ripped MP3 files in an existing library, adding DRM or some other unwanted overhead to those files?  Maybe it's time that I just stopped struggling against the current and embraced "the man's" control of my music...  (sigh).  Trying to keep track of all this BS is getting exhausting (which, I suppose, is Apple's entire plan),

[GodEater]

Rockbox always has, and always will support .M3U playlists.

Also - just using iTunes to load up your ipod will not "introduce" DRM to your collection. You'll only get DRM files if you choose to buy DRM crippled tunes from the iTunes Music Store.

[Bagder]

Rockbox always has, and always will support .M3U playlists.

Yeah, since May 5 2002 should be considered way before the dawn of mankind... :-P