Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion

A question regarding why Rockbox was made the way it was.

(1/3) > >>

galbro48026:
To me, i have never played music on the rockbox and the only reason is that i can play music on my firmware (i have ipod5g and sansae280) im just curious, i dont know why people would rather use rockbox to play music rather than the firmware, i can understand that rockbox play over 13 music formats but every music i have bought was .mp3 format. and most music is only around 4-5MB that really not that much. and i have never seen many different formats of music before other than .mp3 and few others (which i would just convert to mp3 to me average space of mp3 is only 4-5MB that not much to me) Im sure thats why you made rockbox like that because majority of people wanted it that way. in my view and i know i dont represent the majority. it would been cool to have tons of games and emulators and also a video player that plays tons of different codecs as a alternative firmware and/or freeware program in addition to the original firmware.

Llorean:
So what was your point exactly?

Rockbox was made to be a replacement firmware, by people who actually wanted the features it has. Some of us feel that patent-unencumbered formats are better. Some of us actually have a use for gapless playback, or the ability to create a standardized playlist format, or the ability to use our players without needing special software on the PC, or for the ability to not lose quality by having to convert audio in strange formats to one of the two formats our player supports by default, etc.

Rockbox was made the way it was because we made it for us. We put in the features we want to use. Yes, it gets shared with you, but we're the ones working on it, so we put in the things we think are most important.

Here's where it gets great though: We shared all our work with you. Even posted it so you can change it. That means anyone who thinks more emulators would be good can work on it and add more emulators. Nobody is there to stop you!

Rockbox can be whatever you need it to be. We made it what we want it to be, because we're the ones making it. We don't ask you for money in exchange for the software, or anything else. We just share what we've done.

mad:
have you looked here? http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/WhyRockbox
Rockbox was started to improve on the disappointing firmware of the old school archos players. It made my archos 6000 about 100 times better to use back in 2003.
It turns out that with years Rockbox simply trumps every other original firmware that a company puts out. It is for people who want better sound, control over their music, custmomization of the interface, control over the firmware code and of course a wide range of audio codecs....

Spanky:
Thought I'd take a stab at this from a basic user's standpoint. Biggest thing for me in Rockbox is the ability to have all those codecs. FLAC is awesome for those that like quality and don't really care about the size of the file. I think the Equalizer in Rockbox is one of it's shining points and there's nothing that comes close in portable players to it. As far as having tons of games, those games have to be coded in the right language and they must also be open source games to even be considered to be converted over. Emulators can take quite a toll on the players CPU, I can't do much with rockboy on my iPod 4G. Videos, that has to be another shining point of Rockbox. I can convert ANY video to play on my iPod 4G Photo. It's really amazing that Apple hasn't released a firmware update to allow the player to do that.

If better sound, more reliability and being able to play video on devices that can't do it on original firmware isn't enough. Rockbox is "updated" several times a day and it's open source! There's many people that contribute to it and with some time invested you can make your own custom version.

I've forgotten what the original apple firmware looks like. :)

TexasRockbox:
1. Ogg Vorbis playback.  I decided some time ago that that format worked best for my ears in a lossy format.  Large capacity players that play that format are rare.

2. I could design my own screen placing controls and colors I wanted where I wanted.  Display what I want, do not display what I don't want.

3. USB harddrive.  No 200MB of iTunes bloatware.  Use CDEx to rip to .ogg Vorbis and copy to the the harddrive.  Done.

4. It's fun!  Been having a blast wtih it.  Picked up an80GB G5 iPod just before that generation was replaced.

5. MP3, no problem. FLAC,  here it is. WAV, can do. APE, have a banana.  And some I just never heard of!

6. Free.  Doesn't get better than that.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page