Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion

mp3 player is dead, where to next?

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dejannk:
Rockbox project was awesome. I used Rockbox on my Sansa mp3 player, so much better than the OS I got from SanDisc.

But the mp3 player is going the same way as the Walkman. Days of iPod and other dedicated mp3 players are numbered. Perhaps it is time to look for a new project?

I suggest home media players. These devices are virgin territory. They can display photos, play divx and other format videos, mp3s, sometimes even have internet connectivity, torrent, NAS  functionality... They do all this very, very badly! mp3 playback does not include such basic features as shuffle! often device won't play some opular codecs. NAS requires special software. See for example Apacer AL460, WD HD Media Player, AC Ryan Playon, Mvix, etc...

This to me seems like a great opportunity to have open source OS specialized for these devices!

LambdaCalculus:
We're already on the ball with an Android port, which will allow you to use Rockbox on Android-based devices: http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/AndroidPort

dejannk:
The problem is that Android and most smart phones, having full blown operating systems, already have pretty good mp3 playback functionality. Also, they do release patches and upgrades and stuff so the device is not a "sitting duck" as was the case with dedicated mp3 players of old. To me these where the key reasons for switching to rockbox: Better functionality and new releases/functionality which SanDisc wasn't providing. These are simply not going to be an issue with Win7/Android/Apple smart devices.

As a result, there is probably not going to be as much interest for rockbox on these devices. Perhaps rockbox could become an mp3 player app on android, but do you want to go down that route?

On the other hand you have these media player devices being sold in their millions with custom software which sucks. These are small computers with half baked OS made by the consumer electronics companies. This could be the next opportunity to have something very relevant for millions of people instead of being increasingly marginalized on obsolete devices.

You could even make money licensing the software to the likes of Apacer and Western Digital. It could still be open source, Red Hat and those people ae making money of it (I'm poor so making money is always high on my agenda  :P)

saratoga:

--- Quote from: dejannk on November 19, 2010, 02:13:48 PM --- Perhaps rockbox could become an mp3 player app on android, but do you want to go down that route?

--- End quote ---

We already did.  Click that link in the post above yours.

Dec:

--- Quote from: dejannk on November 19, 2010, 02:49:39 AM ---But the mp3 player is going the same way as the Walkman. Days of iPod and other dedicated mp3 players are numbered.
--- End quote ---
How are portable music players endangered?

SanDisk are moving forward with the Clip+ and Fuze+ (after the prices on the original Clip and Fuze models got severely lowered), and anything with a microSD slot is going to equal more cards sold (SanDisk sells a LOT of SC and CF cards). They are also one of the few hardware manufacturers to release firmware updates, and to listen to their customers on a support forum.
They may not have added as many features as some people wanted, but they set out clear targets for what the next release was going to include, and let us all know about them early on.

A more logical next step for RockBox would be as an app on one or more of the major mobile phone platforms.
Android is obviously first choice, but Symbian isn't going away any time soon, and is a slower-moving target than Android to develop for.

Not all home media devices suck: The EM7080 from Eminent (NL) has an excellent OS, with lots of audio and video formats, containers, and codecs very well supported.

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