Have you ever wished your iPod or other MP3 player could be more easily configured, had a better or different equalizer system, or could speak menu items? With Rockbox, this is now possible.
Rockbox is free, open-source replacement firmware which can be used on many Jukebox-style MP3 players, including several models of Apple's iPod, as well as players from Archos, iAudio, iRiver, Toshiba, and Sandisk. Other models are constantly in development. In many cases, it gives your player greater functionality than the original firmware.
Being an open source program, Rockbox can be updated by users familiar with coding, and new items are added on almost a daily basis. As a Rockbox user, you can go onto the program's website, rockbox.org, and view the logs with all of the changes from one day to the next, and decide if you want to download that day's update to your player. On the site, there are also manuals specific to each player Rockbox supports, covering everything from installation to all of Rockbox's menu options. The manual is also user-updated.
I've been using Rockbox for about a month now, and have found it very easy to install, configure, customize, and update. The manual's step-by-step instructions are well-written, and you don't have to be a computer genius to follow them.
As a blind user of an iPod Video, I find Rockbox most appealing because of its speech capabilities. Unfortunately, an iPod without Rockbox is pretty much inaccessible to a blind user, unless you memorize exactly how many times you have to click the wheel to get to the song or podcast you want to hear. This can be impossible when you have a library of thousands of MP3s. Accessibility is an issue with just about any MP3 player, and Rockbox does a great job taking care of this, while using very little of your player's memory. Voice files can be downloaded from the Rockbox website in many languages, allowing your player to speak all of the menus. This is handy for blind users who want to be able to configure their MP3 player on their own, and for sighted users who want to change settings in the dark, or while driving. The hope is that the speech system will allow a driver to keep his eyes on the road, and not on his iPod's display screen. In addition to these files, you can also download a program which will use your computer's SAPI 5 text-to-speech engine to record the names of directories and files as spoken MP3 files, which you can then load to your player to have all files and folders spoken. This is covered in the Rockbox manual.
Another great feature of Rockbox is the ease with which files are transferred. Simply connect your player to your computer via USB, FireWire, or whatever connection your player requires, and use Windows Explorer to move files between your computer and your Rockbox-enabled MP3 player. With Apple's firmware as your default, you pretty much have to use iTunes to transfer music. With Rockbox on your player, your computer treats your player as it would any other USB storage device. Mac and Linux users, use whatever file manager your operating system provides to transfer files.
The file system is great, in that it gives you a couple of options for viewing and selecting the files you want to play. The default is a Windows Explorer style set-up, where your folders are displayed in a list, and you select the folder you want, then view the files within it. You can also choose to have your files displayed based on the MetaData, or ID3 Tags within the MP3 files. This view, unfortunately, doesn't work too well with the speech engine, but is fine when looking at the screen. This allows you to easily browse your music by artist, album, genre, year, and many other combinations.
The program is also highly configurable. You can change the display, the font, and the various sound settings to suit your needs. You can even have multiple configuration set-ups, for example, one for the car and one for home.
Rockbox also comes with a number of plugins including a text editor and several games you can play. The text editor can be used while you're listening to music.
The one drawback to Rockbox is the fact that it won't support DRM-enabled files, such as music purchased from the iTunes Store, MSN Music, or Napster. However, your original firmware is not deleted from your player, so you can switch back to using it quite easily if you want to play protected content.
In short, Rockbox is great alternate firmware to your MP3 player's factory-installed firmware. It's easy to install, use, configure, and even to uninstall. If you're dissatisfied with the way your MP3 player looks and works, I highly recommend visiting the Rockbox site to see if your player is supported by Rockbox. If it is, install it and give it a try. It's free, and won't hurt your system, and it can be deleted if you don't like it. If you're a developer, feel free to jump in and either help in developing the current builds for supported players, or assist in creating builds for other players.
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