Pimp your Pod

Filed in archive MP3 Players on June 16, 2006

James Kim at CNET sings the praises of Rockbox , replacement open source firmware for your iPod or other MP3 player. While it's isn't as slick as iPod software, it provides better sound, more features, and is very customizable.

Kim writes "the Rockbox interface is utilitarian, graphically sparse, and reminiscent of a command-line system, and it lacks the flash of modern commercial MP3 players. But where it comes up short in pizzazz, it more than compensates in options and settings, many of which would make the default iPod jealous. Using RockPod is fun, and though it doesn't benefit from a seamless iTunes relationship (you can, however, manually transfer songs within iTunes) and is missing a few familiar features that make the iPod so popular with the masses, I personally dig it--enough to use it exclusively for a while."

According to the Rockbosx web site:

"Rockbox has been in development since 2001, and receives new features, tweaks and fixes each day to provide you with the best possible experience on your MP3 player. A major goal of Rockbox is to be simple and easy to use, yet remain very customizable and configurable. We believe that you should never need to go through a series of menus for an action you perform frequently. We also believe that you should be able to configure almost anything about Rockbox you could want, pertaining to functionality. Another top priority of Rockbox is audio playback quality - Rockbox, for most models, includes a wider range of sound settings than that device's original firmware. A lot of work has been put into making Rockbox sound the best it can, and improvements are constantly being made. All models have access to a large number of plugins, including many games, applications, and graphical "demos". You can load different configurations quickly for different purposes (e.g. a large font for in your car, different sound settings for at home). You can even customize your "While Playing Screen" to display only and exactly what you want to see when you're playing music. In addition, Rockbox features a very wide range of languages, and all supported models also have the ability to talk to you - menus can be voiced and filenames spelled out or spoken."