Rockbox 3.6 and beyond

“Rockbox has been chugging along for years offering an open
source firmware replacement for MP3 players. But how relevant is a
firmware replacement for a type of device that’s slowly going
extinct? With the release of Rockbox 3.6 on June 3, now is a good
time to check in on the state of Rockbox and the future of the
project.

“Rockbox is considered stable for a range of more than 20 MP3
players from Apple, Archos, Cowon, iRiver, Olympus, SanDisk,
Toshiba, and several others. The project also offers unstable ports
for a number of other players, and ports are in progress (but
largely non-functional) for another dozen or so.

“The 3.6 release is a fairly modest one. It includes support for
the Packard Bell Vibe 500, which is a music player released around
2005. It also supports upgraded hard drives larger than 137GB,
features a new alarm clock plugin, and adds support for Sony’s
ATRAC3 and other codecs. Users should see improved battery life
when playing Ogg Vorbis, WMA, AAC, ATRAC3, Cook, and AC3 formats
thanks to other improvements in 3.6.”

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