This is a request for tips, on where I can find a portable audioplayer, that only do free formats.
What is a free format?
Free Formats are the likes of Ogg Vorbis (for audio), Ogg Theora (for video), Matroska (for video), FLAC (for lossless audio), ODF (word documents), Jabber/XMPP (Instant Messaging) and many more.
These formats are licensed under a Free Software License. This is opposed to non-free formats, like MP3, WMA, WMV, AAC(+), DivX, and many others.
Why use free formats?
This is an easy question to answer: To protect your freedom! Non-free formats aren’t freely distributable, or even freely usable. They require a company to give you the permission to use it.
While it might seem far from reality, using non-free formats means a risk of you not being able to access your data in the future. Using a free format means you always have the right, and possibility to use access what’s rightfully yours to access.
Free formats will probably not contain copy-prevention software, such as Microsoft DRM or Apple FairPlay, because there would be no point in implementing it, seeins how this could be easily circumvented. This is possible because source code of the format is available for free distribution and free use. That means anyone who knows how to write computer software (and there is quite a few of those people) could write a decoder that removes the copy-prevention technology.
What I want to know…
… is where I can find a portable mediaplayer, which is what the general public refer to as an mp3-player, that only plays free formats, like Ogg Vorbis.
Why I want this?
I want this because I do not wish to contribute to non-free formats. Simple as that. Give me some tips, if you got any.
If I don’t find any players that fit my wishes, I might just have to build one. There are som decoderchips available.. I think. I’m not really into building electronic devices, but something like this could probably be used to build an all-ogg-player.
Xiph - The authors of, amongst other things, the Ogg Formats.
March 3, 2008 at 6:14 am
Well, I was on a similar journey a few years ago and could only find a few players which satisfied my needs. In the end I decided to purchase a portable player named “iBeat Organix” from a German company called “TrekStor” and I’m very happy with it. Sure, it supports mp3 and wma as well beside ogg (you kind of have to if you want to sell those players), but back in the day this little thingie came out there was no equivalent player out there which was easily managable from Linux (no extra software required) _and_ had support for free formats. Hell, you can even read text files with this player on its bright little OLED screen - and the sound quality is astonishing.
Now I haven’t looked into their new product line much (http://www.trekstor.de/en/products/mp3.php), but it seems that beside ogg they also added flac support into their newer players since the internal memory boost makes this reasonable.
Anyways, if you really plan to solder your own one, drop me a note, I’d be interested as well
March 3, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Cowon Systems Inc.’s portable media devices are built upon entirely Free Software and use a GNU/Linux Operating System to power the device. I’m going to purchase a Cowon iAudio D2 DAB in the coming months; having used one for myself, it’s fantastic, and it supports free and Open Source file formats.
I hope this helps you.
http://www.cowon.com/