Free Your Music Player With Fresh Firmware

[GhostShip]

This sounds like a sensible way forward for certain "proprietory format " users

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/21/open_firmware_for_mp.html

RockBox is a set of "open firmware" for various MP3 players, including the iPod, Archos and iRiver players. The firmware is the operating system for the player, which determines how the player behaves, what programs it can run, and what restrictions it puts on your actions. By loading an open firmware on your player, you get total freedom and lots of bonus features, like video-games and other third-party software. The code itself is free/open source software and has a giant and active developer community that's always adding new features to it.

Seems you can obtain all this functionality very simply by visiting here and downloading the new firmware.

http://www.rockbox.org/

Anyone attempting this please let us know how it goes, this sounds a useful project   

[Lysander]

Be very, VERY careful with this. Rockbox is only "officially" supported on a limmited number of players, and a good rule of thumb here is that if it isn't officially supported or even mentioned in a passing way on teh website, it won't work. ALso, doing so might (depending on the player you have) void the waranty on your MP3 player, meaning you'll have to pay for a new one and lose all your music if you don't konw how to restore the original firmware.