Vorbis Hardware

   This is a list of hardware of all categories, from PDAs to DVD players,
   that can play Ogg Vorbis files. Hopefully you can find what you want,
   if not, come back next week: several companies who can see the value
   and popularity of Vorbis are working to support it on their hardware.
   If you know of any other hardware or projects, please add them to the
   list. More hardware info can be found at
   [1].

Consumer products that support Vorbis natively

portable players:

• Jens Of Sweden's MP-130, IOPS' MFP300

  The MP-130 is a portable player with flash memory in 128/256/512MB sizes. This appears to be a rebranded Iops player.

• Neuros' Digital Audio Computer

  The Xiph.org Foundation has brought Vorbis playback to the Neuros Digital Audio Computer. See Digital Innovations' press release about the agreement. See the press release about the beta vorbis firmware. The final version will be more optimized.

  UPDATE: DI now fully supports Vorbis in firmware versions 1.45 and 2.x (available at [http://www.neurosaudio.com/support/support_updates.asp their Support Updates page]).
  The Neuros Synchronization Manager for Windows (available at the above link) now also fully supports the addition of Vorbis files to the Neuros. *nix users can use either Xiph.org's Positron or Sean Starkey's Java Neuros Database Manipulator, both of which provide full Neuros database support and other features.
  The new generation Neuros II is now available, in capacities of up to 80GB.

• Rio's Karma

  The Karma is a portable player with a harddisk of 20 GB. It can decode MP3, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC. USB 2.0 is used to connect to PCs, but a docking station is also included which offers ethernet and RCA line-out support.

  IGN have written preview and review articles about the Karma 20. Riovolution has a good Rio Karma forum and a nice gallery of Rio Karma pictures. The official product annoucement was reported in The Register and Slashdot; the Slashdot discussion included several informative comments from a Rio employee.

  Note that firmware versions prior to 1.25 cause stability problems for some people. Version 1.25 of the firmware fixes these problems, and also contains some new features.

  Originally, Rio also planned to release a 40Gb version of the Rio Karma: the Rio Karma 40. Unfortunately, it now appears that the Karma 40 is on indefinite hold, due to problems sourcing the 40Gb hard drives from Hitachi.

• iRiver's H1xx, H2xx, iFP-3xx (and higher model numbers)

  In September 2003, iRiver released a new announcement detailing their plans for Vorbis playback. Now basically all current models support Ogg Vorbis playback.

  Older models like the iFP-1xx line, and iMP-50, 100, and 150 line do not yet support Ogg Vorbis. Getting Vorbis running on the low-end iMP line may be difficult, and is quite difficult with the iFP-1xx line. The announcement has more details.

  Currently, firmware upgrades are available for the iHP-100 and iHP-115 (only available in Korea?), 10Gb and 15Gb portable players. The iHP-120, a 20GB portable player, and the iHP-140, a 40GB version, supports Vorbis playback out of the box.

  IGN have reviews of the iHP-100 and iHP-120.

  The iGP-100, a 1.5Gb portable player, supports Vorbis, according to the FAQ, though no firmware upgrade appears to be required.

  New models out mid-2004 that replace the iHP series:
  Portable harddrive players with 10GB, 20GB, 40GB; H120, H140
  Portable harddrive players with USB host function and colour display: H320, H340
  Portable media players with Linux OS and harddrive: PMP-120 and PMP-140
  Portable flash memory players: iFP-1090; iFP-1095; iFP900 Series; iFP800 Series; iFP700 Series;

• Cowon's iAudio 3,

  It is a portable harddisk player with either 20 or 40 GB of storage. It has a built-in FM radio and mic. It supports MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis and WAV. See this IGN article for more info.

• TrekStore's iBeat 500

  The iBeat 500 is a portable harddisk player with 20 GB of storage. It supports MP3, WMA and Ogg Vorbis and uses USB 2.0 to connect to PCs. It has a FM radio and an in-built mic. It seems to be available only in Germany.

• Xclef's HD-800

  This is a harddisk player with 20/40/60 GB storage size, and can decode MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis and WAV. It has a FM radio and a mic for recording voice.

• Nextway's D Cube NHD-150D

  This player uses a small 1,5 GB harddisk and supports MP3, WMA and Ogg Vorbis. It connects trough USB 2.0 and can broadcast music through a FM sender.

• Freemax's FW-960

  This hardware manufacturer’s new CD-R portable supports Ogg Vorbis playback out of the box. It will have 48 hours of WMA playback if an external battery pack (2 AA batteries) is used. In Korea, its retail price is 189,000 KRW, or approximately 160 USD.

  More information is available (in Korean) on the product page for the FreeMax FW-960.

  The FreeMax FW-960 is also known as the mpman MP-CD550.

• Samsung's MCD-CM600, YP-60V

  The MCD-CM600 is now available in Korea. It is a CD portable that can play Vorbis, MP3, and WMA. Page with photo of MCD-CM600. Closeup of MCD-CM600.

  The YP-60V is a portable 256MB player, that comes with additional functions for athletes.

• Havin's Exonion HVC-400E, Princeton's Pocket Beat airCD

  The Havin HVC-400E, also known as the Princeton airCD is probably on sale in Japan since late November, 2003.

static players / car audio:

• PhatNoise's PhatBox, Kenwood's Music Keg (“Powered by PhatNoise”)

  These are in-car players that are installed into the trunk of your car and hooked up to your car stereo. Both players run ARM-Linux and support playback of FLAC files. Beta firmware to support Ogg Vorbis is available at http://phatbox.sixpak.org/phatbox/ogg.phtml.

• KISS Technology's DVD player models (basically all)

  Except for one older model (the DP-330) all DVD/DivX players from Kiss can play Ogg Vorbis files from CD-Rs and CD-RWs (but reportedly have trouble with UTF-8 comments that aren’t also ASCII), as well as DivX (but not DivX Vorbis).

  There are reportedly problems with some versions of the firmware (2.6.6 ≤ x < 2.7.1), where playback is awful for a bitrates greater than 128Kb/s.

• Kenwood's VRS-N8100, DVF-N7080

  The new line of networked hi-fi components are supposed to decode Ogg Vorbis over the Ethernet port: the A/V receiver VRS-N8100 and the DVD player DVF-N7080. They are available in Germany in September.

• I-O Data's AVeL LinkPlayer 2nd

  This piece of hardware is a DVD player and a HDTV streaming client. It supports MPEG-2, DivX, XviD and WMV9 (WMV HD), as audio tracks PCM, AC3, MP3, AAC, WMA and Ogg Vorbis. It can use ethernet, WLAN and USB 2.0 to connect to media. It is available in Japan from September.

• MP Sharp Technologies' Digital Jukebox

  The MPST Digital Jukebox is a Linux PC designed for audio playback and sold as a stereo component, which of course can play Vorbis.

• Hermstedt's Hifidelio

  The Hifidelio is a music server in hi-fi format and designed to produce high-quality sound. It uses a CD/DVD combo drive and can thus rip Audio-CDs and read from DVD-Rs, and is also able to burn CDs. It has an in-built 4-port ethernet switch, a WLAN interface, can connect to the iPod and other portable players through USB 2.0. It can connect to other Hifidelios through the UPnP/AV standard and to iTunes shares (iTunes shopping is a future feature). The songs are stored on the 80 GB harddisk. Supported formats for decoding are: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, WMA, FLAC, WAV. The Hifidelio will be available from October, but for now it seems only in Germany.

• Umax/Yamada DVX-6600

  For the DVD/DivX player DVX-6600 a future firmware is supposed to be able to decode Ogg Vorbis.

• Neuston's Maestro DVX-1201

  This is a standalone DVD player that supports Vorbis.

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Consumer products that support Vorbis via third-party software

• Many PalmOS 5 powered PDAs:

  Using [http://www.pocket-tunes.com/ NormSoft’s Pocket Tunes software] ($14.95, free 15-day trial), or [http://www.aerodromesoftware.com/ AeroPlayer] (free), many Palm-based PDAs should play Vorbis.

  According to the homepages of Pocket Tunes and AeroPlayer following devices are supported (can anyone confirm this?):

  • PalmOne Treo 600
  • PalmOne Tungsten T
  • PalmOne Tungsten T2
  • PalmOne Tungsten T3
  • PalmOne Tungsten C
  • PalmOne Tungsten E
  • PalmOne Zire 31
  • PalmOne Zire 71
  • PalmOne Zire 72
  • Sony CLIÉ UX50
  • Sony CLIÉ TH55
  • Sony CLIÉ TJ35
  • Sony CLIÉ TJ37
  • Tapwave Zodiac 1
  • Tapwave Zodiac 2
  • Garmin iQue

• Many Windows Mobile/CE/NameOfTheMonth-powered PDAs can play Vorbis (e.g. with Conduits Pocket Player, $19.95, free evaluation available). Devices supported by Pocket Player:
  • Asus MyPal
  • Casio E-200
  • Dell Axim
  • HP IPAQ 1900
  • HP IPAQ 2200
  • HP IPAQ 3600
  • HP IPAQ 3700
  • HP IPAQ 3800
  • HP IPAQ 3900
  • HP IPAQ 5100
  • HP IPAQ 5400
  • HP IPAQ 5500
  • HP Jornada 560
  • JVC MP-PV331
  • NEC MobilePro P300
  • O2 XDA
  • Pocket PC Phone (T-Mobile)
  • Toshiba e300
  • Toshiba e740/e750
  • Toshiba e755
  • Toshiba Genio
• Sony Ericsson P800

  With Ogg Play from http://www.geocities.com/p800tools, you can play Ogg Vorbis.

• [http://www.sharp-usa.com/products/TypeLanding/0,1056,112,00.html Sharp’s Zaurus ]

  The Zaurus, a very flexible PDA which runs Linux, can play Vorbis files with a variety of software, including a plugin for the default media player, xmms, ogg123, mplayer, or theKompany.com’s tkcPlayer.

• Game Park 32

  The GP32, an arm9tdmi portable console with much hackability (gcc3 toolchain, expandable memory), has a Vorbis player available.

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Projects to support Vorbis

• Dioneer

  Their new players due out in July or August will support Ogg Vorbis playback out of the box, according to [http://www.dt.co.kr/print.html?gisaid=2003042402012267701001 The Digital Times] (Korean).

• Nextway

  Announced at IFA 2003 in Berlin, Nextway will be selling portables with USB host capabilities. It will have no memory of its own, but will use external memory/external readers to access smartmedia cards, memory sticks, compact flash, external HDDs, and more. Retail price is planned to be around 50,000 KRW, or approx. 42 USD. Vorbis firmware is planned to be released in November, according to [http://www.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/20030917/080300000020030917145246K9.html Yohnap News Agency] (Korean) and [http://www.nextway.co.kr/etc/hostplayer.html a Nextway news article] (Korean).

• mpman

  Mpman will be releasing a 1.5Gb 1″ HDD portable that can play Vorbis. There’s no mention of it on the website, but an external preview is available.

  Mpman will also be offering the MP-CD550, the international version of the FreeMax FW-960.

• iops MFP-3xx players

  Rumours say that iops plans to release [http://www.iops.co.kr/home/iops_product.html four flash-based Vorbis portables] in December 2003. The specs are very impressive.

• Apple iPod

  Independently of Apple, some people have µClinux (Linux for CPUs without MMUs) running on this. Right now, they are decoding Vorbis at 80% realtime, with hope for improvement.

• Frontier Labs

  Frontier Labs are independently investigating the possibility of Ogg Vorbis support on the Nex IIe. Details are not known at the moment. The Nex iA is advertised as supporting “emerging formats such as Ogg Vorbis through firmware upgrades”. At present, the available firmware upgrades do not provide Vorbis support.

• [http://www.pontis.de/site_e/produkte/pl_600_e.htm Pontis SP600 Portable MP3 Player ]

  Pontis announced in the middle of 2002 that they would ‘soon’ release a firmware upgrade to allow their SP600 portable player to play Vorbis files. Unfortunately, after 18 months of silence, Pontis finally decided (in November 2003) that a firmware upgrade for the SP600 was not possible, due to CPU and memory constraints.

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Vorbis in Silicon (non-consumer products)

• Ogg On A Chip

  A hardware/software implementation with a good report showing how to make FPGAs and the like to decode Vorbis streams.

• FineArch

  FineArch, Inc. developed a hardware core and control software for decoding Vorbis. This technology can be integrated into portable players or cell phones, and since it runs at only 12MHz, it uses very little battery power. It supports files up to 64Kb/s, but could be scaled to 16MHz and 128Kb/s, at the expense of battery life. For more information, see FineArch’s [http://www.finearch.com/english/news/pr_20030715/pr_20030715.htm press release].

• MCS Logic

  MCS Logic creates single chip decoders that can play Ogg Vorbis. They supply the Vorbis decoding chips for Havin and Freemax.

• Telechips

  Telechips has developed the TCC72x, a single chip decoder that can play Vorbis. The TCC72x series is based on on an ARM940T core, and it is used widely in Korea for players such as Iops or MobiBlu.

• Tamul Multimedia

  Tamul Multimedia manufactures decoding chips for Samsung. They claim they have Ogg Vorbis decoding firmware, according to [http://www.dt.co.kr/print.html?gisaid=2003031002011367704002 The Digital Times] (Korean).

• SigmaTel

  SigmaTel hasn't announced anything that we've heard, but we do like this quote:

  I talked to Deborah Clark, product marketing engineer for audio chipmaker Sigmatel out of Austin, Tex. She is the company's expert in audio decoders. She says there is a growing base of support for Ogg Vorbis. "We can't keep paying these high licensing fees for this. Manufacturers would flock to something that's free."

  from a 2000 column in Forbes